Ghost in the Game

This weekend I went through a pile of papers that had been collecting on my desk.  Among the old bills and flyers I found a program note from Evan Meaney's Epilogue: The Well of Representation that I saw at the Wexner Center's the Box last semester.  Epilogue was probably the only piece I've seen in the Box that both drew an audience and that the audience seemed to actually enjoy.  People were even dragging their friends in to see it; usually telling them that "it's like a game".

Given that the Wexner Center describes Epilogue as elegiac, and the film does center on death and decay, it may seem a bit odd that the audience seemed to have fun watching it.  I believe the enjoyment comes from the fact that it is very much like a game, and has a dark humor element to it.  The program note compares the film to the classic adventure game The Legend of Zelda, but it actually bears a closer resemblance to Japanese role playing games such as Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior.  At one point the "player" character dies, and the "game" is restarted.  The "game" restarts with the character rising as a ghost at his funeral, although we would expect the character to simply restart at the point before death.  The film plays with our expectations of how a game should progress.


A Better Ghost [interview w/ Evan Meaney] from Nick Briz on Vimeo.

At several points the "game" crashes, and we spend what feels like a rather long time watching the screen glitch out.  I suspect these glitches are meant to be the heart of the work, but it never became clear to me why the glitches matter.  They tended to be tedious, and felt oddly staged.  In interviews Meaney likens his work with glitches to seances.  Seances are, in fact, staged events created through the use of explainable techniques.  To an extent, the contrivance spoils the mystery.  Glitches can be interesting.  The click and drag on the floor glitch from one of my first interactive experiments was the most interesting aspect of that project.   However, something about actively creating glitches and overly dwelling on them, feels false to me.  This falseness is similar to seances which present stage magician's tricks as supernatural.

When I was watching Epilogue, I couldn't shake the sense that I was watching someone play an interesting game.  The problem with that is that a game is always more interesting to play than it is to watch.  I'm finding it difficult to be motivated about my current project despite my interest in the style and subject matter.  I'm afraid I feel the same way about my project as I felt about Epilogue.  It could be a good game; unfortunately it's a film.