October 28/29 & November 4/5

Hours: 12 pm to 4 pm

"Walking a Turtle" will have its Portland, OR debut next month. The virtual reality experience will be presented at the Lloyd Center on two consecutive weekends, October 28/29 and November 4/5, from noon to 4 PM.

If you're in need of some slowness, want to lengthen your attention span, re-enact a meme from 19th century Paris, or just protest against the attention economy, come walk with a tortoise We'll be setup on the first level in room 931, west of the skating rink and across from Silver Castle. This will be a free VR event.

In "Walking a Turtle", players go on a walk led by a tortoise. Part game, part quantified-self wellness tracker, "Walking" is a farcical tool for resisting the attention economy. Players must endure an obstacle course with an unwavering, fixed gaze in order to be coached into a state of presence.

"Walking a Turtle" references cultural critic Walter Benjamin's musings on the flâneur as agents resisting modernity: "Around 1840 it was briefly fashionable to take turtles for a walk in the arcades. The flâneurs liked to have the turtles set the pace for them. If they had their way, progress would have been obliged to accommodate itself to this pace."

Credits:
A project by Jeremy & Alice Rotsztain
Music and sound design by Patricia Wolf @patriciawolf_music
3D design by Ian Anderson @iananderson.xyz