Spanning seven years, this ongoing saga comprises three chapters in VR and two audiovisual and spatial experiences. In April 2025, the artists—assisted by Pensive Vivifier—presented their extensive research for the first time as a full-scale retrospective exhibition: NERD_FUNK: A Seven-Year Odyssey, at MU Hybrid Art House in Eindhoven (https://mu.nl/).

Bite-sized, easily digestible photos and videos from social media—familiar in our daily feeds—are transformed into an overwhelming deluge within the exhibition space, pulling visitors deeper into the digital rabbit hole. But what does it mean, as a human being, to rapidly consume countless images and videos every day? In the course of this thrilling and immersive experience, the artists plunge visitors into a relentless stream of reels, stories, and other Instagram content. In doing so, they challenge traditional ways of thinking and pose a critical question: how can we make sense of the incessant stream of digital imagery? In this interview, the artists reflect on visual overload, the emergence of a new aesthetic shaped by social networks, and the impact of Instagram’s quirky culture on our bodies and perceptions of identity.

Alexander Burenkov: Mamali, Instagram Stories as a new cultural phenomenon first caught your attention during your artist residency in Korea. You were impressed by how quickly people began using video creatively. Instagram launched Stories in August 2016; shortly after, Boomerang emerged, and by October 2017, features like Superzoom and Polls were added—new tools for self-expression appearing at a rapid pace. Before that, Facebook videos were mostly used to document personal events like holidays or birthday parties, but Stories became a real medium for self-expression. What exactly drew your attention to Stories, and did you begin experimenting with them as an artistic medium?

Mamali Shafahi: My video and film work has always been a collage of various kinds of footage—some shot with my phone, some with a professional camera, and some sourced from online content. When I started watching Stories, I became especially interested in how this new format was used differently in Iran—my home country—compared to the so-called Western world. The contrast in content was striking. In Iran, I saw a much more diverse and eclectic mix: from kitschy weddings to sweeping landscapes to politically-tinged posts from friends in Dubai. You can imagine the cultural clash between that and my surroundings in Europe. What fascinated me was this randomness, the collision of contexts, and the accidental connections between them. That became the foundation for a new body of video work. Initially, I began archiving these videos without thinking about VR at all—just editing simple cuts and experimenting. But when I met Ali, I told him: I’m editing these videos, but they still feel like Stories—they stay stuck in that format. It frustrated me because I didn’t want to simply reproduce Instagram Stories in video art form. But VR offered something different: it gave us the architectural space to build a world. The goal became using these documents as a kind of time capsule—a testament to us being the first generation of both social media and VR. I was also personally impressed by Ali, who was one of the first developers in Iran to use VR in a sophisticated artistic way. That’s how we decided to move the Stories from flat 2D images into immersive spatial experiences, to add a new layer of artistic value.

AB: I’m reminded of Petra Cortright’s VVEBCAM from 2007, which played with webcam aesthetics and diverged from the typical "camgirl" genre. It was an early example of using YouTube as a medium—Cortright stared into the webcam as digital clip-art floated around her face. Before she moved into painting, she was exploring digital communication’s performative potential. Did you ever record performances on Instagram Stories or broadcast your studio process?

MS: One of the first key concepts Ali and I explored in the project was the tension between narcissism and voyeurism—both heavily amplified by social media, and especially by Instagram. Personally, I identify more as a voyeur. I still face a lot of social limitations when it comes to expressing myself publicly online. I wish I could do more performative work on social media, but for now, I mostly observe and absorb. I find visual material that resonates with me and incorporate it into my own work.

Ali Eslami: I grew up with video games, and game engines have been my creative tools since I was very young. So, my journey has been a personal evolution—from gamer, to game modder, to someone who creates full, game-like experiences. That defines my current practice. What makes game engines special to me is their ability to offer a stable computational simulation. In a way, they provide a grounding experience. The outcomes are predictable, which sets them apart from the chaotic and constantly changing nature of social media. When you work within a game world, the engine remains stable, the code behaves consistently—it’s designed that way. That stability became a way to counterbalance the volatility of liquid, ephemeral content from social media. That was the biggest conceptual shift for me: stabilizing what constantly destabilizes us. At first, posting Stories felt exciting and joyful. You were generating these constant extensions of yourself and sharing them with both friends and strangers. And with the 15-second time limit, people started using video in surprisingly open and intimate ways—probably because each Story was only temporarily visible. It created a whole new aesthetic vocabulary. But over time, my relationship with the medium changed. We all began to feel the fatigue. What felt authentic and fresh in 2018 now feels opportunistic. The values have shifted. Social media has evolved into a space of personal branding, where many people—including artists—build mini-empires and monetize visual culture. The boundaries are clearer now, and the spontaneity of the early days has largely disappeared.

