There’s a knock at the door. On the other side is a monstrous creature with gnashing teeth. “I protect and serve,” it says, “but sometimes I kill innocents. Let me in to protect you.” Then the decision is over to you. Do you choose to open the door and let this creature in?
This is from a video game that forms part of “The Delusion,” a new exhibition by the artist Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley that opens Thursday at Serpentine, the London art space. While many of her works are games, the point here is not to win. It’s to connect with the other players in the room.
“The original idea was to do a game work that got people to look away from the screens and instead talk with other people,” Brathwaite-Shirley, 30, said recently during a tour of the show before the opening.
She pointed to a game in which players guide a ball around a series of environments by rocking a table that steers the ball as it tilts. The game is deliberately difficult to play alone, but becomes easier when multiple players work together.
“When we tested the table game, people were having fun and talking to each other, at first just to give simple instructions like ‘Go left!’” she said. But later, when the game instructs the players to “Slam the table if you feel lonely,” the players also joined in, she said.
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