ABOUT THE MOVIE
Six gamers meet for the first time in the sandbox video game Garry's Mod where they are free to build their environment. While playing, they chatter about the medium of video games, the freedom it allows and how it satisfies their needs. The game setting is mirrored then in the physical environment. We see gamers sitting together in the laboratory of the Faculty of Civil Engineering reflecting on their identity and social relationships while trying to understand what makes them happy. The film blurs the line between material and digital reality as protagonists alter their bodies, share adventures, and examine the sensations in their bodies.With this documentary, Petra Mrša invites the viewer into the intimate lives of young people who are connected with the world through the digital medium. By stepping from behind the computer to in front of the camera the players are showing their strength to expose their opinions and vulnerability. Behind the film is long-term research into the media of video games and the entertainment industry, conducted in structured interviews with professionals who create games, those who look at them critically, and those who play them recreationally, professionally or addictively.
Petra Mrša
Petra Mrša’s lens-based media work arises from initiating and facilitating situations that implement rule-based scenarios that takes art context as a site to broaden and challenge the experience of self. Through thought and physical experiments imposed on herself and/or collaborators, her art process opens up the space for creating new realities in which horizontality, radical hospitality, and the acceptance of the unknown shape interpersonal dynamics. Acquired embodied knowledge celebrates vulnerability and imagination while its documentation offers ground to connect to not just other humans but to other-than-human intelligences as well.Petra’s interest in broadening the behavior through self-imposed instructions brought her into a three years-long research on the video game medium that additionally served as a site to open a conversation about the mechanisms of socialization in virtual reality.
