Finally! In London’s David Bowie exhibition the ‘immersive experience’ hits the right note

A few nights ago, I found myself in the audience at the Hammersmith Odeon, watching David Bowie perform his final gig as Ziggy Stardust. He was transcendent: his voice, more raw and potent than I’d ever known, sweat dripping as he bellowed “Rock‘n’Roll Suicide”. I didn’t head to the afterparty at Café Royal with Bowie and Mick Jagger because, well, it wasn’t July 1973. It was 2026 and I was standing in Coal Drops Yard, King’s Cross, levitating from what could reductively be called an “immersive experience”.

I have spent the better part of five years fatigued by exhibitions and such that label themselves “immersive”. Not traditional art shows, obviously, or sculpture parks or even art islands. It’s more the modern pursuit of finding yourself in a cavernous, often freezing, space in an industrial part of town because somebody told you that it was a good place to spend a Saturday afternoon.

Perhaps you know the sort of thing: a projection of a once-great oil painting stretched awkwardly across four walls. A floor “transformed” into a low-res lilypond. And your hard-earned cash spent on the privilege of standing inside what is essentially a Powerpoint presentation. Humanity, once again, humiliated by the technology designed to make life better. 

This push and pull between artistry and technology is nothing new, of course. Look at David Hockney. I loved the 2010 controversy around the then-septuagenarian Hockney creating vast exhibitions from images that he had drawn on an iPad. I also loved it when Hockney said, “Sometimes I get so carried away, I wipe my fingers afterwards thinking that there’s paint on them.” 

The sentiment raised an interesting question: if an artist gets lost in the process of making art with a digital tool, as they had previously with a more traditional medium such as oil paint, why is the final output seen as less valid?

Well, frankly, because digital art is often not very good. AI is the digital tool du jour and is largely, in the context of creating art, seen as cheating. A dirty shortcut. A quick route to something human-seeming rather than the genuine article. 

I have often wondered how I would feel if I cried at a lyric only to discover afterwards that it had been generated by AI. Fury? Betrayal? Embarrassment? The thought leaves me cold. It also explains why I have increasingly found myself fantasising about moving to the windswept Highlands, where technology or AI or immersive exhibitions are not deemed as necessary. I cannot tell you how many things need charging in my London daily life. 

All this is to say that my delight at the new immersive David Bowie exhibition came as such a shock. You’re Not Alone is produced by Lightroom, designed by 59, a Journey studio, and directed by Tom Wexler and 59’s Mark Grimmer (creative director for the V&A’s David Bowie Is exhibition). It is so spectacular, such a feat of creative execution, that I realised I didn’t care if the entire thing was made from AI (as it goes, it was not).

I still don’t quite understand how they managed it but You’re Not Alone has pulled off something extraordinary. An immersive exhibition that left me feeling not as though I had watched a Bowie retrospective (through some clever use of tech) but as though I had actually attended a Bowie gig (through some clever use of tech). Absurd. Thrilling. 

The whole show is dazzling from start to finish. An immaculate union of sound and vision. Across four towering walls and a great big ceiling, Bowie appears and disappears through kaleidoscopic collages and fragments that swoosh all around you. The concert footage is so vivid, so vast and so loud, you feel as though you are standing front of stage at Live Aid, 1985.

What delighted me most was the intimacy of it all. And the sense throughout that Bowie himself would absolutely love it. Despite the scale – the massive walls, the booming, swallow-you-up surround sound – the exhibition pulls you closer to our star as you journey through his many forms. At one point, Bowie discusses William Burroughs’s cut-up technique while pieces of handwritten lyrics scatter across the floor beneath your feet. It’s a clever reminder of the act of making things. No matter the tools, this level of creativity is distinctly human. 

Emily Bryce-Perkins is a London-based writer. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

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