AB: People go directly to Instagram for art now and rarely check websites. If you don’t have an Instagram account as an artist today, you’re simply less visible. The platform has shifted—it’s become more of a promotional or utilitarian space, shaped by competition and less creative freedom, especially for artists. People no longer share their private lives; instead, they promote lifestyles, products, or opinions.

MS: That’s such a stark contrast to when we began archiving. The excitement and sense of freedom that existed back then have now become part of digital history. It’s a pretty radical change—just in the span of seven years.

AB: The exhibition’s title—NERD_FUNK: A Seven-Year Odyssey—feels epic. It suggests a retrospective, a summing up of the project’s evolution over seven years. What are the key findings or conclusions from your research since 2018?

AE: The shift in our perception and digital culture over just seven years has been incredibly radical—so giving the exhibition an epic title isn’t an exaggeration. In ancient times, transformations of this magnitude might have taken centuries, even millennia. But now, change happens at such a highly accelerated pace.

MS: Another important element for me is using the reality of others in my work—something I’ve always done in my films and videos. I strongly believe that reality is fluid. Just a few years ago, everyone was obsessed with Instagram filters. Who even remembers that now? And with the rise of AI, we’ve entered yet another phase in the evolution of what we consider "reality." When we began working on the concept for the exhibition in Eindhoven, I felt it was important to emphasize that this project started seven years ago. Some aspects of digital culture captured in the work may now seem outdated—and that’s intentional. We wanted to let time pass, to allow the archive to age, and to move forward organically. The number seven also symbolizes change, so it felt meaningful to mark this new cycle of transformation in the title of the exhibition.

AE: Any epic saga unfolds in chapters. In our case the first two chapters—#ray_oscopy and #tech_hole—were created early on, in 2018–2019, before the COVID pandemic. The other three—#n2, #mortal_7, and #sub_terranea—were developed more recently. Chapter four, #mortal_7, focuses on gaming and cyber identities, and on how social media transformed users into influencers. That’s why we made it a parody of Mortal Kombat—you’re literally fighting Instagram influencers. In the early days, most Instagram accounts were just eccentric, anonymous personas offering glimpses into their lives. They weren’t monetized. But that quickly changed and became commercialized. Chapter five brings everything together in a sci-fi city fantasy—a world that felt out of reach back in 2018 when we first imagined it. All the chapters, in their own way, are epic battles. As an explorer in the NERD_FUNK universe, you face challenges—whether wandering through dark forests or navigating chaotic arenas. That reflects how I personally experience Instagram today: people constantly throw content at you, and you have to dodge it just to protect your brain. We wouldn’t have created Chapter 4 five years ago. But the climate on Instagram has changed so drastically that it now feels necessary.

AB: You never collaborated with scientists or digital humanities experts to analyze behavioral shifts during this journey. Instead, your insights seem based on personal observation. The overall experience remains overwhelming, deliberately plunging viewers into a kind of nightmarish visual chaos, without zones of calm or digital detox. Was this strategy of pushing visual oversaturation to the point of absurdity intentional? I imagine such an aggressive flood of content in VR could potentially provoke psychological rejection—or even physical symptoms like nausea or dizziness—for some visitors. Were you concerned about that? Interacting with your work isn’t always a comfortable experience.

