Lady Gaga takes flight

After fashioning outfits from meat and seashells, Lady Gaga's latest get-up could double as a transportation device.

The singer titillated attendees at her "artRave" event in Brooklyn on Sunday - thrown to support her newest album, "ARTPOP" - with a flying dress called "Volantis."

Created by Gaga's TechHaus team and Studio XO, the contraption is "essentially a vehicle," Gaga explained to onlookers at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. She then climbed into the hovercraft-esque "dress," which bears the curvacious silhouette of a woman, and demonstrated how the outfit can propel an individual off the ground and into flight.

"We realized her potential for the world," Gaga said of Volantis on Sunday,according to MTV. "Right now she's priceless. The money thing is really not me. What we're trying to say is, we can do anything. Imagine the possibilities."

The pop star's "artRave" event also introduced the partygoers to her new album, which officially arrived on Monday. Gaga has steadily previewed tracks from "ARTPOP" following the release of her first single, "Applause," in August, but those in attendance at "artRave" got to see the singer perform some of the music live:
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Critics so far have been tepid about "ARTPOP," with Consequence of Soundwondering in its review if we've "come to expect too much" of the Mother Monster.

"At her peak, her mishmash of European dance music, American pop, ‘80s Madonna, glam Bowie, hair metal, Giorgio Moroder, and The Killers sounded both reverently referential and ahead of its time" - but with "ARTPOP," "Gaga has added only a few by-the-numbers modern elements to that initial formula ... That refusal to experiment as wildly as she once did reads as fear, and a pop star who’s afraid ends up sounding like the once-weird Lady Gaga does on ARTPOP: boring and normal."

USA Today, meanwhile, commended Gaga for her "latest extravagant exploration of her own fame ... but that doesn't mean it's consistently entertaining."

Billboard agrees that "ARTPOP" doesn't always live up to Gaga's ambition, but thinks that the album's imperfections reflect the imperfections of its creator.

"When Gaga balances these skyward designs with dynamic songwriting - when she successfully mixes the 'art' with the 'pop,' if you will - the results are often euphoric," like with the album's "Dope" and "Gypsy" being two examples. "Some of the more convoluted tracks sputter out before Gaga can carry her vision through, but even the weakest moments on 'ARTPOP' are so carefully built and ardently imagined that one cannot help but admire the effort."