Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley - THE LACK: I KNEW YOUR VOICE BEFORE YOU SPOKE

A dystopic, interactive art video game by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley where audiences shape a new world through their interactions, highlighting the urgency of choices in a time of meteoric change.

“I think it’s best to think about the game as a tool for changing the rules. The more you play, the more you change the rules of the space in the game and in reality.” – Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley

The voice of a lost God has returned to earth, changing the fabric of the world as we know it.

These changes favour no one and instead shift the world towards chaos.

As the world shifts its ripples reorganise the DNA in everything, making what was once impossible, possible.

Two bodies cross paths during this time. Two bodies with secret orbits. Two bodies battling as, married, insecure, desperate, fetishised, cheating, unlucky.

Both of them are running out of time.

The thing is, the new world they find themselves in will be determined by you. What world will you build? What references will you bring? What mistake will you make? You will make mistakes. It’s up to you how to fix these…

THE LACK: I KNEW YOUR VOICE BEFORE YOU SPOKE is a dystopic, interactive art video game by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley co-commissioned for Art Night Dundee, 2023 by Art Night, NEoN Digital Arts and Serpentine Arts Technologies. Inspired by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s love of choose-your-own–adventure games, where players’ decisions reconstruct every element of their surrounding world . The game’s installation features bespoke dance mats as video game controllers, with sound generated by players. Brathwaite-Shirley creates an environment of active participation in which the audience is as much the medium as the video games she crafts. In this “mid-apocalyptic” resetting of the world, audiences can choose their own story, make their own game and consider what they would do, who they would be— and even reconsider the very particles of their being.

Exhibitions

June 24 2023 – Art Night, Dundee

THE LACK was co-commissioned Art Night, NEoN Digital Arts and Serpentine Arts Technologies and first presented at Art Night Dundee 2023 at the historic Arthurstone Library in Stobswell.

September 26- 20 October 2024 – Group Hug, WSA

THE LACK is exhibited in Group Hug, a collaborative exhibition commissioned by Onassis ONX. The exhibition features Feral Metaverse by Theo Triantafyllidis curated by Julia Kaganskiy, THE LACK: I KNEW YOUR VOICE BEFORE YOU SPOKE by Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley curated by Serpentine Arts Technologies, and The Endless Forest by Tale of Tales (Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn) curated by Rhizome.