Alfa 5 space opens in Poblenou, an update of the sports facilities built in the 80s by businessman Jordi Casanovas, but now in the form of XR Sports: extended reality, virtual reality, digital technology. The sports club remains, but in immense ground-floor premises, a wide variety of rooms now extend, allowing one to move the body, mind, and imagination with dynamic activities we had never experienced. The largest in the world, they say. Surely, knowing its founders (Layers of Reality, in collaboration with Eurofitness), also the most advanced. We will now see how they manage the flood of teenagers eager to play, compete, and sweat it out in the sports centers of the future.
Anna Oliveras, the center's director, explains to me that for now they have managed the influx efficiently enough. They don't want to allow a Port Aventura queue effect, but rather a distribution of times that, digitally, can notify you how long you have left to access that specific room. The thing is that you always go with the wristband, and that wristband is conveniently loaded with the local currency. A currency with a name as endearingly boomer as "duros."
My growing skepticism towards the digitalization of art, not because I'm not in favor, but because it's hard to get right and sometimes causes unforgivable monsters, in the case of sports, vanishes, because the tactile and immersive lends itself very well to physical play. It is the digital space where I have seen the most sense in the screen relating to the body, to human presence, and to its mobility. Thus, after a lobby where we are allowed to try future video game releases of all kinds, we can move on to the first experience and, from then on, it is a marathon of surprises for which my body is not prepared. I can, however, highlight its high technological quality and its playful charm. Even in games that, moving away from classic modalities and how we used to do in the schoolyard, they have invented themselves.
This is a magnificent opportunity to catch up on the latest in digital technologyGames of kicking the ball against the wall (yes, the school one, but with lights and targets); digitally dynamized climbing walls; a large court of Flatballthere where the pool used to be, and which is now a space to bounce balls in all directions; a more leisurely excursion with immersive glasses to the summit of Everest; a thrilling paragliding flight not suitable for people who get dizzy (I only need to be asked "do you get dizzy?" to start feeling dizzy); asquashluminescent; a room that recreates the lasers ofMission Impossibleand that challenges you to overcome them to reach your goal... That is,a futuristic play center very much designed for young people ("all ages", but I doubt it) that has the grace of making technology, for once, something profoundly human. Corporeal. Physical.
When you start to immerse yourself in any of the games, willing only to do an experimental tasting, it is entirely inevitable to get hooked and want to hit that shot on that target no matter what and no matter how long it takes, or how much it costs you. Anna tells me that a good part of the games are created by themselves, in the sense that they have the copyright, and that they intend to end up acquiring all those that land in this space.
They do well and, business aside, this is a magnificent opportunity to catch up on the latest in digital technology. The team, young and attentive, ensures that no one gets lost or falls (or gets dizzy), and explains the instructions as instructively verbally as illustratively physically. The neighborhood, still far from the center but in no case far from sports activity, and every day less far from technological avant-garde, asks to go quite expressly. What happens is that, in this case, the displacement is deserved and moving your ass, in every sense, never does any harm.
Another thing, between us, is the hearty laugh they will all have, Anna included, once we leave the premises and remember our spasmodic movements between four empty walls, our ridiculous manoeuvres in the dark. This is for them. For us, there is the monumental amazement and the desire to bring young people. It is not even expensive for their pockets. It is worth spending, nothing, a few bucks.
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