♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Woman: I think people these days are drawn more and more to sensory experiences because we do spend so much time looking at computer screens, staring at our phone, being sort of insular in a way.

And these sensory experiences are a way to sort of get back into our bodies and also inspire conversation.

♪♪ ♪♪ Lauw: This kind of immersive data that involves the senses is not really about the story or the fact.

It's about affecting people on a physiological level, that when you feel this tingly sensation, you are physically changed in some way.

♪♪ Pridgen: It tricks your senses.

It tricks your state of mind.

It re-establishes your perception, your perspective.

Really feels like I'm really changing my sense of who I am.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Hello, everybody, and welcome to luxury escapism, the Oddly Satisfying Spa.

♪♪ Pridgen: Luxury escapism is a multisensory environment where we invite intimate groups of guests down for two-hour sessions to explore 10 or more relaxation spaces.

And each one of those kind of uses either immersive technology or kind of imaginative immersive art to promote relaxation and kind of inspire creativity.

♪♪ Lobser: We both came at the spa from different but similar angles -- just basically the idea that there aren't a lot of spaces, especially in New York, to go be with other people and a very chill space where you can still interact with them and sort of play and explore your senses and not be drunk and not be in a space that's loud.

But we wanted to do it with the things that we're good at, which is Tyler is very good at creating spaces for people, and I know how to drive technology.

♪♪ Pridgen: The idea behind it would be that technology, especially content that's meditative or relaxation driven, can actually be an antidote to negative content and technology overload and hyperconnectivity.

♪♪ ASMR, immersive technology, virtual reality, binaural beats -- The whole thing comes together to create this magical wellness, kind of trippy experience.

♪♪ Today we've created for you a wonderful selection of sensory installations and interactions that will delight and satisfy you if you let them.

Lobser: For me, I find VR to be an excellent space to just go in and relax and unwind and sort of separate yourself from your body and from the day and from whatever place that you're in.

And I think it's just an amazing medium for just, like, chill exploration.

♪♪ The first experience that I made that was designed to be sort of hypnotic uses this, like, deep tunnel and really amplifies it with light that sort of goes off into the distance and comes close and then goes off into the distance and comes close.

And it starts off very slow, and it starts to speed up.

So it's like you have this sense of anticipation, too, which is another thing that excites me a lot about VR is that you can really play with people's proprioception and sort of like their sense of anticipation in ways that you can't do with flat media.

And it's almost like you can breathe a sigh of relief at the end 'cause it's like you've gone through this, like, really tough space of, like, everything's kind of strobing and a little bit confusing.

And then it's back to just relaxing and, like, dark again.

♪♪ Pridgen: The sonic sauna is a small room that's been fully soundproofed.

The lights go completely pitch black, and a 17-minute organic ASMR sound-bath experience begins.

♪♪ The sonic sauna uses specialized audio in this new kind of form of sound design that we're trying to champion called organic ASMR, and it's a very visceral experience that kind of takes people on this mental, almost dreamlike journey.

♪♪ ♪♪ The rainbow therapy waterbed, it's a vibro-acoustic strobing waterbed experience that people report feeling a little bit out of body.

They see visual patterns because of the strobe lights.

And it's extremely popular and very memorable and not quite like anything else that exists, because David invented it.

♪♪ Lobser: I cannot take full credit for the development of the waterbed conceptually.

I have over the years been playing around with different modalities for sober-consciousness alteration.

I wound up in Bali, and I went to a place called the Temple of Chai, and there is a group there.

They bought a commercially available strobe light that's designed for therapy and they connected it to vibro-acoustic beds.

And they do a live performance with a gong and all kinds of other things.

That sort of pushed me over the edge of, like, "Okay.

I need to experiment in this space.

I need to do my own version of this."

