Late on a recent Sunday night, dozens of adventurous urban explorers wandered into Manhattan’s storied Chelsea Hotel. In rooms decorated with antique mirrors and windows draped with velvet curtains, a Fellini-themed party was under way. At various points during the evening, a dancer performed burlesque, a soprano sang Puccini and an accordionist, whose face was painted a ghoulish white and body covered with intricate piercings, played a 1934 ballad, “Midnight, the Stars and You.”
The whole event, lasting two hours, was entirely virtual, filtered through laptops and smartphones. The host and performers were double-exposed by a software engineer onto images of one of the hotel’s last private apartments, giving a ghostly, projected impression on YouTube Live. An audience of some 75 people watched on Zoom, where they could periodically chat and admire one another’s gold-velvet jackets, feather headdresses and other Fellini-inspired outfits.
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