Sophie Rogers

3 Minutes to Midnight, Week 1, 2022

CGI

1920 x 1080 px

Courtesy of Gazelli Art House Ltd.

Copyright The Artist

About The Artwork

3 Minutes to Midnight is an interactive game developed with Unreal Engine. The game takes its starting point from the moment in 2007, when climate change was added as a factor affecting the Doomsday Clock. The Doomsday Clock was introduced in 1947 by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and is a metaphorical, non-linear clock which represents scientists’ estimation of how close we are to global catastrophe. In 2007, the Bulletin expanded the clock to include climate change as one of the greatest man-made threats to humankind. At that point, the time jumped to 3 minutes to midnight.

The game inhabits this temporality, the time of impending apocalypse, a time in fairytales associated with the breaking of a spell and a time that relates to our age commonly referred to as the Anthropocene; a time of great urgency and consequence. Research into Donna Haraway’s articulation of the Chthulucene informs the work along with a more focussed interrogation of multi-species survival with a particular focus on fungal networks and interspecies communication. There are three main characters in the game who live in different environments that are reflective of their species. So far, I have been working on worldbuilding, character development and the game's narrative. I am at a crucial point where building interest in the game and sharing the world seems very important.

I have delivered game development workshops as part of this project with partners such as Redriff School in Rotherhithe and Site Gallery in Sheffield. Through these workshops I have also managed user testing and experience which is helping to shape the further development of the game.


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3 Minutes to Midnight, Week 1