SwanQuake: House - David Surman

SwanQuake: House
- David Surman

‘The stone city explodes like an ammunition dump’ [1], the ashy carcass of a burnt-out carriage sits in the shadow of the central line. It’s completely stationary, and we can enter and leave at our leisure. The lights are on but the power’s gone from the line. Shock is replaced by rumbling unease; jaundiced tiling extends through the twists and turns of the underground.

The death of this train recalls the repose of another:
The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.

In this opening stanza W. H. Auden describes the demise of a camel train [2]. The machine of civilisation stutters; all the trade from sea and distant land grinds to a halt. There’s little that could bring together the romantic image of the merchant caravan and the grind of the urban commuter; but train, in one of its original meanings, simply suggested travelling closely together—a procession of persons. In its opening and closing gestures, House enacts a fantasy of being alone, in a place like the tube which so rarely knows solitude. More shocking than the traces of devastation is the emptiness and stillness; from the train we are jettisoned in several directions—deep into the bowels of the earth along broken tracks, or on into the labyrinth of the station.

Many of the locations connect together through sudden translocation. Teleportation of the player makes each end a new beginning. House subtly subverts the language of the computer games which share its underlying structures. It frames the world as a game, but also the worldliness of games. In depicting the destroyed train one form of mobility is lost, but then substituted with another. Shift into pulsing white light—immediate movement from one place to another. Here teleportation is like getting out of the shower; the column of warmth opens out to the cold of the room, and you are suddenly aware of yourself and your surroundings; you feel fresh but also vulnerable. Teleportation makes fresh our perception—takes us from one stylised space to another, markedly different environment; with new secrets to seek out.

When solitude has become the norm then suddenly House confronts you with its beating heart. In the darkened corridors, shifting into view is the figure of the dancer. Her movement suggests a personal enquiry; as you approach she fades from view, a sentiment that suggests the need for space. Only at a distance can we appreciate the communication taking place—bodies in space are more often than not eradicated immediately in gameplay, in House they are savoured, haunting the corridors.
The single dancers are each a premonition of the gymnasium, a large grey box all paths ultimately lead to. In here many different motion-captured movements are enacted by multiples of the same lone female figure. Are we seeing a multiplicity or single movement traced in time? The spectacle of so many simultaneous performances amount to a crying-out theme; they are collectively the voice that is absent from the tense geometry of the corridors. A high walkway gives us a privileged view of the scene. At a distance the dancers fade from view, but their shadows still swarm across the floor—each its own meditation, a train of movement with no beginning, middle and end, but rather a gentle loop. Ahead, another teleportation point.

Rain lashes the roof of House, and lightning traces the contours of a London skyline. This house is igloo’s Bethnal Green studio, connected in time and space to the rumbling underground and the conceptual space of the gymnasium. This continuity creates ambivalence about the familiarity with which we depict our own environments. Before the glim of the horizon and looming buildings, one final dancer takes a careful walk across the roof space, her body glowing against the dark. Her performance relates how movement is displaced by stillness, and that stillness is not the absence of movement. From the aerie of the roof we look down toward the road, and the story continues. A river of cars hurtles left and right. The train is not still; its movement has been displaced—people getting from A to B, point to point in a virtual geometry. House is a virtual environment created as part of igloo’s ongoing SwanQuake series. It deals in part with the experience of returning home, and continues the inquiry into technology and performance that has become characteristic of their work.

References:
[1] Mutsuo Takahashi, ‘Poet’s Love’ A Bunch of Keys (New York: The Crossing Press, 1984)
[2] W. H. Auden, ‘The Fall of Rome’, Another Time (London: Random House, 1940).

Biography:
David Surman is senior lecturer in computer games design at the University of Wales, Newport. He teaches modules in history, critical theory and the creative process for the BA (Hons) Animation, BA (Hons) Computer Games Design and MA Animation courses. His research interests centre on digital media aesthetics, the phenomenology of play and national discourses in videogames. He has lectured internationally on games and play, most recently at the Universities of Melbourne, Tampere and Urbana-Champaign, and is a member of the Synergy games research group at Newport. He is and editorial board member for the peer-reviewed Games and Culture, and Animation: an Interdisciplinary Journal, for which he is also reviews editor. He is an international programme committee member and games specialist for the Media@terra annual arts and technology festival in Athens, Greece. He is currently writing The Videogames Handbook, a book-length study of contemporary British games design.