The 'illusory virtual objects' presently wafting through the project room of New York's Chelsea Art Museum catalyze a solid examination of the behaviors that embody new media objecthood. For 'The Passage of Mirage', on view through October 16, curators Christiane Paul and Zhang Ga have selected nine works that demonstrate successful tactics of processing, encoding, and transmitting reality in the form of exhaustive digital narratives or states of being. Particularly evocative of this Mobius strip kind of totality is UK team Thomson and Craighead's 'Short Films about Flying' (2003). Each in the infinite series of randomly arranged films emotes the utility and routine exhilaration of airports by bundling cached surveillance of launching flights with streaming radio and protagonist-inducing dialogue snipped from live chats taking place online. More is sure to come to form during the exhibition's annex symposium, 'Negotiating Realities', to be hosted by New School University on October 10th, Tishman Auditorium at 66 West 12th Street from 11AM to 5PM. - Kevin McGarry