How the limitations of reality birthed Radiohead’s most ambitious undertaking.
So much of our understanding of videogames stems from a comprehension of its spatial limitations and architecture. Be it the memorised routes of labyrinthian Metroidvanias, shortcuts and risk mitigation in survival horror titles such as Capcom’s Resident Evil series or the fastest route toward sanctuary. Whether this sanctuary takes the form of a cuboid manor in Mojang’s Minecraft or the warming embrace of a bonfire in Fromsoftware’s Dark Souls series. The nature of games implores us to think mindfully about navigation and the design of the environment. Though what happens when a game is created in answer to the limitations reality imposed upon it?
Radiohead’s Kid A mnesia exhibition, released in 2021, developed by Epic games exists solely in retort to the limitations set upon a creative’s vision. Thom Yorke and frequent collaborator Stanley Donwood initially envisioned the exhibit as “a huge red construction made by welding shipping containers together, constructed so that it looked as if a brutalist spacecraft had crash-landed into the classical architecture of the Victoria & Albert Museum in Kensington”. Yet the impracticality of achieving this vision and the seismic shift in public interaction around the time, cough cough, covid 19. Resulted in the idea being tossed aside and the vision set to rest, momentarily. Yorke, dejected, came to the realisation that his vision was to pass by, the exhibition to remain but a dream. Though the advice he received had swayed him, “all my friends, like, in the fashion industry were talking about moving into doing virtual versions of and it started making me think well we should do the same”. Thus began the creation of the digital exhibition. With the aid of Epic games and realised in the ever evolving unreal engine. Thus the exhibition was released as a video game.
Yet many see it as a gaming contradiction. The categorisation of the project eludes both reviewers and gamers alike. Is it a tour? Is it a semi-open world? Is it truly an exhibition? Is it even a game? Or is it merely digital art?I mean the game itself, downloadable on the PS store and PC alike, claims ‘this is not a game’. And though I think all of these are valid to varying extents, to pigeonhole a concept as embryonic as this feels reductive, I mean, the exhibition agrees with me here as it claims ‘this is not a game’ as you enter into the exhibit, the dissonant tones of
everything in its right place swelling to a crescendo with the close of a door behind you. It is a project fuelled by frustrations directed at the nature of exhibiting in a gallery, so Yorke and Donwood chose to create their own.
I was worried upon entry in my initial playthrough that Yorke and Donwood’s vision would be undoubtedly fully realised but would that limit my nature as a viewer, as a player, to form my own polysyllabic interpretations. When an experience is so curated, so true to a concept it can often feel reductive to be placed within it, it becomes a ghost train ride? Or a walk through a corridor, akin to those seen in the Call of Duty franchise. I envisioned a scene in the exhibition where the music swells and our actions, already dictated by the architectural confines, can only shift us forward, toward the intended feeling, the intended payoff. Though To these initial worries I can safely declare that this is no ghost train.
Throughout my time spent in the exhibition I felt as if I trudged through the mire that is the headspace of Yorke. Having commonly felt akin to a lost child stumbling, unknowingly into the darkest recesses of their parents’ memories. Confronting something an infant mind should never see, should never remember. This feeling was brought on predominantly by the environments and their implied messaging. Though evident it was never meant to be a cheery affair, I still felt utterly forlorn as I put down the controller.
Would it have been the same had I entered a gallery to experience it? I doubt it. If anything, my reaction would’ve been dampened.
For I was immersed wholly in a creative vision, as opposed to bearing witness to it. The confines of a gallery would seem only to diminish this experience in my eyes. Through its employment of distorted, impossible spaces- it is evident the influence that Jorge Luis Borges’ work, the Library of babel had upon its architectural approach. The book itself depicts an unfathomably vast, geometrically impossible space containing all recorded written works. The exhibition felt like a physical manifestation of the distorted labyrinthine architecture depicted in Mark Z Danielewski’s magnum opus, House of Leaves.
Nothing in this uncanny landscape is quite as you wished. This is not a greatest hits celebration, instead flowing akin to standing witness to an artist’s self flagellation. A confrontation of hubris rather than the celebration of the grandeur. You won’t find a framed shirt that Thom Yorke wore at glastonbury, no spit soaked mic from that one Radiohead gig you attended, no. What we are met with is a symphony of melancholia. The beloved compositions are anatomised as opposed to praised. Each song distorted to a near unrecognisable state. Morphing to something akin to a passing, fragmented recollection, a hum you recall hearing in your youth which has long since eluded you. Now what remains is the pained recollection, so close to the comfort yet so far from the truth. One example I recalled was the ‘national anthem room’ in which features interactable elements purporting to gain fragments of each audio track, though impossible to hear all at once.
One of the most memorable encounters for me, also came as I stumbled upon ‘the little cinema’. The metallic door swung open and a fleeting rendition of idioteque began to play out, though, in typical fashion, it was cut short. Though what began to play was concert footage on a minute TV set, watched on by me and my horned companion, swaying beside me.
Yorke recites how to disappear completely, as it gradually distorts both instrumental and vocals alike, albeit to a far lesser extent to the other iterations seen elsewhere in the exhibition. It remains one of the only complete compositions in the exhibition. A projector screen, a wooden stool and a mute companion to boot. The cinema setup of one confined in the darkest confines of a long repressed memory. As we stumble across unearthing this painful recollection, akin to a scent transporting us back to that day in our childhood. Where all clouds seemed darker than before, the unmentionable memory hiding unmentionable things. But like Yorke, like the pale figure sat beside us, we won’t mention anything about that. Leave it be, just where it is. And as we leave the footage returns to the innate loop of figures jumping into a sanguine pit. The door closes, the reel ceases, the memory, forgotten.
Yorke and Donwood’s utilisation of space, of the creation of space, no doubt sets a precedent going forward. When faced with constraints, simply free yourself of those and look beyond reality’s limitations. As gaming grows into an ever expanding medium so too does the capabilities of artistic expression. Though we must endeavour not to stray into those narrow hallways and instead push beyond, finding a world anew, either of our own design or becoming lost in those made by others. No longer do artists have to abide by the financial ramifications or answer to the feasibility of material acquisition necessary for their exhibits. No spatial requisites required, no need to lend thought to reality’s constraints. In the digital realm, a vision is only as limited as the engine you’re working with.
The vast tapestries of infinite space reveal a new frontier for those who yearn to find expression outside of the limitations we must function under in everyday life. The experience left its mark upon me, for I felt heavier as I trudged forth from the monolith erected in memory to the suffering and pandemonium Yorke felt during this period of his life. I wished to be rid of the place, despite being surrounded by an audioscape that I love, songs I’ve even taken comfort in now left me drained, forlorn. I was in the mind of Thom Yorke, I saw the result of a vision, truthful to the creator’s desire. And all I wanted to be was rid of it. Rid of the maelstrom, though beautiful, much like a thunderstorm, to witness it from beneath the confines of home, sealed beneath glass. Though to trudge through in the piercing rain, the lightning illuminating and animating once still shadows, hurling your mind to a place of unease, as each shadow becomes a figure. Its beauty left me devastated, I was in the eye of the storm, and I wanted out.
