PERSPECTIVE
The Outer Limits
Journeys to the farthest reaches of interactive entertainment
ALEX SPENCER
Truly being in the moment is a wonderful thing – but in this day and age it’s not worth much if you can’t share that Illustration konsume.me moment around afterwards. Which, lest I come off as a cloud-yelling old man, is not necessarily a bad thing. The cultural dominance of Instagram and its kin are a major factor in the rise of playable spaces I’ve been charting in this column, especially any that fit under the ‘immersive’ umbrella.
Hence the social-media-ready ‘Balloon Museums’ that keep popping up in cities across the world, or the months-long waiting list for tickets to Yayoi Kusama’s (slightly underwhelming in person, but incredibly photogenic) Infinity Mirror Rooms exhibition. Or indeed the gigantic game of Tetris I stumbled into just now, above Tottenham Court Road tube station, where a quick scan of a QR code made my phone a controller for steering tetrominoes into place on a four-storey LED well, alongside six strangers doing the same, while dozens more captured the moment on their phones.