Jeremy Rotsztain: Walking a Turtle

Walking a Turtle is a virtual reality experience where 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. 

Created by artist Jeremy Rotsztain, 

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.”As players are challenged to maintain their focus for longer periods of time, notifications pop up all around them. Obstacles they encounter include a fantastical mechanical-era mobile phone (with a carved wood case, paper scroll display and ringing bells) and a fictive precursor to social media called “Daguerogram.”