Everything
I couldn’t stop giggling as my camel spun head over heels, rotating across the desert like a lumpy wheel; a herd of newly found friends following along the dunes. Everything quickly lives up to its name as an ambitious game about scale and interconnection of the universe. True to its name, within a short time I had danced around and around as single-cell organisms, elliptical galaxies, and ice continents on alien worlds. It is a challengingly vast work spun from a simple premise: be any noun at any scale you want; move; dance; procreate; then step up or down a scale (and time) when you’re bored. But the sweeping effect of inhabiting the slow undulations of flagella and within moments be whirling through space as a cousin to Earth, uncountable organisms scampering unseen across your surface as you frolic, is enough to give you existential vertigo. The game, as evidenced by the fact animals roll rather than walk indicates, has a rather playful spirit, but punctuating this cyclical cosmic-comedy dance are fragments of lectures by Alan Watts provide some artistic context and reflective starting-points to engage with the broader theme of humanity’s place in the vast, often silly, wonder of cosmos.
(Tip for curators or those new to games: The game has an auto-play mode that can be turned on and off at any point.)
Creator: David OReilly
Link: http://www.everything-game.com
Connections:
Italo Calvino - Cosmicomics
Charles and Ray Eames - Powers of Ten
Vija Clemens - Starfields