♪♪ It's like sort of a healing modality, but it's also an art medium, just the idea that you can compose audio specifically designed to just like tune people's cellular structures with just acoustics and then tune people's brain waves with these strobe lights and then do the same thing with binaural beats, and just combining them all together, it sort of create something that's like the opposite of a sensory-deprivation tank.

I kind of think of it as like a sensory-activation tank, where it's just, like, hitting all your senses at the same time.

♪♪ Pridgen: Celestial flow is a virtual-reality sandbox tool where you use your hands and you gesture in front of your face to manipulate about a million particles that are very colorful.

And each different gesture that you use will change the way that you interact with those particles.

♪♪ In virtual reality, people feel very magical and powerful.

They often get out of it and say, "Hey, it feels like I was in Harry Potter land," or something like that.

♪♪ ♪♪ Lobser: A lot of VR experiences, the most popular ones at arcades, are actually zombie shooters and just like the high-intensity, like, fast kinds of experiences.

And there hasn't been as much of a space for relaxing VR.

But I think that's starting to change and people are starting to realize that there are even medical -- like, real, measurable therapeutic benefits to, like, just VR almost as itself as a medium.

So it's almost like whatever work I've been doing in VR is just to sort of amplify the effects that I find kind of naturally lend themselves to VR as a medium.

♪♪ Pridgen: I've always been very interested in immersive theater spaces, anything immersive, but I would say the one most important aspect that we're trying to basically have ownership over is immersive technology and the way that that can be used and the proper way.

♪♪ We hope that tonight has allowed you the space to take a moment to remind yourself that relaxation and mindful sensory stimulation are incredibly important in maintaining a calm and creative mind.

Work to balance your digital and physical life.

And remember, whenever you need us, our spa is here for you.

I've seen so many different immersive experiences.

I recently did Whisperlodge, which blew my mind.

I was amazed.

I thought it was absolutely incredible.

I am a very strong ASMR responder, obviously.

I was just so impressed by the production that they put on and how strong the experience was for me.

I mean, I was completely passed out, wiped out, like...tingling.

Let's just say I was tingling.

♪♪ [ Whispering ] The scratch of my razor against my skin.

[ Scraping ] Lauw: Whisperlodge is a 90-minute immersive performance where we take you through an ASMR spa.

ASMR stands for "autonomous sensory meridian response," and it's a made-up term that describes a pleasurable, tingling sensation that some people feel when they watch whispering videos online or when they just, like, experience sensory things in their everyday life.

♪♪ ASMR becomes more and more popular.

More people are studying it.

Last year, there was an important study that came out from the U.K. where they showed that people who have ASMR, they experienced a lowered heart rate when they were watching ASMR content.

There was also, like, an increase in their skin conductivity.

ASMR does have this, like, relaxing property that's very similar to meditation.

♪♪ [ Whispering ] So, when I was little, I used to paint my older brother's back.

Lauw: We came up with the idea for Whisperlodge because I have ASMR and I'm also a crazy immersive-data fan.

And Whisperlodge's co-creator, Andrew Hoepfner, he is, like, an immersive creator who accidentally made a show where a lot of people had ASMR.

So we both came together and were super interested in combining both the ASMR and immersive-data worlds.

[ Inhales, exhales deeply ] When I say Whisperlodge is like a spa experience, I mean it's kind of like there's no overarching narrative.

You kind of go to a spa, you do your nails, you soak in the tub, and you kind of go to all these individual treatment rooms.

And we try to replicate that at Whisperlodge.

So you come in as a group intro.

There's a group outro at the end, but in between, you're traveling from room to room visiting our guides, who all specialized in one type of ASMR.

♪♪ ♪♪ There's also another scene that's very popular that we call the boudoir, and it's just a scene where we brush your face and hands with makeup brushes and we spray rosewater on you.

And it's all about, like, just enjoying pleasure.

♪♪ ♪♪ Not everyone has ASMR intrinsically, but I do think you can learn to appreciate it.

For our show in particular, in the beginning, our intention was that we want to do the triggers.

