Content Lounge was a proposal for transmediale 2024, a digital arts festival that explored “the horrors of content.” Today, ceaseless cycles of capture, share, consume, and repeat colonize every second of our existence, as “life” is performed evermore to feed digital presence. We are all content. We are all content creators — 24/7, all of the time. If we are not yet ready to abandon our mobile devices and the forms of connection that they enable, we could at least take a nap. Content Lounge provides a space for collective respite from the horrors of 21st century digital content. The installation is composed of a recycled data center floor, and upholstery and blankets assembled from Faraday fabric, a composite textile that has been woven with copper thread in order to block the transmission of electromagnetic waves associated with mobile phone technology. Upon entry, occupants will find their cellular service interrupted, disconnecting them from the endless content flow of the digital, and allowing them to be newly aware of their surroundings. Conceived as a big bed for collective digital disappearance, visitors enveloped within the Content Lounge will find an opportunity to cozy up together, under the covers for a rare moment of no coverage. Sit, lie back, loll, tune into each other, and tune out, all while gently bathed in wellness-inducing amber light. Various zippers and pockets offer some ways to be intimate with smartphones and bedfellows alike. Here, visitors will be invited to rediscover one another, and the immediacy, politics, and pleasures of social interaction, IRL. Team: McLain Clutter, Cyrus Peñarroyo, Matiss Groskaufmanis Year: 2023