Los Angeles

EVENT: ALICE BUCKNELL: THE ALLUVIALS (APRIL 4 - MAY 5 2024, LOS ANGELES)

 Alice Bucknell's The Alluvials is a groundbreaking hybrid of video game and film. This project, set in a speculative near-future Los Angeles, engages with the the politics of drought and water scarcity through a unique narrative lens, presented at Killscreen’s new gallery space in Los Angeles.

What distinguishes The Alluvials is its commitment to exploring these pressing issues through the perspectives of non-human entities and elemental forces, such as the Los Angeles River, wildfire, and even the storied ghost of P-22, the city's famed mountain lion. The Alluvials is structured as a multi-chapter journey, spread across seven distinct worlds, using a game engine to craft a narrative that oscillates through time. This method allows the artist to explore possible futures and revisited pasts, creating a dynamic storytelling experience that challenges traditional linear narratives. By harnessing technologies like drone mapping, stable diffusion algorithms, and cinematic modding within the Grand Theft Auto V engine, the project crafts a parafictional world that is as visually enthralling as it is thought-provoking.

Each chapter of The Alluvials engages with different strands of speculative fiction and ecological theory in crafting engaging and meaningful narratives. The settings range from a synthetic water corporation’s storefront with a backdrop of burning Malibu, to a desertified downtown Los Angeles haunted by the swarm intelligence of wolves. These vivid scenarios invite players to immerse themselves in a world where a moth and a Joshua tree dream reciprocally in the ruins of the Hoover Dam, presenting a narrative that is both haunting and reflective.

The video game component of The Alluvials, developed in 2024, includes four levels, each set in a distinct environment where players assume the roles of conventionally non-playable characters, ranging from elemental forces to wildlife. This design choice not only diversifies gameplay but also enriches the narrative depth, allowing players to experience the ecological and thematic nuances firsthand. The game critically and creatively explores various gaming genres, such as first-person shooters and open-world explorations, reinterpreted through a speculative ecological lens.

Inspired by queer ecological theory and the concept of “difficult games”, The Alluvials challenges conventional game mechanics that center human players and predictable reward systems. Instead, it invites players to engage with gaming’s other affective capacities - such as failure and nonlinear progression - to reflect on the broader ecological implications of their in-game decisions. This approach not only highlights the potential of games as complex ecological systems but also prompts players to reconsider their relationship with the natural world.

The Alluvials is more than just a game or a machinima; it is a unique, visionary project that merges interactive media, ecological awareness, and speculative worldbuilding to address some of the most pressing issues facing contemporary society. Through its innovative narrative structure and immersive gameplay, it offers a compelling invitation to envision and engage with the future of our planet’s water systems and ecological health. As such, The Alluvials stands as a significant contribution to the fields of new media and environmental storytelling, promising to inspire and challenge its audience in equal measure.

Alice Bucknell is a North American artist and writer based in Los Angeles. Using game engines and speculative fiction, Bucknell’s work explores interconnections of architecture, ecology, magic, and non-human and machine intelligence. Bucknell is generally interested in the limits of scientific knowledge and systems thinking, the weird possibilities of play, and the ecological dimensions of games that can dissolve binaries like humans vs. environment, natural vs. synthetic intelligence, and self vs. world. They are the founder of New Mystics.

All images: Courtesy of the Artist and Killscreen

Alice Bucknell: The Alluvials (RSVP)

Killscreen

April 4th – May 4th 2024

5511 W. Pico Blvd.

Los Angeles, California

Read more about Alice Bucknell, The Alluvials (machinima, 2023); The Alluvials (video game, 2024)

NEWS: MATHIAS WOLFF ON IT'S JUST MATH

It’s Just Math is a 30 min experimental documentary that deals with predictive policing and its impact on everyday life of Black and People of Color (BPoC) in L.A. The film shows how so called Dirty Data are created through discriminatory policing practices and how the usage of this data within predictive policing software affects BPoC.

The main goal of the LAPD is to prevent crime with the use of data mining. But the predictions are only as good as the data that are fed into the algorithms which try to predict future crime patterns.

The police officer Tom B. explains his take on the predictive policing technology Gotham by the company Palantir. In his view Operation LASER (the LAPD’s strategy to prevent future crime) reduces upcoming criminal activities by analyzing past data and surveilling so called Chronic Offenders — people who are seen as the biggest risk factors.

Larry S. has had difficult experiences with the police even before this program started. He lives in an overpoliced neighborhood and has multiple unlawful police contacts on a regular basis that fail to have reasonable suspicion. He describes a police encounter that leads to an unjustified placement on the Californian Gang Database (CalGang). After that Larry receives a letter from the LAPD that states the reasons — none of which are true or justified with evidence.

Watch the trailer below

Like Larry S. Bryan A. is a long time resident in an overpoliced area and affected by discriminatory policing strategies. Bryan shares his story of being unlawfully included in CalGang some time after a police stop. He also describes how his cousin is arrested just because he was seen with a known gang member who happens to be a friend of his.

The local activist Jamie G. shines a light on the architecture of Operation LASER. She talks about how it’s made possible to create discriminatory dirty data that are manipulated by the LAPD and affect minorities from low-income neighborhoods. This role is based on the founder of the Stop LAPD Spying coalition from L.A. who successfully filed a lawsuit against the LAPD LASER program.

The former Palantir analyst and now whistleblower Kieran J. further reflects the LAPD’s concept and its logic of fighting crime that has not happened yet with data from the past which are mainly produced by the police. He guides through real LAPD documents that have been leaked. These reveal how the police create lists of high-risk-subjects — so called Chronic Offender Bulletins‘ — and also apply risk scores to people without a criminal record.

This is the only fictional character in the film that is not based on interviews or public statements.

The video images of the film were produced with a modified version of the game engine of Grand Theft Auto V. With this approach 'It’s Just Math' doesn’t just touch on stereotypes incorporated in the game but also bypasses viewing habits of the audience. At the same time the film blurs the lines between conventional documentary formats, game and film.”

(Mathias Wolff)

Watch It’s Just Math