Pure Absence (2016)

Pure Absence is a single player art music game by Adam Nash. It was created for the "Domelab" 4K immersive dome, in the Design + Play exhibition at RMIT Design Hub Gallery, 2016.

Download the game to play on your computer:
MacOSX version or Windows version or Linux version

Controls:
Mouse to look/aim;
Arrows or w,a,s,d to move;
Left/right shift to strafe up/down;
Left/right alt/opt to speed up/down;

Great sound is silent. Great form is absent. Or so says the Tao in chapter 41. The sensuous instinct wishes to to receive an object; the formal instinct wishes to produce an object. Or so says Schiller in Letter XIV. Can an individual subject resolve its incompatibility with itself through a transindividual environment of immersive digital data? Or is it merely creating more anxiety, the only true product of the digital era? So asks Pure Absence.

Pure Absence is a playable, abstract, generative and composed, audiovisual experience in realtime 3D. Pure Absence discombobulates notions of the virtual by sounding visions, animating audio and worlding words. Revelling in the confusion of abstract space that is nothing like reality, and yet is, it shows how things are the same to see how they differ. A game with no point(s), a world with no poles, a lack of reason that presents itself rationally, Pure Absence is an actual fantasy. Colours, sounds and player interact on an equally (artificially) stupid level of intention. Wondering ensues.

To quote an anonymous visitor who played Pure Absence in the "Domelab" during the Design + Play exhibition at the RMIT Design Hub in 2016, "I felt disembodied in a very airy way. I liked how my brain was telling me that saffron and coral coloured sheets of light were intersecting my pelvis. It opened up a clarifying sensate balminess that I could have inhabited for hours."

 

---

 

Videos

 

Here are some videos of the work being played live in the 4K dome at the Design + Play exhibition:

 

This video shows the work being played in the dome, while others lie down watching

 

This video shows a close up on the surface of the dome as the work is being played in the dome.

 

This video is a full 25-minute play-through of the work, captured from the dome simulator.