Journey through a wide spectrum of graphic, futuristic visionaries all on your own terms including but not limited to video art, music video, performance art and animation. Immerse all thoughts into your machine with the radiant colours and hypnotic music sure to seep its way into one’s sense of reality. This techno-heavy playground is one waiting for travellers. Game starts in three, two, one, zero…
Your expedition of gadgetry fortune begins surrounded by purple as far as the eye can see. Once the audience gets to grips with the surroundings using the easy to navigate ‘point and click’ system, a roundup of the experimental works to be shown can be accessed. This gives you a sense of what you are to experience shortly, right before you get to the entrance point of the labyrinth.
One of the most memorable showcases I interacted with was one of the first I had encountered called ‘The elasticity of the sense’ by Darae Baek. It showed her holding a flag, bouncing on a trampoline with her nose and mouth covered. Due to her prolonged dizziness, she erases past situations in her life and replaces them. As the description stated, ‘It is an act of resisting situations that disturb her life’. In my opinion the most interesting videos I observed required me to be open-minded in order to find the metaphorical meaning behind them resulting in many eye-opening experiences.
‘Yamada’s Love Game’ was also an interesting imagining I had come across more toward the video game aspect of things, leaning away from the metaphorical and toward the interactive. Personally, I found the latter sorts of exhibitions a good contrast between the deep, heavy nature of experiences as mentioned before. It was also fun to explore the environment and find calming and endearing showcases such as ‘y30’s pink dolphin’. A few more of my favourites included ‘Trespassing’ by Jaxton and Nhozagri and ‘breath-scape’ by Divaagar.
The visuals presented in ‘Cyber Labyrinth’ were honestly on par with that of an actual video game, there were different types of environments throughout however all still incorporating the same techno feel. Big, lettered titles sat upon the experiences making them easy to find and access and there were enough of them to easily occupy an audience for hours. Despite all these positives, after exploring for a while I came to find that the futuristic music got boring and repetitive after exploring for a while.
Overall ‘Cyber Labyrinth’ provided me with interesting and engaging encounters that was made all the more amusing with the fact I could control my own way around the labyrinth all the way until I found the finish line.
Reviewer: Julia Panova
Reviewed: 22nd May 2021
North West End UK Rating: ★★★★