In Encounterism, performance artist Andy Field sets out to make our everyday activities – a taxi ride, a trip to the cinema, a visit to the hairdresser, going out for a meal, or a walk in the park – strange again. He does so to highlight the neglected role that public spaces play in allowing us to meet people different from ourselves, and how such encounters are vital for enriching our lives and knitting together the social fabric of our societies. Others, such as Weiss and Matthew Roberts, a Naval cryptologist, experienced seeing fast-moving objects in the sky at other points in time — Roberts talks about the Gimbal event from 2015, radar footage of which was released to the media.

The idea of empathy runs through the book, but there is also anger. Anger at what he sees as the misuse and misappropriation of our public spaces and therefore our private destinies. At times, it reads like a howl released after years of buildup. Was there a moment of ignition? Face off against enemies in a fast-paced last-man-standing arena! With a large amount of champions and infinite combo strategies, there’ll always be new things to explore. The Gist: In the first episode, a 2008 sighting of bright lights in the Stephenville, TX area is examined. It’s an unusual case because the sighting wasn’t just reported by one or two people, but by hundreds of people at the same time. The people who saw those lights, including businessman Steve Allen and constable Lee Roy Gaitan, were members of the community who weren’t inclined to tell tales about alien sightings, but they both saw what they saw, and both became obsessed with the fact that there might be something out there that was bigger than themselves. Allen admits that his experience got him so involved in finding answers that his marriage and business suffered.We just need to invent more ice breakers. More invitations.” But not digital innovations? “All the apps are about efficiency and compatibility, pushing you towards like-minded people when you need to search out non-like-minded people.” We just need to invent more ice breakers. More invitations Swifties Threaten To Boycott Netflix When 'Taylor Swift: The Reputation Stadium Tour' Is Removed Next Month: "Does Netflix Realize How Many People Are Going To Cancel Their Subscription?" Encounters is a four-part docuseries, directed by Yon Motskin, that examines different cases where people saw unexplained phenomena, like strange lights, alien spaceships, or even aliens themselves, and how those sightings were dismissed by both the federal government and the people in their lives who didn’t experience the phenomena firsthand. ENCOUNTERS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? There’s a degree to which we are being optimised,” he says. “We are being driven to be as efficient as we can be for safety and comfort, but also for profit-driven reasons. I think it’s less a Matrix-like desire to separate us off and subjugate us and more the forces of capitalism – the easiest and most efficient way of sorting things out for profit. You don’t want people lingering in a space, because you don’t know what they might do. Capitalism in general is always trying to design out those uncertainties.”

Field is also a child of the 90s so clubbing and dance music looms large, and in his book he talks of clubbing as a kind of pilgrimage: “A journey that takes us out of the confines of ordinary society and our everyday lives, enabling us to experience a collective joy in the temporary community.” Stream It Or Skip It: 'Holiday Road' on Hallmark, Where Nine Strangers Come Together for an Unforgettable Christmas Roadtrip Witnesses have for decades comes forward to share their alleged encounters with strange flying objects and even otherworldly beings themselves, only to often be ridiculed and dismissed. The specter of flying saucers and little green men has long been a topic relegated to the realm of pop culture at best, and hokum at worst. Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Oppenheimer’ on VOD, Christopher Nolan's Sprawling, Urgent Three-Hour Nuclear Biopic

Southern Charm' Star Olivia Flowers Shades 'RHOBH' Star Crystal Kung Minkoff After BravoCon: "I Thought She Was Rude" One of the things that all of these people have in common is the idea that seeing something that could be from an otherworldly being, whether it’s another planet’s living beings or, in Weiss’s belief, “messengers”, shakes people to their core because of the confirmation that something bigger than themselves actually exists. Photo: Courtesy of Netflix

That experience, he says, helped smooth the journey from thinking about how we meet each other in the context of art to thinking about the way we meet each other in the world. “It dawned on me that the thread was the idea of the encounter – everything I was making was about trying to create opportunities for people to meet each other.” Billed in Netflix press materials as a "detective story," "Encounters" relies on both firsthand accounts and also the testimony of various scientists and military officials to delve into reports of suspected extraterrestrial phenomena. The four episodes feature accounts of strange lights in the sky in 2008 over small-town Texas; Cold War-era submersible crafts lurking near a coastal Welsh village; a non-human intelligence reportedly interfering in 2011 with the operations of a nuclear power plant in Japan; and an alien encounter in 1994 experienced by schoolchildren in Zimbabwe.NASA also recently released its long-anticipated report on UAP while indicating its intent to study the phenomena from a scientific perspective by appointing a new chief of UFO research. He was inspired by other artists, especially Abigail Conway, whose work borrows from the everyday to make us think about neighbours and neighbourhoods and how we interact with the other people living around us. “I realised that, often for the sake of comfort, we avoid the difficulty, the complexity, the nuance of those encounters. Not every encounter you have is going to be comfortable and wholly satisfying, but when you approach them with care and intention, then you can begin to learn from that.” Field writes with tenderness and wit – born out of twenty years as a performance artist creating scenarios in which people are encouraged to see and interact with each other afresh. In Encounterism he not only examines how we physically encounter both strangers and friends – in all our human grace and awkwardness – but builds to a manifesto for the importance of real-world interaction. A rousing reminder that our cities, our residential and work places, must still allow for the possibility of spontaneity and shared, in-person joy. Directed by Yon Motskin, each episode of the series produced by Stephen Spielberg's Amblin Television, Boardwalk Pictures and Vice Studios explores a separate report of a mass sighting in a different part of the world.