espionage

A political art experiment in text adventure game format, rendition has been described as "superb", "very powerful", "affecting" and "brilliant". Others have described it as "repugnant", "filth" and "terrorist propaganda". renditionhas been the subject of discussion at Cambridge University, the Association for Computing Machinery, even The New Statesman. Make your own mind up.

This "interactive fiction" game is playable online in your browser, but is also available in platform-independent z-code format. Just download the gamefile and the corresponding z-code interpreter for your platform to play it with.

(Source: Website) 

Anglophone Atlantis has been an independent nation since an April day in 1822, when a well-aimed shot from their depluralizing cannon reduced the British colonizing fleet to one ship. Since then, Atlantis has been the world's greatest center for linguistic manipulation, designing letter inserters, word synthesizers, the diminutive affixer, and a host of other tools for converting one thing to another. Inventors worldwide pay heavily for that technology, which is where a smuggler and industrial espionage agent such as yourself can really clean up. Unfortunately, the Bureau of Orthography has taken a serious interest in your activities lately. Your face has been recorded and your cover is blown. Your remaining assets: about eight more hours of a national holiday that's spreading the police thin; the most inconvenient damn disguise you've ever worn in your life; and one full-alphabet letter remover. Good luck getting off the island. 

(Source: The Interactive Fiction Database)

Exploring connections between surveillance and interference in the lives of artists, "The Wedding Celebration of Gunter and Gwen" is a hyperlibretto where the experience of a wedding celebration is created with words, graphic icons, and glockenspiel intermezzi. 

Artist Statement

"The Wedding Celebration of Gunter and Gwen" is informed by a strategy of following signs and signifiers that point to ancient systems of control of people's lives. It is a device used by Dan Brown in Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code, although actually it was through the performance artist's strategy of looking at hypertextual connections in my own eventful life that "Celebration" took on this aspect. In the creation of this work—that looks at systems of surveillance and interference in the lives of artists—a metaphoric meaning is set forth that can be experienced in the same light as newly discovered maps and artifacts that lead us on a trail to explore the hidden narratives of this country's history, such as the map of Viking exploration of the Americas in the Yale Library or the image of a Templar Knight on a rock ledge in Massachusetts. Regardless of the complete accuracy of such artifacts, (and of this narrative) their meaning is "look here, there is some aspect of our history that should be re-examined." The interface for "The Wedding Celebration of Gunter and Gwen" is based on the interface I developed for "A Party in Silver Beach," a work that situates the reader at a party where visual images of the guests lead to their words. Celebration also utilizes elements of Opera libretto. Thus, the visually-cued scenes (the recitative) are interspersed with text arias and ariosos that contain sustained narrative content and are introduced with graphic and/or audio intermezzi. In the magic realism tradition of Mozart and Emanuel Schikaneder's "The Magic Flute," where music brings safety in harrowing times; in the tradition of Shakespearean identity subterfuge, or of Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte's "Marriage of Figaro," "The Wedding Celebration of Gunter and Gwen" is a hyperfiction libretto where the unmasking of spies and perpetrators is woven into a diffuse wedding celebration. The reader moves through the story like a guest at a party—speaking to some people, overhearing the conversations of others. He or she may enjoy the ambiance of a party to celebrate the marriage of writer Gwen and video artist Gunter; and/or may listen to painter Dorothy Abrona McCrae relate the story of the search for the fate of Virginia Dare, the first child born in the Roanoke Colony; and/or may listen to former intelligence agent Uncle Roger reveal the disturbing extent of brain surveillance and life interference technologies. If the story at times seems difficult for a wedding celebration, it should be remembered that many of the characters are victims of war game and intelligence agency interference in their lives. They know this, but they do not want such interference to mean that their happiness, the joy of living, the enjoyment of their own wedding has been taken.

(Source: 2008 ELO Media Arts show)

Possibly Short's most polished work, and that's saying something. In a city based on both high technology and magic, trains and robots and illusions, an innocent traveller gets swept into the center of a clandestine power-struggle which will forever change the city and how it is seen. Excellent world-building, not just in that the environment is highly explorable and implemented in great detail, but in that the city has a distinct foreign-metropolis-through-tourist-eyes flavor, and a history which makes itself known in various and subtle ways. Good sense of choice: although there's basically only one ending, much of what happens along the way is variable. Uses the conversation system from Pytho's Mask: a combination of menus and ask/tell that's sensitive to context and lets you change topics arbitrarily. Even though most characters will respond to a wide variety of topics, it's still easy to run out of things to say. Features a "novice" mode, but the standard mode is recommended for anyone but the absolute newcomer to IF.

(Source: Carl Muckenhoupt, Baf's Guide to IF Fiction Archive)