Don鈥檛 touch the exhibits! Anyone even half familiar with art-gallery etiquette knows the rules. But no-one told the organisers of 鈥� a 聽three-day showcase event that鈥檚 part of the city-wide .
The wooden box on my lap must have two dozen knobs on it. I need to know what they do. I turn one, and the image on the wall morphs in response. I twist another this way and that, and watch hills in聽a pulsing alien landscape bulge then shrink. The music soars and with a giddy rush I become the creator of worlds. I stretch the trees, invert the oceans and blot out the sky.
Made by artist and coder Fernando Ramallo (who worked on Google鈥檚 VR doodle app Tilt Brush) and musician David Kanaga, is a video game that that embodies what it means to play. Here are some buttons, there is a virtual world: go forth and exert your will. We like seeing our actions have an effect; we like exploring the limits of what we can do.
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Panoramical is one of the more conventional pieces in this unusual show. Next door is a mirrored box with tiny buildings to arrange into cityscapes that recede into infinity. The exhibition booklet invites me to make my own fun: 鈥淪quat next to a heater. Play the heater like it was a harp. Imagine you have long and wavy hair.鈥� I see at least one person doing this.
Playing to the gallery
Given prime real estate inside London鈥檚 Somerset House, Now Play This! celebrates the fringes of what games are and what they can do. Placing games in a gallery raises questions about how you should interact with them. Some people stood and looked, others lined up to play. One game few were able to resist was called Hear, in which bangs and rattles made with drums and shakers are played back through headphones with varying degrees of distortion. 鈥淏y the end the instruments were starting to fall apart,鈥� says Holly Gramazio, the director of the show, which is now in its fourth year. 鈥淚t鈥檚 staggering how much people got into it.鈥�
One of Gramazio鈥檚 favourite moments from this year鈥檚 show was when she spotted one of the Somerset House invigilators hiding out in the staff room, playing one of the exhibited games on his phone.
On the other hand, a few people have demanded refunds because they were expecting lots of technological (as opposed to artistic) experimentation. The idea that if something isn鈥檛 at the cutting edge of technology then it鈥檚 not interesting is, Gramazio reckons, 鈥渟uper weird鈥�.
Games are emerging as powerful ways to tackle and explore difficult issues. The Loss Levels is a game that deals with the loss of the designer鈥檚 brother in last year鈥檚 Manchester bombing. Games exploring death and grief have found a commercial audience in recent years, from Jason Rohrer鈥檚 Passage 鈥� a five-minute game in which you fall in love and live happily ever after until one of you dies 鈥� to That Dragon, Cancer, in which you play through very upsetting scenes depicting the illness and death of the designers鈥� infant son.
But perhaps one of the most audacious games on display was by artist Yara El-Sherbini:聽Roadmap for Peace聽presents the Israel-Palestine peace process as two interleaving Scalextric tracks.
I watched with mounting anxiety as two聽young players derailed their cars, over and over again.
ran from 6 to 8 April at Somerset House, London
