“Are You Experienced?” is the spring 2025 edition of the Notebook Insert, a seasonal supplement on moving-image culture.
Multiplex asks filmmakers, critics, and artists for short-form responses to the topic at hand. In this issue, our contributors imagine cinematic paraphernalia of the world to come, each one illustrated by Jake Tobin.
Andrew Norman Wilson on Total Fiction
Filmmaker; director, Silvesterchlausen (2024)
Imagine a world of pure light. There’s no screen between you and the fantasies that ensnare you, no physical body dividing you from the image. Just full immersion in the mind’s eye, as though a single retina lines the inner surface of a globe that contains all things.
Bodies will be unnecessary in this world of pure light. We’ll have no use for their unwieldy skeletons and central nervous systems, so spaces won’t have to be arranged like the one you’re in now. Math will simply tune to your fantasies and then express simulations accordingly. But if you want to take shape in this world of pure light, you can become any shape you want, even that of the fluid landscape that shifts around you.
Rising above material concerns, this world of pure light will redefine your perceptual reality, transcending race, gender, class, illness, and any other corporeal limits. The need for “tools” will even be thrown into question as you’re able to revel in a state of disembodied aesthetic bliss. Artist and viewer will merge in an infinite simulation of your own making as desire collapses into sensation and fantasy absorbs reality. Because these endless horizons will be generated as they unfold before you, the act of exploration will continuously manifest unthinkable new worlds.
While this all may seem impossible, dreaming has offered us this kind of simulation all along. Even in lucid dreams the dreamer doesn’t doubt the sensorium that envelops them. Now imagine a fictional reality in which you have complete control.
Fiction has always been the basis of any large-scale human cooperation: religion, the nation-state, human rights, money. These are myths that exist only in our collective imagination. The social meaning of something like democracy is, of course, to shelter human life from the laws of Darwin. Now fiction is set to become the most potent force on earth—far more powerful than natural selection. As these fictions are translated into electronic code that we can control, our aesthetic, erotic, and ethical fantasies will swallow up our objective reality. Total Fiction.
Sara Magenheimer on Donut Movie
Artist; author, Beige Pursuit (2019)
Experimental architecture is the new thing for movie theaters. Audiences require a compelling reason to exit the horizontality of our gravity-bound homes, and a reliable ballast for our increasingly unwieldy attention.
The oppression of linearity has no place in the collective cinematic dream. Theaters will be reoriented such that the audience watches the film lying down—either on our stomachs, looking through holes (imagine a massage table, but more comfortable), or on our backs, looking up at the ceiling.
The orientation is the director's choice. The former, looking down, is sometimes preferable for directors who want their audience to feel omniscient, godlike. Lying on the back immediately creates a feeling of intimacy, and the movie glides frictionlessly into collective hallucination. Some ultra-luxe theaters provide salinated pods in which one can float and completely lose their relationship to embodiment.
Also: a donut-shaped theater. Oroboros cinema. Movies in the round. Structurally anti-patriarchy, non-hierarchical, non-linear. Literally cyclical. A clear conveyor belt guides us through a tube of images. Vibes: intestinal and gestational. We transcend the body by going deep within it. The tube surrounds, envelopes and contains us while images play in stripes all along its surface, above our heads and below our feet. Some viewers may lock into one stripe and follow the unfolding narrative as they circumambulate. Others may edit images together associatively by simply shifting their attention from one track of video to another. Soundtracks are linked and unlinked in the mind of the viewer as their attention shifts.
All of this, of course, requires a certain amount of trust and submission from participants, but nothing is compulsory, merely available. Sitting and eating popcorn is always an option, even on the conveyor belt or in a salinated pod.
Kevin B. Lee on Makervision
Critic and filmmaker; director, Transformers: The Premake (2014)
In the 1980s, Pauline Kael observed that film students were less interested in making movies like Martin Scorsese than in being Martin Scorsese. That tendency has only deepened in today’s influencer economy, shaped by parasocial relationships, productivity hacks, and the cult of creativity. In an era when the notion of creativity itself is a form of capital, the tools and rituals of the creative class have become as fetishized as their finished works.
Cinephiles fantasize about a trip to the Criterion closet, but what if they could access the space where those masterpieces are made? Consider the possibility of observing an auteur's editing session, with unprecedented access to their creative cognition. It would be like watching a Twitch gamer's speed run: You would see every cut, every decision, every moment of doubt and flash of inspiration unfold in real time.
Imagine an ultra-deluxe streaming package in which auteur films are accompanied by screen recordings of their editing sessions—better still, played on exclusive “Makervision” monitors, custom-designed for this second- or even third-screen experience. Premium subscribers would also have access to the director’s bodycam livestreams on the set of their next film. Isn’t it every cinephile’s dream to embody the cineaste?
The director’s commentary track is as outmoded as the DVD. It’s time to enter a new dimension of auteurial access where the process is as immersive as the product.
Vera Drew on Hug-O-Vision
Filmmaker; director, The People’s Joker (2022)
For centuries, nothing has enhanced the filmgoing experience quite like being snuggled up with that special someone. During a creature feature, a lover’s soft but firm embrace helps us feel emotionally secure and grounded while we partake of the gripping terror on a movie screen. The darkened rows of a cinema are the only place some (who still live with their parents) can get away with snogging their sweetie on a Saturday night! For many of us, though, whether it’s because we’re unadventurous, unattractive, or unable to partake in physical intimacy with our partner, a trip to the movie theater can feel like a night in solitary confinement.
Introducing… HUG-O-VISION! A revolutionary cinematic adventure specifically designed for single schmucks, sexless cucks, and ugly fucks. By integrating advanced haptic feedback technology, this immersive experience offers a sense of physical connection and comfort during the film that you are unable to get from a loved one. Each leather-padded HUG-O-VISION recliner is hollowed out and houses two well-paid professional sex workers (with healthcare benefits, a pension, and vacation time)—that’s four leather-gloved arms providing gentle touches, soothing embraces, and warm reassurances while you watch the next Marvel flick or A24 critical darling! Is touch not enough? For a premium price, film viewers can pay for the KISS-PIPE extension—a retractable tube attached to your seat with a pair of the wettest, softest synthetic lips you’ve ever smooched at the end of it! You’ll never feel fugly watching movies alone again with HUG-O-VISION.
