“Because of the level of sensory overload we experience on a day-to-day basis, we need to have this fully arresting experience in virtual reality in order to get a total sense of vertigo from a work of art,” says Rafman, on the phone from Montreal where, coincidentally enough, he’s in the midst of perusing a virtual reality exhibition at Phi Centre. There were times when said vertigo was achieved by paintings. Manet’s Olympia (1863) and Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) each stunned the bourgeoisie when first placed on public view. But looking at a painting today is not the same as it was even 50 years ago. Bombarded by the sticky, interactive experiences fed to us on a steady drip by media and tech companies alike, we crave more. Enveloping, consciousness-bending experiences aren’t “just to escape life,” says Rafman, “but to create a total experience that will create a feeling that is qualitatively new. That is ultimately the most radical thing.”

The 33-year-old Rafman made a first foray into bringing virtual reality to the art world in a room at Miami’s Deauville Hotel during Art Basel in Miami Beach week in 2014. Junior Suite (2014) saw Oculus-clad viewers step out onto the room’s balcony, peer back through the glass door, and suddenly watch the room and balcony on which they were standing disintegrate, parts flying past their heads in their virtually simulated periphery. Some screamed thrillride, others masterpiece.