atraylor – Looking Outward 10 – Section B

For this post I chose a [domestic] by Mary Flanagan which is a conceptual art piece in a first person video game space. It is a virtual experience exploring the traumatic memory of a house fire using fragmented language and images. The space has odd scales and perspective and an obvious computer/video game appearance. [domestic] for these reasons it doesn’t follow regular video game conventions in emulating reality. Players can shoot coping mechanisms at the walls covered in text and images that describe the event. The piece explores the role of narrative and memory in the space of video games.

I admire this piece because it makes nontraditional narrative the main focus of the piece. There really aren’t any traditional storytelling techniques and there few interactions the player can do. I find this interesting because it takes one of the essential aspects of games and takes it to the extreme without making what some might call a “walking game”. This game is also from 2003 and makes me wonder what a game like this would look like now.

Mary Flanagan has a PhD from St Martins, University of the Arts in London and is a professor at Dartmouth College. She is an artist, a writer, a poet, an inventor and a designer. Her work focuses on the human experience and human desire often implemented in games, installations, computer viruses, and interactive texts.