A new VR experience in Australia will show you what it’s like when you die.

By Jane Herz | March 27, 2023 7:20pm | New York Post

This new art exhibit is to die for.

An Australian artist is bringing the experience of death to life via a participatory virtual reality simulator, showing people what it could be like like as you’re dying.

Artist Shaun Gladwell’s show, “Passing Electrical Storms,” at Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria can conjure the process of dying through “medical technologies,” according to the official description.

“At once meditative and unsettling, this interactive work guides participants through a simulated de-escalation of life, from cardiac arrest to brain death,” reads the exhibit’s outline on the gallery site.

Gladwell described the experience as “moving away from yourself and then floating off into the giant universe” in an interview with the Australian this week.

“By simulating death as an experience in its last few minutes, it’s a meditation on the ephemerality of individual life,” Gladwell told the outlet. “For me, it’s not all gloomy but a spectrum of colors and moods.”

He said that his latest work has been inspired by philosophers such as Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault and David Chalmers.

However, he also admitted that his work has changed because of his 11-year-old son, Zeno.

“My work has shifted seismically because of him,” Gladwell said. “I think about death in a different sense; it’s personal now because I see life as being so dear.”

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When you get to the exhibit, gallerygoers are instructed to lie down on a fake hospital bed and are hooked up to heart rate monitors, according to the Daily Star.

Visitors are able to leave at any time if it gets too uncomfortable, though, and there are even staff members on hand to “pull you out of it,” according to the outlet.

On TikTok, one user named Marcus even showed off the exhibit to their followers, taking a video clip of the room where it all happens.

Inside, you can see people lying on blue beds with their heads stuck in virtual reality simulators.

Next to the beds, there are large computers that resemble hospital monitors.

“It was really cool, as you put on the goggles you see yourself laying on the bed from above so it really changed the experience from just the traditional VR as you are able to step outside of yourself from a different perspective,” Marcus wrote to The Post about his experience.

In a follow-up video, Marcus explained what it was like to experience the simulation, which follows the aftermath of a heart attack.

“What happens is, you’re laying down, the bed vibrates, you flatline, the doctors come over the top of you, you can see yourself in the goggles, and they try to revive you,” he explained.

“It doesn’t work, then you float up past some, into space, and yeah, it keeps going, but I won’t spoil it all,” Marcus continued.

He told The Post that after going into the virtual reality exhibit, he did ponder a lot more about the afterlife.

“It does make you contemplate what happens after death, it also gives you a sense of the scale of both universes within and outside of our bodies,” he wrote. “If anything it makes you marvel at the possibility of life in the first place.”

He also added that he understood why some thought it could cause “anxiety” and “panic” and agreed that the simulation “borderlines” those feelings when you’re in there.

“When they put the heart rate monitor on your finger and tell you to raise your hand if you want to quit, it does give you a slight sense of anxiety about what’s to come,” Marcus admitted to The Post.

“During the initial flat line and being revived by the doctors/nurses it was an uncomfortable feeling, the bed is also vibrating and pulsing below you so it’s a real sensory experience,” he continued.

Marcus revealed that he felt “slightly overwhelmed” after coming out of the virtual reality, but he was overall “amazed” by Gladwell’s art.

His brand, HoMie, a streetwear label combatting youth homelessness, is also featured in the Fashion Now section of the whole exhibition at the gallery, which features 200 Victoria-based local artists and designers.

The Post has reached out to Gladwell’s representatives for further comment.

This is not the first time that Gladwell has created a provocative exhibit.

In 2017, his virtual reality experience called “Orbital Vanitas” took users into a real-life human skull.

One news outlet compared it to Plato’s allegory of the cave.