We want to, like, make you have the tingles.

And that was how we determine whether we were successful, versus now, like four years on, I think our success metrics is, like, do you feel cared for.

Did you feel like you were relaxed?

Because a lot of people who come through, even if they don't have ASMR, what they receive is one-on-one attention from someone.

And just this person who's, like, in service to you, caring for you, that is universally enjoyable.

♪♪ Usually when we perform, we can immediately see the impact that we're making.

The first one-on-one, people are usually, like, still a bit nervous.

They kind of sit still and they let you do your thing.

The second one-on-one, you see them more at ease.

They come in and they're like, "Yeah.

Do it."

And then the third one, they're just like, "Give it to me!"

They are just very relaxed.

For people who have ASMR, sometimes we see them, like, shudder or shiver or they, like, make sounds, and then we feel really happy when we see that, of course.

♪♪ [ Whispering ] Good morning.

Last night, I didn't set my alarm.

I slept as much as I needed.

Lauw: For me, I think Whisperlodge is in that boundary between art and wellness.

I see it primarily as a performance, 'cause that's where we started from.

We were, like, thinking of this as an immersive theater performance to begin with.

And then, as we performed, we started to see the real impact that we have on people.

They actually derive something out of it.

[ Whispering ] I head to the bathroom and turn on the faucet.

[ Lid clicks ] Water makes contact with my hands.

♪♪ Lauw: Because our show is entirely whisper for 90 minutes, after being in such a quiet environment, your hearing levels just automatically, like, adjust.

It becomes hypersensitive.

And when we put you out into the world, you feel everything louder and brighter.

And that's a physiological change that you cannot deny.

[ Click ] [ Whispering ] My toothbrush turns paste into foam.

[ Bristles scraping ] Lauw: This is art for me.

I always tell people I want to make art where you are not -- you cannot deny that the art is happening.

♪♪ People are no longer, like, attentive enough to stand in front of a painting and just intellectualize and think about it.

♪♪ When we touch you in Whisperlodge and we hold your hand, there's no way you can not feel that.

You don't have to go through your brain.

Your body just reacts to it.

♪♪ ♪♪ The experience is pretty much a multisensorial experience based on perception of taste, how augmented reality can change the way how we perceive food and the way how we experience food.

♪♪ Mazumdar: The idea we're working on is immersive gastronomy.

The question we were asking was how do we create an experience that's more immersive?

What's next?

How does emerging technology play a role in our industry?

And with that, we embarked on this new journey where the idea becomes your food and your experience is no longer about just what you're tasting, but everything else and your surroundings and how it's combining into one cohesive experience.

♪♪ Casalegno: I figured out that taste is the kind of sensory that in VR is not very much explored yet.

Of course, VR is very much about the eyes, about hearing, about sound and music.

But there's not much other things that went into how we can combine those with food.

♪♪ Mazumdar: What people experience as they are thrust into this completely unknown world -- and it could be as if you're floating on the sky or you're underwater or you're on a mountaintop.

And each of those moments, you're seeing all these different objects around you.

What if you could go ahead, pick up one of those objects, and eat them?

♪♪ ♪♪ Casalegno: The entire piece is inspired by an actual book.

It's inspired by "The Futurist Cookbook."

It's an Italian book written in 1932 where the Italian futurists sort of start thinking about food in terms of colors and shapes.

Through the experience, you are in different worlds, different scenes, and every scene that you get to explore are sort of inspired by one of the stories of this book.

♪♪ The futurists lived about 100 years ago, and it was around that time they were asking all sorts of questions that were considered radical and crazy for their times.

But now, with the advent of technology, we realize those crazy questions can actually become reality and we can create these worlds out of it.

♪♪ Casalegno: You literally eat abstract shapes, and so the question is like, how that tastes like, right?

And how vision, of course, influences what you actually taste.

