HEADSET OFF
Four times a year, the Being Adelin Schweitzer newsletter opens with an editorial. Gathered here, these texts form a notebook of reflections written alongside the work: on virtual reality and artificial intelligence, on the industry taking shape around the immersive, on cultural policy and what it expects of artists, and on what these technologies do to our gaze, our bodies and our sense of reality.
Get the next texts →
EDITORIALS
09.2026 - I’m sorry, but I don’t tour VR pieces
A festival director replies that he “doesn’t present VR”. A look back at what made the headset the emblem of a world, and a reminder that what matters is not the format but the gaze.
06.2026 - Should the immersive be awarded?
The immersive enters the Official Selection in Cannes and becomes a market. A defence of forms that are too long, too slow, that slow the gaze down rather than climb the steps.
03.2026 - HyperNormalisation
Starting from Adam Curtis’s film, a reflection on the saturation of the gaze and the hypothesis of a lucidity that would come from interrupting vision, at the origin of the Sutherland test.
12.2025 - Cultural industry: at what cost?
In trying to build an industry, digital art hands the advantage to those who hold the economic and institutional levers. What if the real challenge were to protect its margins and its disagreements?
09.2025 - Immersive dreams, or autonomous drones?
The rapprochement between Meta and Anduril reveals the military turn of XR and the use of our data. Against this drift, a call to preserve poetic and political zones of friction.
First published in HACNUMedia.
06.2025 - And what about Taylor Swift in all this?
A satire of total experience and the attention economy, and a longing for a crooked art that does not try to please but stares at its audience sideways.
03.2025 - The Augmented Illusion
Raised by public authorities into a totem of cultural progress, AI becomes an augmented illusion. What remains of our free will when the machine anticipates our desires?
11.2024 - If they can’t get a grant, let’s give them a bun!
Summoned to become content creators serving the platforms, artists risk losing what makes digital art rich: repurposing tools and challenging formats.
Four times a year, the Being Adelin Schweitzer newsletter opens with an editorial. Gathered here, these texts form a notebook of reflections written alongside the work: on virtual reality and artificial intelligence, on the industry taking shape around the immersive, on cultural policy and what it expects of artists, and on what these technologies do to our gaze, our bodies and our sense of reality.
Get the next texts →
EDITORIALS
A festival director replies that he “doesn’t present VR”. A look back at what made the headset the emblem of a world, and a reminder that what matters is not the format but the gaze.
The immersive enters the Official Selection in Cannes and becomes a market. A defence of forms that are too long, too slow, that slow the gaze down rather than climb the steps.
Starting from Adam Curtis’s film, a reflection on the saturation of the gaze and the hypothesis of a lucidity that would come from interrupting vision, at the origin of the Sutherland test.
In trying to build an industry, digital art hands the advantage to those who hold the economic and institutional levers. What if the real challenge were to protect its margins and its disagreements?
The rapprochement between Meta and Anduril reveals the military turn of XR and the use of our data. Against this drift, a call to preserve poetic and political zones of friction.
First published in HACNUMedia.
A satire of total experience and the attention economy, and a longing for a crooked art that does not try to please but stares at its audience sideways.
Raised by public authorities into a totem of cultural progress, AI becomes an augmented illusion. What remains of our free will when the machine anticipates our desires?
Summoned to become content creators serving the platforms, artists risk losing what makes digital art rich: repurposing tools and challenging formats.