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The Alluvials
Section
Virtual Worlds
Genre
VIRTUAL WORLDS
ALICE BUCKNELL
THE ALLUVIALS is a world building project (created in 3D) consisting of a film and a video game from American artist and author Alice Bucknell. She takes inspiration from deep ecology, speculative fiction, and post-human video games to imagine what the future of the Los Angeles River might be like.
The film revisits the past with a fresh perspective and explores multiple potential futures. The narrative unfolds through a variety of non-human point of views: the Los Angeles River, forest fires, an over 400 years old sycamore called El Aliso, and the ghost of the renowned Los Angeles puma P-22.
The video game lets us control non-human characters we can’t usually play as: the forest fires themselves, the Los Angeles River, a Yucca moth, a Joshua Tree, or a wolf pack. Each of the four levels strives to reinvent genres through an ecological lens, offering a different type of gameplay (shooting, walking simulation, car racing, etc.).
The project is a production from MUDAC (Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts), located in the Plateforme 10 quarter of Lausanne in Switzerland. It also received financial contribution and production assistance from transmediale and Arts Council England.
