Alice Bucknell
The Alluvials Level 3: Sorites Paradox, 2024
Interactive video game
Copyright, The Artist
The Alluvials Level 3: Sorites Paradox The third level of The Alluvials is a take on the open world game typology, set inside the same desertified downtown Los Angeles that...
The Alluvials Level 3: Sorites Paradox
The third level of The Alluvials is a take on the open world game typology, set inside the same desertified downtown Los Angeles that appears in the project’s film world. Posthuman playability is dialed up as the player roams on all fours as an American Gray Wolf: a species seen for the first time in over a century within Southern California after the 2020 wildfires.
There is no set trajectory; no singular mission. Players can encounter AI agents embedded in the landscape—they appear as multiple bodies and intelligences, from a water bottle embodying a sales associate of synthetic water company Aquarius (which appears in the project’s filmic universe), to a hyperintelligent, hyper-old rock, to a self-aware shrub asset pack, to a prickly pear cactus that embodies the paradoxical identity of the 100th Meridian, a speculative geographic “divider” between the arid west and humid east that serves as a fantastical stand-in for the project of American colonialism. Other easter eggs inside the game level abound, including a cut sequence triggered by an encounter with the ghost of the 400-year-old sycamore tree that once grew in Los Angeles, called El Aliso.
As in all the levels, slowing down & listening is rewarded. Players may follow in the pawprints of their ghost self, a wolf that speaks in emojis, who leads them to the Bonaventure Hotel, and eventually, its rooftop. LAPD helicopters swarm but are seemingly no match for the canine post-linguistic communication rooftop ritual.
???????? ???? ₓ˚. ୭ ˚○◦˚.˚◦○˚ ୧ .˚ₓ
The third level of The Alluvials is a take on the open world game typology, set inside the same desertified downtown Los Angeles that appears in the project’s film world. Posthuman playability is dialed up as the player roams on all fours as an American Gray Wolf: a species seen for the first time in over a century within Southern California after the 2020 wildfires.
There is no set trajectory; no singular mission. Players can encounter AI agents embedded in the landscape—they appear as multiple bodies and intelligences, from a water bottle embodying a sales associate of synthetic water company Aquarius (which appears in the project’s filmic universe), to a hyperintelligent, hyper-old rock, to a self-aware shrub asset pack, to a prickly pear cactus that embodies the paradoxical identity of the 100th Meridian, a speculative geographic “divider” between the arid west and humid east that serves as a fantastical stand-in for the project of American colonialism. Other easter eggs inside the game level abound, including a cut sequence triggered by an encounter with the ghost of the 400-year-old sycamore tree that once grew in Los Angeles, called El Aliso.
As in all the levels, slowing down & listening is rewarded. Players may follow in the pawprints of their ghost self, a wolf that speaks in emojis, who leads them to the Bonaventure Hotel, and eventually, its rooftop. LAPD helicopters swarm but are seemingly no match for the canine post-linguistic communication rooftop ritual.
???????? ???? ₓ˚. ୭ ˚○◦˚.˚◦○˚ ୧ .˚ₓ