arty farty

Me and M went for the electronic art happening "Feed" at the festival Elektra yesterday night. It was supposed to be spectacular and cool and mind blowing. They talked about loosing track of space and find yourself lost in ambiance... öööh.. arty talk. Well... The artist was working with physical sound (you know, when your body starts vibrating due to heavy low frequency sound), 2D computer animation art, stage smoke/fog and strobe lights. All in all I would conclude it like this: after stressing to get there in time, we had to actually wait 40 minutes since it was delayed (supposed to start at 11 in the night), so by the time we were seated we were very tired. It starts with heavy sound (cool) and an arty animation on big screen with weirdly moving naked body floating around in the air, becoming multiplied and weirder as time went on (fun for the first 5 minutes). After kinda 10 minutes of not much actually happening, suddenly there came a heavy, duty fake stage-smoke, thick as grandma's whipped cream, and in an instant everyone around you in the audience dissapered in the fog and you found yourself "alone" and isolated. Cool! But irritating for the lungs and a bit like a sleeping pill. Then starts a flickering strobe light, music more intense and heavy, strobe a bit shifting with music... This was meditatively slow - and quite boring and after 15 minutes of nonstop of this, I couldn't help falling in and out of sleep, M too, I just didn't see it at the time. Then it was suddenly over, but the heavy smoke stayed and nobody could find their way out and everyone was coughing. Just great. Arty and weird. This is what they say in the festival program:
"... The loss of control that arises from this immersive environment assures a sensorial, emotionally satisfying and
truly alarming experience. This is a great opportunity for you to put your senses to the test… and experience something beyond understanding."
Yes, they were right - it was beyond my understanding - and the fire alarm actually did went of