March 23-29, 2006
Arts : Artpicks
Been There/Done ThatA Long, Strange Trip
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Every Fri. and Sat., 9, 10, 11 p.m. and midnight, Fels Planetarium, The Franklin Institute, 222 N. 20th St., 215-448-1200, www.fi.edu
"Shoot, shoot, God damn it," grouses a goateed guy dressed in a bomber jacket and high-top sneakers. "I thought they was gonna play Pink Floyd!"
It's Saturday night and I'm standing outside the Fels Planetarium with a handful of disgruntled Floyd fans. We're trying to get into the midnight showing of SonicVisionwhich some panic-stricken partygoers have mistaken for a Floyd-scored laser showbut the doors are locked and the guard is asleep at the desk.
We migrate to the front of the Franklin Institute and knock until another guard opens the door and leads us into the belly of the dome. We've missed the first quarter of the screening, but I imagine it's a lot like the other 28 minutes: trippy Trapper Keeper-ish designs morphing and multiplying at dizzying speeds and set to a soundtrack of the good (Queens of the Stone Age, Spiritualized), the bad (Audioslave, Prodigy) and the ugly (White Zombie).
A brainchild of the American Museum of Natural History and MTV2, SonicVision is what happens when digital animators (née acidheads) spend way too much time staring at screen savers. Montages of iridescent faces ping-pong across the dome ceiling, green aliens scale virtual jungle gyms, and neon starbusts get all M.C. Escher on our collective ass. My optic nerves twist like pantyhose in a washing machine just trying to keep up.
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The seats don't recline, so my neck starts to crick after, like, 40 seconds. Just as well: What begins with a bring-your-own-buzz turns into full-blown pukiness during the all-too-literal Moby segment wherein "We're All Made of Stars" plays to a starry, starry ceilinginventive, guys!
Pity the janitors.

