Dissonant Mythologies

Rumor is the primary ignition that propels the formation of myth in the technologically hypersaturated twenty-first century. Despite heightened possibilities of verifiability accorded by an increasingly interconnected world, myths persist today more than ever, festering with their bizarre and often grandiose claims with the strength to influence geopolitics on an unprecedented scale.

From the rise of the alt-right Internet shamans such as Jordan Peterson, who refashion racist and sexist ideologies using meme culture, to the proliferation of images of Hindu gods embracing technology that have propelled the far-right Hindu ideology of Hindutva into mainstream politics in recent years, today we see the reemergence of myths, in a form that has the might to recast its own set of perceived heroes and villains in the arena of contemporary civilization.

For the Solitude & ZKM web residencies, I propose to create a video game that mirrors the parallel dissonant mythologies. The game space will act as an archive of digital ephemera, such as fragmented forms of the Internet rumor, the conspiracy meme, and the »truth-claim« propaganda … and interrogates the formation of the contemporary myth.

The player is guided through the space by a »voice of god« narrator, who mimics the tone of the Internet shaman figure, and the game space will be created by 3D-scanning my own sculptures, employing them as props and puzzles. The game will carry within it a mythology with multiple overlapping and contradicting narratives. These will then spill over into the real world through player interaction, where – upon completion of the game levels – the player will receive 3D-printable files of the in-game objects, which can be further remixed, reappropriated, or printed by the player.