2D or not 2D? ... Drew Burrows' In Bed. Photograph: Drew Burrows
In the offbeat new cult film Lars and the Real Girl a delusional young man strikes up an unlikely relationship with a doll he buys on the internet, while his friends and family pretend that everything about the new couple is completely normal.
Just as offbeat, perhaps, is the news that a decidedly non-delusional young man, student Drew Burrows from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, has created a two-dimensional virtual girlfriend to inhabit his bed (providing he remembers to leave that darned infrared-sensitive light projection system on at night). What's more, he is even - the cad - posting private photos of her on the internet.
Burrows has created an interactive installation that features a mattress along with a computer and projector that projects an image of a woman onto the bed. His work was exhibited this past week during the two-day Interactive Telecommunications Program Spring Show.
New York Magazine reports:
"You work late. Like, every night. You probably screwed up your last steady relationship, and, well, maybe there's no one to curl up next to in bed when you stumble in the door at night. Drew Burrows knows the feeling. 'I'm in this grad program right now, and it's totally consuming,' he said. 'I come home every night to an empty bed.' So Burrows, 28, engineered (literally) a solution."
According to Burrows, though, his "In Bed" work isn't so much a virtual girlfriend as a comment on loneliness based on the idea that "you're coming home to an empty bed or coming home to someone sleeping in bed who is either excited or not so excited about joining you. It works on all those different levels."
Still, you gotta love those accompanying photos. Unless, that is, you agree with one online respondent who failed to see much academic merit in the new work:
"I think this is one of the most misogynistic projects I've ever seen. Congrats! You can have a dumb 2D woman who can't speak or question you. So much easier to deal with than a real woman. I hope she malfunctions and gives you a virtual kick in the pants!"
Sounds as if that critic probably wasn't much of a fan of Lars and the Real Girl, either.
