The Experientialists

Banijay Entertainment no longer content simply beaming entertainment into your eyeballs—they now want you inside the experience, ideally ziplining through a cathedral while a licensed character explains the meaning of time. With their acquisitions of Balich Wonder Studio (who choreograph global unity), LOTCHI (who reprogram sacred architecture), and the addition of Tristan Desplechin (who thinks films should physically chase you), Banijay Live Studio is out to rewire reality—beautifully. Please read The Experientialists co-founder Lou Pizante's latest on blooloop before Banijay buys gravity and rebrands it as part of the Peaky Blinders Extended Universe.

The Experientialist, your semi-reliable field guide to the plausibly absurd, is back with Issue No. 45, now with 20% more clarity and 80% more feelings you weren’t ready to process. This month, we dive into immersive wellness that wants to recalibrate your nervous system with whispering lights, museums that seem to have been designed by emotionally complex glaciers, and a time-travel attraction where you might accidentally invent the microwave. We also explore Expo 2025 Osaka, where we learn what happens when architects and designers are given $5 billion and no adult supervision. Read the issue. Or don’t. But just know everyone who did is already halfway through an immersive trust fall with a talking chandelier. https://lnkd.in/gH9eNUVp

Imagine if Burning Man went to grad school, got a Fulbright, and moved to Japan—that’s Expo 2025 Osaka, where nearly every country has shown up with a pavilion that screams, “We recycle emotionally.” Hungary built a haystack theatre, Portugal turned fishing nets into a poetry performance, Saudi Arabia brought wind tunnels made of stone, France invited moss to cohabitate, and Qatar stitched together two architectural love letters to the ocean and meaning itself. There’s also a smart mobility system powered by hydrogen, 300 dancing fountains telling stories about the elements, enough projection mapping to accidentally summon a minor god, a mascot called Myaku-Myaku that a mascot that looks like a Furby took ayahuasca. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll wonder if that pavilion was built out of rope, hope, or repurposed metaphors. Scoops up, peeps: Expo 2025 Osaka will take place April 13-October 13, 2025 on the artificial island of Yumeshima, located in Osaka Bay, Japan. https://lnkd.in/gNDsRcpF

Imagine an art show where the goal isn’t to make you think, but to make you nap. A.S.M.R., or Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, is one of those terms that sounds like it was invented by a scientist who was also really into horoscopes. It describes that weird tingling sensation that starts in your scalp and works its way down your spine like a warm, fizzy wave. It’s triggered by everything from whispers to caresses to watching someone squish kinetic sand—basically, the internet’s way of saying, “Here, let me gently tap your brain into submission.” Naturally,?the internet turned it into a global phenomenon, with millions of videos dedicated to whispering, tapping, and generally making you feel like you’re being gently lulled into a coma. It’s either the future of relaxation or the end of productivity as we know it. james taylor-foster, a 32-year-old British-Swedish curator, has turned it into "WEIRD SENSATION FEELS GOOD: The World of ASMR", an art show that is here to cash in on your exhaustion. That’s right—this Hong Kong exhibit is basically a sleepover for adults. Featuring whispering videos, kinetic sand, and a pillow shaped like a brain (because there is nothing more “relaxing” than lying on a giant organ), it’s basically a spa day for your nervous system.?Oh, and let’s not forget the 20 million YouTube videos that inspired it—where people whisper, role-play as hairdressers, and slice soap like it’s their job (because, for some, it is). Who knew ASMR, the internet’s favorite tingle factory, would one day need its own museum? This is either the future of art or proof that we’ve officially run out of ideas—either way, it’s looks weirdly comforting. Scoops up, peeps! The exhibition, which unfolds in five sections, opened last week and will run through July 13, 2025 at Gate33 Gallery in Hong Kong’s Airside mall. With a focus on the auditory, visual and tactile, the exhibit brings the online world of gentle tapping, whispers and caresses into the real world.

