Content Moderator Sim puts you in the role of a subcontractor whose job is to keep your social media platform safe and respectable. Play time is approximately 5 minutes. Headphones or speakers are recommended.
Content Warning: Brief written references to abuse, self-harm, racism, and brutality, but no images or video.
Follow the grim tale of young Amicia and her little brother Hugo, in a heartrending journey through the darkest hours of history. Hunted by Inquisition soldiers and surrounded by unstoppable swarms of rats, Amicia and Hugo will come to know and trust each other. As they struggle to survive against overwhelming odds, they will fight to find purpose in this brutal, unforgiving world.
1349. The plague ravages the Kingdom of France. Amicia and her younger brother Hugo are pursued by the Inquisition through villages devastated by the disease. On their way, they will have to join forces with other children, and evade swarms of rats using fire and light. Aided only by the link that binds their fates together, they will face untold horrors in their struggle to survive.As their adventure begins… the time of innocence ends.
(Source: About this game description from Steam)
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1)
BOOK OF A HUNDRED GHOSTS is a virtual reality installation, a Chinese parable staged in the form of a virtual tableau. It reimagines the history of an ancient land as a Book of falling words and crushing signs, inciting awe, fear, pain and carnal pleasure.
Rolled Hem or Nadine contains text, images, and animation by Christy Sheffield Sanford. This bedtime horror story, based on a 12th century lais by Marie de France, was published by Amp in 2017. The video, part of a multimedia project The Hem-nal, explores how we veil or bare our inner lives and bodies and how much agency we have in forming boundaries.
Asked about U.S. resistance to Tanztheater Wuppertal, German choreographer Pina Bausch suggested one reason might be habits of viewing, Sehgewohnheiten. Digital animation can disrupt linear reading habits and provide new associations. Inherent poetic qualities of iMovie and Photoshop help bridge the gap between image and text. Faun, a German ensemble, permitted use of the song “Sirena”.
I investigate digital horror comics as a case study in anxieties about the boundaries between fiction and reality provoked by the remediation of print media forms, such as text or comics, as digital media forms. Because the horror genre often deals with questions of transgression and boundaries, and because the frightening fictions depicted in horror media raise the stakes on questions of the boundaries between media and reality, horror it is a fruitful site for exploring assumptions and anxieties about the boundaries of media. This paper uses Noel Carroll's framework of “art horror” to examine digital horror comics by three authors: Studio Horang's Bong-Cheon-Dong Ghost (2011), Ok-su Station Ghost (2011) and Ghost in Masung Tunnel (2013), Emily Carroll's Prince And The Sea (2011), When The Darkness Presses (2012) and Margot's Room (2011), and Kazerad's Prequel (ongoing). These comics all make use of uniquely digital elements, such as “infinite canvas” pages of different sizes, animation, and sometimes sound, to subvert the reader's expectations and create horrific effects. These comics are effective because they take advantage of expectations about the boundaries of the comics medium which readers carry over from print comics, subverting these expectations by using elements which are possible in the digital comics but not in print comics. Reader's expectations based on what is and is not possible in print comics, make these exclusively digital elements in the comics seem unsettling, as if the digital comics have broken a law of reality and the boundaries between our own world and storyworlds are breaking down; the digital horror elements in these comics make many readers feel as though a monster may literally climb out of their computer screen. Using Janet Murray's framework of immersivity and interactivity for understanding digital media, discussed in Hamlet On The Holodeck, and Bolter and Grusin's theory of remediation and hypermediacy, I argue that when a new, more immersive media form with expanded affordances that allow it to appear “closer” to reality, such as digital media, is first adopted, older media forms are remediated into it and assumptions about the boundaries of those older media forms are at first carried over and taken for granted as laws of reality. However, at some point, the expanded capabilities of the new medium become apparent, upsetting expectations and provoking a period of anxiety as the vestigial boundaries of the old medium are dismantled and the broader boundaries of the new medium are encountered. These digital horror comics discussed in this paper play on the anxieties that breaking these vestigial boundaries provoke, and provide a clear illustration of the process of remediation and renegotiation of boundaries that the medium of digital comics, as well as many other digital mediums are also undergoing.