♪♪ The interception of tastes is not about only the taste buds, but it comes from nose and eyes, of course, right?

There's this famous saying that we eat with our eyes first.

So how that works when you are actually in a completely immersive environment that has no sort of relationship whatsoever with what you're actually used to eating.

Mazumdar: The experience started to be really based on emotions.

So when we started designing the menu, it would be between Chef, Mattia -- All of us would sit in a room and discuss, "Well, it's springtime," and Mattia is like, "Well, I see olives."

Chef is like, "I'm Indian.

I don't see olives.

I see mangoes."

And it's funny because how each of our own interpretation, our own authenticity lends itself to a certain type of emotions.

♪♪ Casalegno: So the way that I worked with the chef, we started from the scenes.

So he spent his time into VR, he saw every scene, and then he got inspired by that.

And he created a sort of menu where you could sort of flavor and taste one bite of things from each of these scenes.

And then after that, I started to create the visual objects, the visual representation of what you eat.

♪♪ What is really interesting for me, actually, is that in this very experience, it's like to eat for the first time, because we don't have any sort of preconceived idea of how the food will be like and how it actually tastes like.

Your brain is way more open in a way.

And it's really amazing to see how, you know, the comments of people are always similar.

They were really amazed when they discovered that actually we are not so much used to actually focus on taste anymore, right?

We are so much used to take photos when we eat or Instagram and just share.

So we sort of lost the moment where we actually are eating something and we sort to focus our efforts on taste.

♪♪ Mazumdar: The very last bite is a dish called falooda.

It's kind of like -- Imagine a bubble tea, but not as soupy, not as much milk.

It can technically be that way.

But we give a version that's a little bit on the drier side.

And we actually had that on our restaurant menu.

It was one of the worst-selling appetizers ever until we removed it.

That dish is the most talked- about dish in the VR world.

And it's not only that people are just eating it because they have to.

They're walking away, being blown away by that same exact dish that has a direct cultural context.

Yet because they're experiencing that in VR, it's as if it's a whole new world.

♪♪ Casalegno: I think that as an artist these days, there's no point to creating more stuff.

We have a lot of objects around us.

We have a lot of things in this world.

I think a critical approach to art now is really to start thinking about the experience of art itself.

We really need more and more spaces for connections and to enlarge and to start to increase our awareness of ourself, of the world.

My goal is to create moments and situations for my public to get in touch more with their own feelings, probably, but also be more responsible human beings, probably, and more aware.

♪♪ Mazumdar: In this case, you're not focused and walking into this dining experience with preconceived notions.

I think what ends up happening is whenever we walk in, we're like, "This is Italian food."

"This is Thai food.

I'm gonna order a green curry."

"This is Indian food.

I want X."

All of a sudden, what if you didn't know what the cuisine was?

I think for far too long we've been categorizing food based on geography.

I think finally we emerge on a new world where we get to categorize food based on flavors and textures.

So when we do that, all of that stigma, the preconceived notions, they all go away, and it becomes just about flavors, And all of a sudden it's magical.

♪♪ I think this is a new way to tell stories, and it's not to take away anything from the restaurant industry, but it is to further reinforce, further immerse a guest into sharing those stories that we couldn't tell in this format before.

♪♪ ♪♪ Lauw: Immersive data is going where it's no longer so much about, like, the story and the set and the drama.

It's about affecting you on a bodily level.

♪♪ Pridgen: I think it's all kind of this tight-knit world, different types of museums, a type of museum that feels really, really immersive and not just like, white-wall, gallery, elitist, like you're here to see art.

It's more like you're here to kind of shift your perspective, to let this affect you and change your outlook.

♪♪ Casalegno: I've seen over and over again through my arts and through my pieces, there is this very, very deep need for human connection.

A lot of thought that I put in my art is how to bring people in certain situations so that they are more aware of how they feel, they're more aware of their own bodies, more aware of their own selves, more aware of how we all connect to each other in this world.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