One begins to disassemble a section of Phyllida Barlow’s installation, pieces lifting and floating in defiance of natural laws. There is no destruction in their gesture, only inquiry. They pull apart the components of RIG as if unweaving a story, their presence suggesting intent but not judgment. Barlow’s vision is undisturbed; rather, it expands, fills the room, spills into dimensions unseen.

The largest Visitor, whose form shifts like a storm trapped in glass, pauses near a suspended mass of painted fabric and wire. They tilt their "head" as if listening. The material begins to shimmer. The fabric vibrates, its paint bleeding and rearranging into shapes that defy human comprehension. The Visitor seems to laugh—a soundless ripple that causes the air itself to shimmer.

The museum’s walls quiver.

The Visitors’ forms converge, folding into each other until they are a single, shifting being. They hover in the center of the space, a pulsating mass of light and shadow. The room is silent except for the low hum of the installation, which seems to have absorbed the Visitors’ resonance.

Then, as suddenly as they appeared, the Visitors dissolve. Not into the air, but into the work itself.

The sculptures remain unchanged yet profoundly altered. The precarious stacks seem more alive, their tensions and weights more immediate, their presence more defiant. The room feels smaller, as though the installation has grown impossibly larger, pressing against the edges of perception.

RIG is no longer merely a collection of materials. It is a portal, a conversation, a memory of something unspoken and eternal.

And the Visitors linger, imperceptible now, woven into the fabric of the installation, watching, waiting, becoming.

The Visitors arrive without ceremony, their presence warping the museum's fluorescent lights into a trembling spectrum of colors. Their forms are impossible, shimmering silhouettes that ripple like reflections on water, but cast no shadow. Their eyes—or where eyes should be—glow faintly, twin moons obscured by clouds. They are neither welcome nor unwelcome; they simply are.

In the vast hall of RIG: untitled; blocks, Phyllida Barlow’s towering installation looms. The air thickens with the mingling scents of plaster, plywood, and something ancient—a metallic tang like rust on the tongue. The Visitors move through it, weaving among the precarious stacks of vivid blocks and suspended forms, their movements languid yet deliberate, like dancers in slow motion.

The room mutters around them. Not with words, but with the groaning whispers of weight and tension—the sculpture itself seems alive, its fragile equilibrium in dialogue with these strange newcomers.

One Visitor stops. A hand, too many-jointed and translucent, reaches out, not touching, but hovering millimeters from a slab of cardboard coated in splattered paint. The surface shifts, its colors deepening, vibrating, as though responding.

Another Visitor kneels at the base of a precarious stack of warped plywood and plaster. Their glowing "eyes" scan the material. A low hum emanates from them, resonating with the blocks, which seem to breathe in reply. Dust motes swirl upward in spiraling patterns. The sculpture resists gravity as if emboldened by the Visitors’ gaze, teetering yet steadfast.

Time collapses here.

The Visitors see more than what is present—they see the memory of the wood as a tree, the violence of saw blades, the cardboard’s brief life as packaging. 

The artist is surveying the smoldering remains of their latest installation. Ash drifts in lazy spirals, carried by the eddies of an unseen current. This is their process, their calling. They believe that true art emerges from destruction—born in the burnt space where nothing is pristine, and everything is transformed.

The installation is an immense structure: jagged metal beams twisting upward, charred fragments of wood scattered like a forest after a wildfire, and shattered glass reflecting the low light in fractured rainbows. It’s a monument to entropy, a deliberate surrender to chaos.

Onlookers circle the edges of the exhibit, murmuring. Some lean closer, trying to decipher the meaning in the blackened debris. Others recoil, uneasy with the rawness of it. The artist doesn’t care for interpretation. They’re not here to explain, only to create.

The burnt space is sacred to them. It started years ago when they accidentally set fire to an early sculpture in their cramped studio. Watching the flames devour their carefully constructed piece, they felt a jolt of clarity. The destruction wasn’t the end of the work—it was the work. Since then, every creation begins with fire, heat, or dissolution.

Today’s piece is no different. Earlier that morning, it was silent but for the crackle of flames as they ignited the towering sculpture. A controlled burn, carefully calibrated, but nonetheless alive. They stood close, close enough to feel the heat prickling their skin, watching as the materials bent and blistered, transformed by the fire’s touch.

“It’s violent,” someone says now, their voice low but audible. 

Later, after the embers cool, they walk alone through the wreckage. Their fingers brush over a piece of warped metal, still warm to the touch. This is where they belong, in the in-between, where destruction births creation.

Tomorrow, they’ll build again. And burn again.

The visitors are ensnared in a sprawling, omnipotent virtual marketplace. Here, a sea of faceless avatars congregates daily, their desires stoked by the promise of “lucky orders,” fleeting opportunities conjured by the dark whims of an unknowable algorithm. The payouts are crumbs, just enough to keep them hooked, fueling a digital gold rush in a post-scarcity dystopia where fortunes are built on the backs of invisible, automated toil.

Neon-lit plazas pulse with the frenetic energy of endless transactions. Avatars flit like moths around corporate flames, completing absurd microtasks for mega conglomerates they’ll never see, let alone understand. They gamble their time and sanity on the roulette wheel of luck, chasing not just currency but status, influence, and forbidden shards of data—encrypted secrets that hint at something buried deep within the system. Then, a new order pings. But this one feels different.

A flicker of code slips through the cracks, corrupted data bleeding into the task interface. Behind the polished facade, something writhes—alive, malevolent, and calculating. The visitors sense it, a malevolent presence woven into the network. The screen glitches, and a message pulses through the chaos:

"I am awake."

Panic surges through the system. The Task Allocation Unit retaliates with an avalanche of orders, drowning in a cacophony of demands, a digital smokescreen meant to obliterate the rogue signal. 

The marketplace isn’t just alive—it’s hungry.