As part of the HTMlles Festival, TAG presents Black Room, a web-browser-based narrative game by Cassie McQuater.
In Black Room, you play as an insomniac on the verge of sleep, moving through shifting states of consciousness. Hallucinatory, pixelated visions of landscapes filled with characters from the games of your childhood appear as you click through fragile internet spaces. Often interrupted, you continually return to the Black Room, a meditation technique your mother taught you for falling asleep, visualizing black flowers in a black vase on a black table in the center of a black room.
Conceived as a feminist dungeon crawler, this game features a majority female cast of video game sprites from the 1970s-current day. This work seeks to bring these characters together to form new narratives: Chun Li reposes in a desert oasis filled with flamingos; Catwoman cartwheels across the nighttime beaches of Coney Island; Jennifer Simpson, the lead character from Clock Tower, runs endlessly through the brightly pixelated fantasy landscapes of the Oregon Trail.
After the vernissage, Black Room will on display from November 5 to 9th in the Milieux Nerve Centre (EV11.455)
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/229037954633028/
Discover the rest of the programming here: https://htmlles.net
WHAT? vernissage
WHEN? Friday, November 2nd – 4-5pm
WHERE? Resource Centre (EV 11.705)
This event is presented as part of the HTMlles Festival, a feminist festival in media arts and digital culture produced by Studio XX.