In December 2019, I visited a bizarre installation in Philadelphia’s Navy Yard. Group X, partnering with Numen/For Use, assembled 21 miles of packing tape into a web of suspended tunnels in an unoccupied warehouse.

Numen/For Use’s work is outstanding; they have completed tape webs all over the world. They also design installations with string, nets, and light which are all interactive and, at times, immersive.

Back to the Navy Yard. The varying degrees of transparency in the web-like structure gave the appearance of a cocoon, with a blurred view of crawling occupants within. Once inside, the lack of fresh air, vibration of the web from others’ movement, and inability to avoid slipping/sliding in unintended directions (socks + plastic = trouble) made the experience as unsetting as it was interesting. Overall, it was a pretty cool exhibit and I hope that it is as close as I ever come to a spider web of this size.