(Source: Author's description from ELO 2018 site: https://sites.grenadine.uqam.ca/sites/nt2/en/elo2018/schedule/1209/Broken+Windows+and+Slashed+Canvases%3A+Digital+Comics+and+Transgressive+Horror)
Observer is a survival horror video game played from a first-person perspective. It is set in 2084 Poland following a "digital plague" that cost the lives of thousands, resulting in war and rampant drug use. The player controls Daniel Lazarski, a Cracovian detective of the Observers police unit tasked with hacking their targets' memories and fears with a device known as the Dream Eater. Equipped with augmented vision split into Electromagnetic Vision—which scans for electronic devices—and Bio Vision—which scans for biological evidence—he is able to analyse and highlight certain objects in his environment, which in a hacked brain is subject to active change. Objects can be interacted with and examined. A conversation tree is used for dialogue.
"Psyco" by Felix Rémirez is about the conversation between a psychiatrist and a patient who suffers from schizophrenia. In this hypermedia the hypertext appears automatically without the reader's intervention in the reading process, the images and hypertext change rapidly and in some sequences the reader does not have enough time to read the whole story. The only option the reader can choose is clicking on underline sentences which give the reader descriptions of medical terms and information about a woman the patient was in love with. The patient explains that he is scared of some people who are at the back of the psychiatrist, the latter tries to distract him asking him to talk about the period in which he studied music. There is an open ending and the reader does not know if the patient attacks the nurse, the psychiatrist or himself at the end. This hypermedia has been programmed with Flash CS5 and the narrative is told in different shots: two shots show the characters' conversation, other shots show what they think at the same time and there is another shot in which images move to create a mysterious and frightening atmosphere accompanied with Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta by Béla Bartók (Maya Zalbidea 2014)
"Psyco" de Féliz Rémirez trata de una conversación entre un psiquiatra y un paciente que sufre esquizofrenia. En este hipermedia el hipertexto aparece de forma automática sin permitir al lector/a que intervenga en el proceso de lectura, las imágenes y el hipertexto cambian rápido y en algunas secuencias al lector/a no le da tiempo a leer toda la historia. La única opción que el lector/a puede elegir es hacer click sobre las palabras subrayadas que proporcionan descripciones de términos médicos e información acerca de una mujer de la que el paciente estaba enamorado. El paciente explica que está aterrorizado porque ve a personas detrás del psiquiatra, éste trata de distraerlo pidiéndole que le hable de la época en la que estudiaba música. El final es abierto y el lector/a no sabe si el paciente ataca a la enfermera, al psiquiatra o muere al final. Este hipermedia ha sido programado con Flash CS5 y la narración está contada en distintos planos: dos planos que muestran la conversación de los personajes, otros planos que muestran lo que ellos piensan, un plano en el que las imágenes se mueven y crean un ambiente de misterio y terror acompañado de la Música para cuerda, percusión y celesta de Béla Bartók (Maya Zalbidea 2014)
The first part of this horror story about a series of identical houses is told in a series of emails received from Mark Condry, who has received a newspaper clipping in the mail describing a double murder and suicide committed by an old friend, Andrew. Mark decides to investigate, but disappears after sending a series of text messages from a house that may have changed Andrew completely. The second section of the story is told in a series of "updates" on the website with links to various blogs, with extensively interlinking comments.
Heisserer sold a version of the story to Warner Bros. in 2005.
Vespers is an interactive fiction game written in 2005 by Jason Devlin that placed first at the 2005 Interactive Fiction Competition. It also won the XYZZY Awards for Best Game, Best NPCs, Best Setting, and Best Writing. Set in a 15th century Italian monastery, it is chiefly a horror-themed morality game, where the player takes moral decisions, which then affect the ending. However, whilst playing the game, it isn't obvious that these are moral dilemmas, and the game actively encourages the player to take the evil path.
Hurst is a cinematic network fiction, told through the Twitter account of virtual character Karen Barley. The work was performed as a 3 week live event that began in June 2011. Synopsis: Karen Barley is convinced by her sinister Boss to take on an outdoors project in an ancient Bronze Age woods. Her boyfriend Darren is excited about a mysterious legend of the Hurst and cant wait to find a hidden path he's heard of. On first appearance the Hurst seems mundane, with traffic and people close by. But gradually they begin to experience strange sounds and druid like signs. And when Darren discovers the path he opens a portal that lets in his Other. Convinced that her boyfriend is trying to frighten her, Karen slowly spirals into a deadly paranoia that result in tragic consequences. And all the while her madness is played out for all to see as she uses Twitter to tell everyone whats happening.