nlb@u
nlb@u (nostalgia looks back at you)
We often look back on nostalgic days, but have we ever thought that nostalgia looks back at us in return? “nostalgia looks back@ u” (nlb@u for short) is an interactive multimedia installation and “selfie station” that invites viewers to look at themselves inside a Y2K-dated “fake fish aquarium lamp”. Does your digital doppelganger look back at you to cheer you up, or to guide you to something deeper? With a webcam atop a hybrid computer-tank machine that outputs custom, interactive visuals, viewers’ likenesses are transported into the spiritually introspective visual worlds of nlb@u. Viewer’s physical movements get interactionally reflected in real-time inside the tank, and with a simple press of a button on a custom 10-key keypad, they can interact with 8 custom background “channels”, including community submissions. From the fish in the sea to the birds in the sky, and to the blunt reality we deny, nlb@u’s interactive, reflective rhetoric and ever-changing backdrops allude to our one-sided psychological relationship with nostalgia. In a world where nostalgia is sold to us, we often don’t see beyond the commodity that only fixes our gaze on the past. nlb@u encourages viewers to consider community over the commodity of nostalgia by restoring this iconic but dated lamp from a visually fixed artifact of the past into an ever-changing community artifact. Only then do we notice the emotionally transformative aspect of community coming together to rebuild our idea of “nostalgic futures” to its former glory, and then some!
Follow nlb@u on Instagram @nlbau.ndi