The party is so loud that Kylie Jenner can’t hear me, but a Meta assistant told me, if she could, she could tell me where the nearest late-night bakery is. We’re not talking about the living, breathing Kylie Jenner, who came here briefly in a Tom Ford-era Gucci dress with her boyfriend Timothée Chalamet in a cinched-up hoodie to launch the new Meta smart glasses she designed. We’re talking about the virtual Kylie Jenner who lives inside smart glasses, an AI assistant officially voiced by Jenner. The $399 round cat-eye glasses, called Starfire, reportedly start each wearer’s day with Jenner’s now-iconic quote: “Rise and shine.”
Starfire looks like something straight out of a Caroline Bessette Kennedy mood board. I wore them and looked helplessly at the Meta Assistant; She gives me an iPhone and sends me out for a walk. There are mirrors everywhere in Jenner’s room, one of three impressionist-driven, interactive installations installed by Meta at Terminal Warehouse, a Manhattan event space that once housed the famed 1990s nightclub Tunnel. I understand that the Tunnel was a bastion of drugs, public sex and bitchiness, which probably benefited greatly from the fact that cameras you could wear on your face had not yet been invented. But even at this corporate event of 2020, I become nervously aware of myself once my lender Starfire is actively recording. Every time I look at my reflection in the mirror, the recording light shines back at me, as if someone else was also contacting me through my reflection.
Walking through the crowd at Peggy Gow’s DJ stand, I recognize the same playfulness in others when they notice the headlights shining on my right temple. I feel like a hall monitor. “Hey, Meta, turn on the AC,” a partygoer wearing Starfire said as he passed by. The place is pink-washed and oppressively scented, filled with influencers, content creators, meta designers, and techno hooligans stealing souvenirs from establishments. “All the hot girls stole from Meta,” says one tech employee.
It’s cool in the Silver Magnet Room created by conceptual artist Harry Nuriv, one of the many creatives enlisted to help set the evening’s atmosphere. At its center is a pit filled with the usual magnets: Scrabble tiles, pastries and outlines of US states. We are invited to make our own magnet arrangements, and a small framed prompt tells us to ask the Meta what those arrangements say about us.
