Installation, live video game visuals for festival stage, stage and projection screen design by Troy Barrett

Lupercalia, California City desert

The „Desertgame“ 2022 is specifically created for the landscape of the Mojave Desert as interactive visuals for the performances of the festival LUPERCALIA and could be played using a keyboard on the side of the dancefloor. It was projected on a screen in the back of the stage, floating with the wind and partially keeping the view of the desert through the in-between spaces. The digital landscape refers to the physical surroundings and the festival’s theme: the ancient roman festivities and fertility rite of Lupercalia. Two overlaying and differently angled cameras follow an invisible player, the underlying slightly rotating in time, a disorientating additional view in the background. The visual elements in the landscape are inspired by elements of the desert.

The ground of the gaming landscape consist of enlarged bodies that rise from the sand colored ground, shifting people’s perceptio of the desert landscape they are actually in and contributing to the atmosphere of the
event. When the game is not played it is in an ambient state. The invisible player will always be in slight movement because of their physical attributes and the elevations throughout the terrain. There is always a minor rotation of the underlying camera view and transparency on the background that creates glitches also when the game is not actively played.