The first room is entirely white, including white floors so glossy you feel you should take your shoes off. A semicircle of white leather lounge chairs surrounds a stage screened off with a see-through white curtain. My first reaction? It looks like a nail salon run by Barbarella.
“That’s it. Yes, yes!” laughs David Byrne, my tour guide through this surreal space. Then he adds, “We don’t do nails. You get embodied in the body of a doll in this room.”
Byrne — yes, of Talking Heads fame and many other creative achievements — is walking me through his latest project, The Institute Presents: Neurosociety. It’s an immersive, participatory theater performance at Pace Art + Technology in Menlo Park, one of three Silicon Valley-based art spaces occupied by the New York-based Pace art gallery chain. The multi-room installation makes you, the visitor, a participant in a series of “scientific experiments” focused on how the human brain perceives what it senses, comes to conclusions, and then acts.
,
Source: Kqed