Walter Pichler’s TV Helmet of 1967

Around twenty-five years previously: a person wears a white helmet that is submarine-like in the way it extends to the front and back. His entire head disappears into the futurist capsule; only the title betrays what is happening inside it. The TV Helmet of 1967 is a technical device that isolates the user while imbedding him or her in an endless web of information: closed off against the outside world, the wearer is completely focused on the screen before his or her eyes. This work by Walter Pichler doesn't merely formally anticipate the cyber glasses developed decades later. He also articulated questions of content in relation to the media experience long before the "virtual world" was even discovered. Pichler called his invention a Portable Living Room, and this is usually interpreted as scathing sarcasm. When at least the tube is on in the living room, then we can easily do without varnished cabinets and potted violets, the title seems to say.