Although Elliott cites William Faulkner and the American tragic playwrights as touchstones (O’Neill, Williams), it’s more of a mash-up of The Grapes of Wrath and an Appalachian folktale. Seven years later, the technology needed to run Kentucky Route Zero has become commonplace and the story its makers set out to tell has grown into one of the most powerful experiences available in a work of new media art. Given how good an exhibition it is, it is remarkable that Limits and Demonstrations is but an interlude that they had originally designed to help determine if a user’s computer graphics card was powerful enough to load the main story. The choices you’re presented with have different emotional tones, allowing you shape the tenor of the story without restricting your ability to get through it.Ĭardboard Computer released Kentucky Route Zero in installments between 20 as each of its five acts was completed. The text reveals relationships and uncovers backstory, motivating further action. Adapted from the earliest text-based adventure games, it’s more like a participatory play where you guide characters through various stage-like spaces and select from lines of dialog and other text that appears in speech bubbles. There’s no fighting or shooting, no winning or losing. I was even more impressed that she wasn’t a real person.Ĭhamberlain is a character in the magical-realist story Kentucky Route Zero, an interactive fiction made by Cardboard Computer, a collaboration of Jake Elliott, Tamas Kemenczy, and Ben Babbitt.Īlthough Kentucky Route Zero is available on videogame platforms including Steam for a nominal fee, it isn’t a game. I was duly impressed with the ways that Chamberlain cleverly pushes the limits of the Unity videogame engine that she uses to create her work. The small but powerful exhibition makes savvy references to the history of media art, with nods to Nam June Paik and Racter, the first artificial intelligence to write a book of poetry. I recently visited Limits and Demonstrations, an online retrospective of Lula Chamberlain’s work. Stuck in the Pioneer Valley where galleries have been shuttered, I’ve had to settle for virtual exhibitions instead. Thanks to COVID, it’s been more than a year since I’ve visited a museum in person, which is an eternity for an art lover.
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