"Real life is a hashtag we’re nostalgic to remember."

This piece is audio from a film (soon to be released) and was originally produced for Earlid as part of their 2019 Liminal Sounds exhibit Retreat, Disappearance. It was produced by Lily Sloane and Garrett Tiedemann.

Tape Extracts:

Welcome.

This is IRL.

Over the next few minutes we are going to introduce you to ideas of space and time that have become unknown to us. Ideas of sharing that have evolved to no longer require the necessity of proximity and location based concubation, but the ability to traverse long distances in the spheral fabric of code and fabrication.

As strange as it may seem, people used to come together physically. They used to share the same space and time to engage in ideas that to us seem trivial and unnecessary. They used to pacify the living with thoughts of progress and the satiation of dreams. Ways of living now primitive to the advanced consciousness we are so endowed with the aid of technology.

No longer do we need to come together to live a good life. No longer must we give away our time to another in order to advance our own expectations of achievement. We are one with the wires, one with the universe, the infinite justification of the cosmos.

You may be prone to think, based on past lives, that there can be good in the physical. That something better may arise from us returning to each other. I assure you, this is a falsehood. IRL holds nothing that cannot be provided. IRL had no reason for being other than we had not yet devised the tools to avoid it.

Joy and sorrow can all be provided within the safety of the infrastructure. You can experience it all without the worry of unknown physicality.

We share this with you to warn you. We share this with you because information is total. We share this with you because despite everything, there is no going back. Nothing more than a fabled idealism of nostalgia telling you that there is another way. There is no other way.

Let us show you.