What do we actually want from a massage? Is it the relief of physical tension, the correction of some bodily ill for greater comfort or flexibility? Or is it more about a mental process: the signals your brain releases, when you smell the palo santo, hear the babbling brook soundtrack, the promise that you’re going to relinquish some discomfort that has been ailing you, even if that annoyance is in your hippocampus more than your hamstrings— and all that. On a very sweaty Monday, I made my way to midtown to the (location for ’s haunts; there were still a few devotees taking pictures in the lobby) with more than a little stiffness in my shoulders. It has been 500 degrees in New York for about 100 days; sweating in the subway, does not a sauna make.
I was there to try , a new machine that bills itself as “the world's most advanced massage” and is entirely delivered by giant robotic arms. The idea conjured memories of sitting in the at the mall, those full-body experiences that once seemed so novel but have now migrated to airport lounges and highway rest stops across America. I remember at the time thinking, as the panels gently compressed my calves, that this was , I could get used to this.
If I were to grow up to be the kind of millionaire who could furnish their house with such extravagances, I wouldn’t mind a chair like this. After all, that’s what a massage—robot-enabled or not—is: indulgence. Or maybe not.
Aescape is ostensibly built on the opposite prem.