You might also be wondering - why place the “100% organic” sticker on the headset? The shortest answer: The sticker commonly used to designate produce brings with it connotations of the commodification of the earth’s resources and the various processes involved in it’s production from farm to table. I’m extending this connotation to consider the hands/processes that go into bringing pieces of technology (the VR headset) from chip to user. Much like natural resources, how do the creation of such technologies impact the environent in their proudction and consumption? The shorter answer: The fruit sticker is also my tongue-in-cheek nod towards channeling some Dada-era influence - where they’d often place ‘ready made’ objects into art gallery settings as to change the context-connotation of the art-object. By placing the sticker on the headset, a conversation about how ‘natural’ technology might be, because truly, the same minerals that constitute this headset echo the carbon-based life that puts the headset on. Both the spectator and spectated are "100% ogranic". Which brings me to the longer answer: I’ve been recently fascinated by the notion of ‘everything being natural’ and ‘from nature’ - even technology, culture, and society. Technology being simply an emergence from human engagement with the materials and minerals that are ‘from nature’. If the materials that coalesce together to form technology are not from the wilderness we know as ‘nature’, where else would it be from? This idea has roots in a couple schools of thought - some mystical concepts of interbeing where “everything is interconnected”, sure, but also echoed in new age philosophies that might fall under an umbrella term of “post- humanism”. This is a framework that would view the technologies humans have developed as just as much of a ‘life form’ as humans in an attempt to question human exceptionalism and the purpose of technology. This is echoed in another new age philosophy called “object-oriented ontology”, which has a similar intent of challenging human-first hierarchies as to view technology as just as important as humans in the world we co-inhabit. This way of thinking would also ask us to observe the way in which we relate to technology and the ‘gravity’ it has on our daily lived experiences. I mean, we (humans and the technologies we’ve developed) all come from the same earth, so why do we place strange dualities between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’? Even moreso, such fremeworks would ask us to consider the perspective and experience of the non-human object (the hedseat in this case) as if to ponder: What would the 'experience of Zen' be like for a VR headset? Pulling from the 'alien phenomenology' as posited by object-oriented philosopher, Ian Bogost, would allow us to consider such an empathetically profound insight. Would the headset's experience of Zen just be simply sitting on the meditation cushion in a state of non-interaction with humans? Would we even turn the headset on... would the headset ever had been created in the first place? In the face of environmental, political, and ‘meaning crises’, these all seem like interesting scopes to gaze through. Taking insight from these various schools of thought, Zen for VR attempts to challenge perceptions of reality before the headset is even put on. ________________________ I’d also like to pay respects to the influence Nam June Paik's perceptually challenging and technology-circumventing works + approaches have had on my own work, with this piece especially. His "Zen for..." series (in the mid 1960's / early 70's) notions towards similar ideas. Though concepts found within Buddhism are invoked in both art works - I think the works differ in intent. Zen for TV and Zen for Film seem to point at the medium itself (and surely the impact the technology made on the culture of the time), while Zen for VR is pointing towards the spectators’ experience of self-reflection through the technology; yet they both seem to share the theme of the “medium being the message.” As we inevitably move towards a technologically mediated existence with the rise of absurdly meta-metaverses, I think it’s time to recontextualize such themes into modern mediums (such as VR) as to address modern issues of how emerging technologies may affect our perception of reality and self. Zen for VR is an attempt to do so.