[EOL]. End of Life

What do abandoned virtual worlds feel like? How much life remains in the digital reconstruction of a deceased person? Who am ‘I’ in the presence of the absent and who chooses what will no longer have a place in the future, corporate-controlled Metaverse? Building on themes explored in the 2021 hyperlink installation 404-TOTLINK created for Germany’s Impulse Theater Festival, [EOL]. End of Life offers a look into a not-so-distant future through the lens of a Meta Quest 3 virtual reality headset. The audience steps into the role of an ‘outsourced freelancer’ for the fictional multibillion-dollar corporation Imaginary Reality Landscapes (IRL). As freelancers, they must decide which abandoned worlds still deserve to exist in the virtual utopias of tomorrow’s metaverse– and which should be permanently erased. [EOL]. End of Life confronts these virtual travelers with a range of walkable, 3D environments, each containing remnants of their human creators. In this slowly decaying Metaverse 1.0, now disconnected from the online servers, the digital echoes of past existences persist, along with the question of how we will one day be remembered and how we want to be remembered.