"Our world Version 2.0"
Nerve Theory: Tom Sherman and Bernhard Loibner
Performance@ The Void in NYC
April 1, 2000

Walking into Nerve Theory's version of The Void on Saturday night
produced a definitive transformation from the commerce crowded streets
of Soho. The only lights available were from three channels of
otherworldly video exposures that stared up from almost every seat in
the room and two large projection screens at either end of the space.

From the very first moments there was an underlying heaviness in the
room that something was wrong, very wrong like the disorientation
involved when you can't tell if you are waking up or going to sleep.
Sherman's video and voice transmissions seemed to be relaying a dis-
junctive and ulterior media format where the t.v. reveals its true self
as a hardcore instrument of survival for a species who have outrun their
bodies. Sherman knows there is nothing out there… "the information
bomb has been dropped", the real-time desert is before him but he can't
unplug for fear he still might miss something.

Loibner's audio mix was adrift like a muted alarm or SOS from lost a
vessel on some other planet; a befuddled need for location and
orientation. He transmitted a continuous current that oftentimes re-
sided just above noise and manytimes "degenerated" into music. Loibner
delivered a smart navigation of soundscapes that dangerously teeter
between lost and found.

The performance ended with Loibner's audio "destroying" Sherman's
increasingly frantic techno-sex-monologue amidst images of nature and
commerce. Each video screen went dark, an awkward silence filled the
space. Had Nerve Theory unplugged? If so why? People sat up and
looked around.

Something had happened. One couple whose eyes were shut in trans-like
state for the duration of the show both began to laugh. Was this was a
victorious psychic-gesture of beings having succeeded in locating
themselves outside the incessant streams of real-time texts or rather
just an admission that we have seen the future and nothing is very much
fun anymore?

Either way Nerve Theory succeeded in changing our perceptions for awhile
and accomplished the difficult feat of re-processing our media saturated
environment and converting it into a format that allows distance and
criticism. Another world in crisis from accelerated time and reduction
of space… our world version 2.0.