AE: It’s definitely an intense, embodied experience—right in your face—because the medium itself is physically demanding. It tires you out, especially in VR, where you’re required to stay in a fixed posture, fully immersed and without the usual distractions like checking your phone. You’re completely confined to the experience. But we don’t consider NERD_FUNK to be simply a VR project. It’s an immersive art installation where VR is just one of several mediums, alongside sculpture, video, sound, and spatial design. We chose to present the last two chapters outside of VR to give viewers—and their bodies—space to breathe. Still, each chapter places the visitor in a different physical position: in Chapter 1, you’re seated; in Chapter 2, you're standing and dancing, immersed in a digital rave; and in Chapter 3, you’re seated in a lotus yoga pose. Mamali and I have always shared a deep interest in the physical and psychological tensions between the body and technology—how our bodies push against the limits of what they can endure in the face of relentless computer-generated imagery. No body can sustain that rhythm indefinitely. It inevitably leads to fatigue, even burnout—and that’s part of what we’re exploring. What unites us is that we don’t try to impose any grand theory or singular narrative. We act more like observers, collecting and reflecting behaviors, sometimes exaggerating certain aspects, but never reducing them to a fixed interpretation. We’re drawn to the ambiguities and layered subjectivities that exist within this visual culture. It’s not about arriving at conclusions—it’s about opening space for complexity.

AB: What was the reason behind collaborating with Pensive Vivifier and curator Marijn Bril, a specialist in digital culture, who created the social media library in your exhibition? It acts as a kind of portal—filled with books, images, websites, and five works by emerging artists that loosely connect to your five chapters. This space feels like an entry and exit point into the NERD_FUNK universe. You’re known for resisting explanation in your work, yet the library provides an extensive context. What role does this space play in relation to the rest of the exhibition?

AE: The core of our approach has always been about observation—about witnessing what’s happening around us. But we didn’t want to bear the full weight of intellectual ownership over such a broad and complex subject. That’s why we invited other voices into the project—not only Marijn Bril, who curated the library, but also five young artists who contributed their own personal perspectives through new works. Still, this field is far from being fully explored. The library at our exhibition is just a small gesture toward what could become a much larger body of knowledge. We see NERD_FUNK as a kind of laboratory—an ongoing research project. It’s centered on the body, and each chapter represents an extension or mutation of that body. Even when we talk about nature in Chapter 5, it’s ultimately about the body and its evolving relationship with the natural world.

AB: The fact that “brain rot” was named Oxford’s Word of the Year for 2024 is absolutely fascinating. The cultural conversation around the mental and intellectual effects of consuming excessive amounts of trivial, low-quality content—especially on social media—has become central. “Brain rot,” and its emerging subgenres like Italian brain rot or Indonesian brain rot, have snowballed into a full-blown phenomenon, particularly on TikTok. At the same time, I see more than just bizarre addiction—it’s almost magical, this trance-like absorption in irrational, delusional video content from endless Instagram or YouTube feeds. In some strange way, it offers a new form of hypnotic entertainment. It disables logical thinking and replaces it with the absurd poetics of internet trash. What seems like nonsense and visual garbage might actually be saying something real—something words and logic can’t quite express.

AE: Absolutely. This visual language on social media is often absurd, but I see that absurdity as a kind of coping mechanism. It’s a way to deal with the pressures and surrealism of modern life—a response that often comes from a vulnerable place. Absurdity has always existed in internet culture, from the very beginning. And even though it’s constantly evolving, the weirdness remains persistent. But the absurd isn’t just in the content—it’s in the roles we take on as users. For example, I’ve started to think of myself as a kind of postman. I spend time forwarding reels to close friends, almost like matching a reel about cats to someone who loves cats. It’s such a specific ritual. I didn’t do this a few years ago, and now I even get offended if someone doesn’t react to a reel I’ve sent. It shows how our social behaviors around content have shifted dramatically.

MS: I’m really struck by how influencers now create daily content as a job—purely to please an audience. Often, the content is meaningless in terms of depth or logic, but they take it so seriously. That was never the case during the early days of Instagram Stories. Back then, it was emotional, raw, and spontaneous—completely ephemeral. People would post raves or concerts with grainy visuals and terrible sound, but it felt alive and real. Now, everything is curated, polished. I recently read an interview with Bill Gates, where he suggested that in five years, people might work only two days a week. That kind of shift would leave a huge void—a need to find new meaning in life, especially if that meaning used to come from work. Maybe people will look for that meaning in the next generation of social platforms. What fascinates me is how absurdity keeps evolving. There were forms of absurdity five or ten years ago that are now outdated. Today, we’re witnessing new forms emerge—each era inventing its own flavor of the absurd.