[WIP] The Disappearance of the Real

This project is a work in progress and is likely to evolve in the near future.

The Disappearance of the Real is an augmented foldable leaflet/book taking inspiration both from modern escape room apps (Unlock, …) as well as traditional hidden object games (Where’s Waldo…). It’s constituted of a physical book and a companion app. The title page is as follows:

The rest of the book is a long foldable fresco that the player will explore in AR in attempt to piece together enough clues to find the cause and the solution to this dystopia’s problems.

The rest of this blog post describes the ending of the game, so you might want to stop here if you want to play it un-spoiled.

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Ending

After searching for a while, the player discovers that there is no obvious cause or solution within the picture. There’s only one possible conclusion: it is outside of it. It is the player themselves.

Neoliberal capitalism is bringing us to an apocalypse of catastrophic events that we are only beginning to see the start of. The forces of the market have taken over most of the world and reign supreme and unchallenged in most democracies. It is easy to feel like this is an unstoppable force that we cannot do anything about. Yet, at the heart of it are individuals, doubly so (both as voters and as consumers).

Every citizen of every democracy has a share, albeit infinitesimal, of responsibility for the current situation. But it is not simply a proclamation of guilt, it is also an opportunity, for this responsibility comes with power. And in fact, only the power of citizens can oppose the invisible lovecraftian behemoth that is dragging the world towards potential extinction.

AR as hidden layer on top of reality

Let me take this opportunity to comment on the use of Augmented Reality in this project. AR represents quite obviously an “invisible layer” on top of reality that the scanner allows the player to see.

I’ve decided for this project to lean into this dimension by invoking the theory of french philosopher Jean Baudrillard, who coined the term “the desert of the real” referenced by the Matrix and by the title of this piece. Central to the thinking of Baudrillard is the concept of Hyperreal, which could be very roughly summarized as a reign of appearances and symbols leading to a loss of meaning and a collapse of the distinction between the real and the imaginary.

The smartphone is usually our window to the virtual, a world completely distinct from material reality, which yet paradoxically hosts most of our cultural reality (news, economy, discussions…). The virtual and the real are deeply intertwined to the point where ther virtual has become more real than the real, sometimes very concretely. After all, that’s where all our bank accounts, our social networks, and the rest of our lives really are.

The usual reactionary complaint that people are just glued to their phones nowadays is simply an admission that the virtual is where our reality lies now. Images and appearance have taken over the world. Nowhere is this clearer than in Instagram, hence the choice of the UI for the AR scanning.

In this way, this game can be seen as a search through the hyperreal for the elusive and missing Real.

A search for the real

Philosophy in general and psychoanalysis in particular has shown us that this quest is necessarly vain. It brings to mind Jacques Lacan’s objet petit a, the always-elusive object of desire that is never to be apprehended. The structure of the game mirrors the history of philosophy: the player searches for an absolute, foundational answer that never really comes because it doesn’t exist, culminating in the Nietzschean conclusion that God is Dead: the real does not exist.

This postmodern loss of absolute frame of reference is strongly felt now more than ever, in this so-called “post-truth era”. Yet, I want to argue that this is not a cause for despair. What this trauma does is open our eyes to the radical contingency of any value system: the real doesn’t exist as such, it’s a human construction. Which means the agency lies with us to change it. We may have killed God, but it’s up to us to replace Him with something of our chosing. Or rather, something of our making.

The Real that has disappeared is mankind’s agency, or to put it more crudely, mankind’s political power. Giant abstract entities (corporations, VCs, boards of investors, whims of the market…) have now replaced humans as decision makers and stakeholders in our neoliberal dystopia. So where has this power disappeared to, and can we ever get it back?

Transcending an unsolvable situation

A naive surface reading of the ending could be something like “drop your phone and go back to material reality”, but I like to think that it holds more layers than this. I don’t think virtuality is bad in itself, nor do I think it’s possible to “go back”, but I do love the duality of media between the paper and the phone.

I’m currently working on the ending of this game, what happens after the player gives up on their quest. I like to leverage the dissatisfaction with the lack of closure to push people towards action, but here this dual medium offers an exciting opportunity: I can invite the player to transcend the rules of the game and think outside the box, using the paper in a more active way than just “being scanned”.

I’m trying to make it so that a final puzzle reveals itself if you manipulate/fold/tear the paper in the right way. I want the player to regain a positive agency and, through creativity, build, construct something on the ruins of the old world.

The hard part is that it seems obvious that I shouldn’t be the one to dictate to them what to do. Emancipation can only take place if the deadlock is transcended by the subject themselves. So I’m still looking for the best way to give them a nudge. Hopefully I find it soon.

Credits

The image is made with Stable Diffusion, the logo with Bing AI. I kept it because I loved the fact that the letters were in negative space. Talk about creativity from an AI.