Air-conditioning blasts down my neck as I watch bright, frenetically-flashing neon hues shimmy and swerve across the screen. How much more brightness can my eyes tolerate? I’m seeing purple blobs.

I think about where to draw the line as a viewer of Ryan Trecartin’s short film series, Any Ever. The young video artist is famous for short films that probe modern-day conceptions of consumerism, identity, and post-millennial technology.

In this particular exhibition, the movies blend narrative imagery and frenzied dark humor which crescendos like an MTV Real World brouhaha—times ten. Hosted by MoMA PS1, Any Ever occupies seven sculptural theater installation galleries that inspire viewers to question perceptions of humanity and the tolerance for a higher pitch and a faster pace.

The seating is unusual and the headphones remind me of blueberry muffins with their rounded, insulating speakers. To build on the bright colors, Trecartin simulates his short films in a fluctuating continuum. He created this sculptural, theatrical soundscape in order to evolve the viewing environment from space to space and to push viewers to a questionable edge. One room is a simulated airplane, while another is intended to look like a sterile business office. The contrasting environments complement the swift plot and interrelations in the films.

Trecartin’s series explores the themes of the ever-evolving technologies of our day and age, identity, humanity, language, and how narratives intertwine through linguistic interactions. I got the chance to speak with Trecartin and ask him about his artistic intent.

He took a swig of his Red Bull and gave me the down-low in a California-boy-kinda-way: that this exhibition was a major breakthrough in his investigation of linguistics and the evolution of personas, and that the ideas of translation and technology were paramount in his work.

“It’s exciting to think about how language has changed and has accelerated and has morphed and is altering sort of as the interactive devices and ways of connecting and networking with people is changing. I’m really interested in language.” He infuses the themes by articulating them in a particular person or form; characters in the films embody a particular topic rather than imitating a certain individual.

“We are substituting our agenda and medium of one thing with an agenda of another. It’s exploring the ways different things are informing each other. They are much more like idea studies put into a personality trait,” he told me.

Many characters have high-pitched voices, some with British undertones, that ring-a-ling repetitively throughout the screenings. This dialogue crescendos with an uncanny effect—viewers are assumed to have encountered these notions but traits are exaggerated in each character.

One valley girl character scathes her boyfriend with nasal-toned blunt remarks along the lines of “You make me sick. If your face makes me throw up, I’m going to make you clean it up.”

In short, Trecartin is exploring the most basic fundamentals of modern existence—family to corporations to office politics. “I like to see where that edge is,” Trecartin says.