Between the code

The Museum of Hauntology is the product of four years of work, and it's still unfinished. It's an immersive digital, experiential environment, not quite a 'game'. It's experiential in the sense that it is meant to be a place of quiet contemplation. This probably makes it sound far more Zen than it actually is; some people find the Museum utterly unnerving. And that's a facet too, that unnerving quality.

The Museum of Hauntology isn't welcoming in any obvious sense. Although those of us who enjoy slightly sinister brands of kenopsia do find it a nice place to be, I think.

The work features, at a basic level, a rundown museum which showcases counterfactual histories. These histories are illustrated using fairly mundane objects and locations. As in a real world museum, everyday items are given significance because of their positioning within a narrative. There's an overarching narrative too, tying all the exhibitions together, woven into the background, one which aligns with Mark Fisher's ideas of a hauntological Britain.

One of my objectives in building the museum as a purely virtual space was to exploit VR's ability to convey a sense of the liminal, the non-place. A depopulated virtual zone which feels as if it's tolerating your presence rather than requiring it.  I remember one early adopter of the first Oculus developer kit in 2015, describing how they'd put on the headset and immediately become disinterested in the game's quest. Instead they became interested in how the grass moved.

I'm very much of that mind set too. I love open world, sandbox games for the same reasons I love exploring  actual liminal non places; there's a chance of betweenness there, a tantalising potential to actually go where you're not meant to go, behind the scenes, or  between the code.

I'm not suggesting this potential is new to computer games, I remember similar vibes from the C64 game Mercenary from 1985, for example, but access to the new generation of VR equipment has supercharge that potential. I don't think this is what's meant to happen in VR games, most of the time. It's usually not what most games developers have in mind. Giving users the ability to encounter the liminal was not what Meta wanted when they bought Oculus, for example. But it's there and it can be exploited.

The Museum then, is an attempt to capitalise on the, perhaps surprisingly subversive potential VR offers. To have encounters with virtual objects and places not on your terms, but on theirs.