SULK CHICAGO is thrilled to present “HALCYON.EXE: THE RIDE,” an executable software poem that choreographs both the elements of the operating system and various multi-sensory physical components into a total, colossal, digital amusement installation by Mark Fingerhut.

Duration: 25 minutes.

A Note from the Curator

Mark stands cursing the motherboard. I smell smoke but I’m not sure who zapped who. I ask Mark what the fuck is going on. He tells me not to worry about it, and I am glad.

I experienced a similar feeling of trust when Mark told me about turning Halcyon.exe into The Ride.
I’d seen the Halcyon software in his studio last July. Sitting at a desktop outfitted with three monitors and a gaming chair, I wore the artist’s headset, and he sat behind me. What transpired on the screen was beyond exaggeration. Beyond material or judgement. The lights and words; the words and music.

When W. H. Auden spoke of Cocteau’s Holy Terrors, he said, “the lasting feeling the work leaves is one of happiness; not of course in the sense that it excludes suffering, but because, in it, nothing is rejected, resented or regretted.”

I feel similarly about Halcyon.

I texted Mark a few weeks ago and asked how to write about the show. He said idrc (I don’t really care) as long as you don’t call it a video. “It like calling a play a movie; it’s just not.” A video happened before, but the software is alive.

The essayist who took up Mark for Public Works Administration likened the artist to David Foster Wallace and Halcyon to Infinite Jest. I found it more Joycian in its references. The Ride shreds and confuses the time/space continuum of the representative world. Watching it, I am jarred from complacency. I know it is good to feel inspired.

I do not search for answers, but I find them in perfect time.

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“HALCYON.EXE: THE RIDE” opened July 15. Riders were welcome every Thursday & Sunday from 4-6 pm.
The Ride was be administered every half-hour. Appointments always welcome throughout the week.
15 people per ride.