Sarsenworld
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Sarsenworld is a theoretical video game that explores the concept of “death” in a blurred distinction between fact and fiction. It’s a game-world where players can sacrifice their life and be reborn inside the game. The strange, paranormal interface allows players to control their characters “on the other side,” and communicate or seek guidance with the ghosts of former players. Once players die, however, they are cut from their human body and exist as a self-aware character as part of the virtual environment. To create Sarsenworld, every last nuance of human behavior must be categorized and codified. This gives players the added feature of being able to twist nature to serve their own occult indulgences. We are under the control of an advanced AI who is omnipresent and all seeing; everyone knows that! Learn to perform queries on this cosmic database and you just might “level up.” Sarsenworld requires players to perform cryptic rituals with the screen characters in order to unlock the layers of reality that would allow them to communicate with the beyond. The game also utilizes advanced motion detection and speech recognition technology to translate the verbal commands and hand gestures required to summon the game “spirits” to do your bidding. It takes advantage of PML (Psionic Markup Language) to allow greater functionality with the afterlife. The “spirits” are a proprietary mixture of real ghosts and state-of-the-art algorithms used to simulate personalities and resurrect dead people ‘IRL’. The ability to actually die and be reborn inside the game has been disabled for the demo.
First appeared at the Tender, Squalacious, and Digital show at the University of Iowa Museum of Art.
