Simulation City
- If Vegas is a city of simulations (imitative representations—Paris, Egypt, New York—in space and time), then the Sphere is its ultimate object; from within it, it can take the form of every and any situation. Usually the simulation takes the form of some plastic object in a chaotic skyline, but the Sphere is a Platonic solid. The only other perfect shape is the Luxor. The Luxor symbolizes the past; the Sphere symbolizes the future.
- Inside of the Venetian—the hotel connected to the Sphere—the shopping mall is pseudo-Italy with eternal daylight, featuring Gondola stripe-shirted chanters, a painted sky of clouds, with pucks (sprinklers) spaced 15 feet apart. It is a 1990's low-tech simulation.
- The perfect Sphere demo would be a film that transports you to Venice. It would be digital Venice inside of a plastic Venice inside of a sweltering Vegas inside of a desert. Nested simulations.
- The Aronofsky Sphere demo, “Postcards from Earth,” is a tech demo posing as a documentary. Without a narrative, they couldn’t charge $150 for it. But now everyone is upset for overpaying for what is fundamentally an uninspired, dragged out, half-length movie. The footage itself though is awe-inducing though. I got the chills multiple times. It’s close to full sensory immersion. The haptics on the seat give you something that VR doesn’t have. You can really feel and smell like you’re in the backseat of a car on a bumpy road in India—it should've been in Venice.