Screen

"Screen" was created in the Cave, a room-sized virtual reality display. It begins as a reading and listening experience. Memory texts appear on the Cave's walls, surrounding the reader. Then words begin to come loose. The reader finds she can knock them back with her hand, and the experience becomes a kind of play -- as well-known game mechanics are given new form through bodily interaction with text. At the same time, the language of the text, together with the uncanny experience of touching words, creates an experience that doesn't settle easily into the usual ways of thinking about gameplay or VR. Words peel faster and faster, struck words don't always return to where they came from, and words with nowhere to go can break apart. Eventually, when too many are off the wall, the rest peel loose, swirl around the reader, and collapse. Playing "better" and faster keeps this at bay, but longer play sessions also work the memory text into greater disorder through misplacements and neologisms.