Play PHL Collective’s virtual reality game at Little Berlin this Friday

One hour before his technology-focused art show, Peter Erickson‘s new iPhone died. He couldn’t turn it on. He couldn’t charge it. It just refused to function.

It was the first mishap in a series of technical difficulties that occurred at INTERFACE, Erickson’s interactive exhibit that explores the lines between reality, technology and virtual reality. The irony wasn’t lost on Erickson, who, full disclosure, works at Technical.ly as our business development manager. He noted that the only piece of the exhibit that went off without a hitch was the low-tech part, a piece by artist Maddie Hewitt where attendees were invited to tear off layers of two large print photographs. They were, as the exhibit’s name suggests, being asked to interface with the art.

You can see the exhibit this Friday at the closing reception from 7:00 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. at Little Berlin (2430 Coral Street). RSVP

Peter Erickson curated the exhibit. Photo by Aidan Un.

Other highlights included:

• indie game studio PHL Collective‘s virtual reality game “NIB,” which attendees experienced (only after signing a waiver), while wearing an Oculus Rift headset and sitting in a chair that was suspended from the ceiling. PHL Collective’s Noodle Arm Royale video game was also set up in the exhibit.
• a live Tinder session, which was supposed to be a woman using the dating mobile app while her phone screen was projected onto a wall. When that didn’t work because of technical difficulties, she used OKCupid instead.
• Erickson planned to turn the exhibit into a 3D video game, so he had a station set up for people to get their video game characters drawn. The artists planned to use 3D-modeling software Autodesk but switched to MS Paint since the Internet wasn’t cooperating.

The exhibit reminded us of another Little Berlin show that aimed to show the blurry lines between virtual reality and reality.

See photos from the show in the slideshow below. All photos by Aidan Un.

[slideshow_deploy id=’34186′]

See more photos here.