Tom Lionetti-Maguire and the lovely maniacs at Little Lion Entertainment have officially weaponized nostalgia, launching a real-life PAC-MAN maze in Manchester city center where grown adults can live out their pixel-chomping fantasies without judgment or gym memberships. It’s like CrossFit for '80s kids, but with more neon and fewer kettlebells. Players outfitted with what I assume is NASA-grade tech glowing vests and run from ghosts, all while being judged (and possibly mocked) by a human hype man known only as the Pac-Master. It's the most fun you can have with augmented reality, cardio-induced panic, and unresolved childhood trauma—all in one nostalgic dopamine trap.

Shoutout to our brilliant friend Louis Alfieri for introducing us to the gloriously bizarre rabbit hole that is?Digital da Vincis, a Slovenia-based AI-first creative studio that’s out here putting souls into machines and winning awards like they’re collecting Pokémon cards. Their short film?BLUEBIRD—a dystopian AI-generated hallucination about life after the "Big War"—is leaving us equal parts baffled, mesmerized, and questioning whether we’ve been using our brains correctly. We have no idea what’s happening, but we're 100% here for it. Thank you, Louis, for dragging us into this glorious chaos. Also, wtf, friend?!

Don’t pretend we didn’t tell you so. Three. In. A. Row. That’s not a streak—that’s a color-coded hostile takeover of the alt.ctrl.GDC subconscious. And we said it was coming. We said ChromaCorp was no ordinary game. We said it was a "meticulously designed dystopian trap," and some of you laughed. Some of you looked at us the way a cat looks at a Roomba—bemused, suspicious, and certain we'd been sniffing dry-erase markers. But look who’s laughing now. (It’s us. Quietly. In an HR-safe corner of the ChromaCorp lobby.) Massive congrats to Justin Andarza ?? GDC, Forrest Lucas, and the entire rogue faction of brilliant weirdos behind ChromaCorp. You built a team-building simulator so immersive, so subversive, it should probably be on a watchlist. And now you’ve three-peated. Three-peated. That’s Bulls-level behavior, and we are all just Dennis Rodman in your orbit—confused, delighted, and somehow at a Vegas hotel during playoffs. To anyone who ignored our warnings and didn’t visit them at GDC: Enjoy your Unsettling Beige? future. You brought this on yourselves. To everyone else: We told you. WE TOLD YOU. Now if you’ll excuse us, we need to submit a formal request to get Pony Pink? reinstated.

Here it is! The most persuasive evidence we've found yet to support our argument?that immersive theater is alive, well, and possibly armed with enchanted cutlery.?In Norfolk, Virginia, someone possibly spiked the tea at the Jane Austen book club and the result is Pride & Prejudice & Dragons—an immersive show where Elizabeth Bennet rolls for initiative and Mr. Darcy may or may not be a warlock. Hosted inside a historic museum-turned-dungeon-crawling-Regency-estate, the event lets guests wander freely from drawing room to Hobbit hole like it’s Bridgerton meets Skyrim meets “I definitely didn’t read the book, but I dressed up anyway.” You don’t need to know Austen, or D&D—you just need to enjoy chaotic romance, velvet waistcoats, and the creeping suspicion that Lady Catherine might turn into a basilisk at any moment. It’s the only event where you’re encouraged to wear both a bonnet and chainmail, and if you leave emotionally unchanged, that’s on you. Scoops up, peeps! "Pride & Prejudice & Dragons" is running at the The Hermitage Museum & Gardens from March 20 through April 5, 2025. Cop your tix here: https://lnkd.in/gg7kiDgN

Just when you thought the museum world couldn’t get any more extra, 2025 rolls in with a global drop of architectural flexes so wild, even the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is politely sweating. In a piece that reads like a highbrow treasure map, Nazar Atamaniuk guides us through post offices turned into color-coded feminist dreamscapes, palaces rebranded as gallery-hotels, and at least one museum that looks like it was built by an art-loving mountain. Apparently, museums are no longer places to view art—they are the art, and Nazar is our passport-wielding Virgil through the whole beautiful madness. https://lnkd.in/gDhqY4x9