multi channel video game, sensors, installation

BFA show at HFBK Hamburg

The game in this work is in an „ambient state,“ a moment that exists in some video games as the inverse of pressing pause. Without a classic gaming narrative or objective, it is a state in which no player is needed, play is absent, and the game only exists for itself and its own continuation.

There are few clues as to what the actual gameplay might look like, much more like various differentiated, fragmented, and self-referential entry points to a non-linear narrative. The concept of the game refers to strategies of counter gaming, such as very limited player interactivity and non-correspondence, a „play of signification“, and an aestheticization of the technical error.

The video projection on the fields of the windows is a moving glance over the prototype-like shapes of Zabriskie Point in Death Valley, expanding the space into virtual potentiality. The world in digital space consists of endless sandy terrain and golden waves; multiple angles and camera details are superimposed per image section. Huge bony formations dominate the landscape - they are magnified retainers, a mechanical attempt to treat nightly teeth grinding - turned into an eerie landscape. There is a character or potential avatar existing in this state and it is ready to go, waiting for a trigger, for the game to start. The music is building up, but right before the break it starts all over again and the loop becomes an ambient soundscape in the experience.

In the exhibition space, there are sensors that react to physical presence, as well as light changes in the room, resulting from light changes from the video projection and within the game itself. When triggered, they randomly activate or don‘t activate changes in the behavior of the figure and lighting within the game. The cables are fixed to the floor, mimicking the circuitry of a computer chip, turning the exhibition space into the machine.

Through irritations grounded in countergaming strategies, digital and analog „glitches,“ we are constantly set back into the physical experience. The experience for visitors/players/collaborators is one that considers the body and physical space and at the same time stimulates their perception of the virtual. They form a multiplicity of storytellers who construct their own narrative within the experience, based on their personal imprint and micro-decisions.