Ariel Slater
i.
It’s 10 a.m., and the sun beats down on my shoulders. A clear day, hot. Jo’s nails click on the sidewalk, her tail wags side to side in the air. She leads us through rows of townhouses to the entrance of Leopold’s Preserve, a conservancy. It circles the neighborhood. Seven miles of trails, through protected woods and meadows and swamps. There are about 35 interpretive signs that detail the flora, fauna, and historical significance of the landscape during the Civil War. A project by Virginia Tech. I’ve never stopped to read the signs, only glanced at the titles.
Jo and I cross the boardwalk into the preserve. I let her snuffle along, let her stop and stare deep into the woods at things I can’t see or hear. I only pull her back when she steps off the trail. I’m used to walking the trails like I’m on a mission, fast, music blasting in my ears. This time, I stop to look, to listen. Jo runs towards squirrels with her mouth in a little wide-open smile. She darts after little lizards. I see the blue tail of a skink disappear under a fallen log. I hear birds in the trees. Can’t really see them. Sometimes tiny brown birds fly down and hop around the flat dirt of the trail. Sparrows, finches, wrens, I’m not sure. I hear a piliated woodpecker pecking at a tree. It’s a big bird, loud, sounds almost like a jackhammer. Echoing through the trees, it’s difficult to pinpoint where it is, or even how far away it is.
Eventually, Jo bursts into a sudden trot down the trail. In the woods, I skim signs detailing the ecosystem, the landscape. We cut away into a meadow. Jo’s favorite area. The grasses are thigh-high and golden. There’s cotton, not ready for picking. Some other plants, some weeds, dry and spindly. Jo loves to stand out here, ears perked up, just listening. I read the signs here. Learn about the hedgerows and how they’re highways for wildlife. There are a lot of different types of little critters here, apparently. Another sign details how this used to all be farmland. Another talks about the birds that live here.
We head out along Leopold’s Loop. It’s more of the same; a forest quietly teeming with life. We pass signs about deer, birds, mosses, and also about the families that lived here, about multiple Civil War battles that occurred on this land. There are remains of some very old houses and farm equipment. Everything in-tact, but dubiously standing. I learn about the nearby railroad, I learn how folks around here used to live. We stop at a swamp overlook. I observe ducks thriving. Someone built little houses for them, on stilts in the water. Further down, a sign tells me about the beavers living nearby — “nature’s engineers,” the sign calls them. Finally, nearing the end of the loop, I step onto a large wooden platform and learn about The Thoroughfare Colored/North Fork School, a school opened in 1885 for Prince William County’s African American students. Nothing of the school remains. Instead, the platform marks its history.
ii.
It’s 9 p.m. and my room is cast in darkness. A friend, Ryan, recently gifted me a copy of a videogame called Mango. It’s a small indie game, made only by one person. One person’s experience, turned into some sort of strange piece of interactive art for the rest of us to experience. Ryan tells me the game is about a mind losing its grasp with reality. He calls it a “nightmare.”
I put on headphones and open the game. Immediately, I’m in some sort of office lounge. No explanation of where I am or why I’m here, I’m just here. I don’t know who I am, either, as the camera is in the first person perspective. The graphics are simple and blocky and everything is covered in bright, obnoxious colors and intricate patterns. Psychedelic, I’d call it. I examine objects and read my character’s thoughts on them. There’s nothing of value. Nothing that matters. My character hates plants, for some reason. There’s music playing. It sounds royalty-free. It has no meaning. It just fills the void.
I leave this office building, find myself outside, in a courtyard in a city. There’s a gigantic statue of a bunny, some strange murals. Otherwise, looks like a city. Tall dark skyscrapers, bricks, cement, some very unattractive grass. The textures are totally heinous. It’s hideous to look at. It’s been completely silent besides my footsteps, but then I hear a plane, look at the sky and see it pass overhead. There are no people, no signs of life. I enter my character’s apartment. The walls are concrete, the furniture is black and white, the fridge is rainbow-colored. My character again tells me they hate plants.
I leave the apartment and suddenly I’m on some sort of linear walking trip through… a 3D art gallery? A funhouse? Tunnel after room after tunnel of what I imagine are just things that visually appealed to the creator of the game. A rainbow fence and bright red trees, more weird sculptures and textures, a wall with stars, a movie theater with colorful static on the screen, a tunnel of black stone with two huge roses at the end of it, stained glass walls, a rubber duck with huge red lips that you have to kiss to proceed, then suddenly, a massive mountain range that stretches up and up and up to a twilit sky.
I appear suddenly on a house on top of a mountain. I enter a door. A white room, with a phone on a white table. It rings; I answer. A woman’s voice asks where I’ve been. I blink and I’m in a large empty room with dizzying wallpaper. The process of running through strange room after room continues, occasionally pausing to solve obtuse puzzles. Honestly, just strong-arming them. It is all, quite frankly, jarring. An assault on the senses. But then, that’s the intention. I feel, nearly, motion-sick. Dizzy. A sensation I haven’t felt from a game before. I have to call it quits. I check the clock thinking I’d played for an hour, maybe more. No. Only 40 minutes.
I text Ryan, ‘Mango is sure something.’ I text, ‘Couldn’t even play an hour straight.’ He texts back, ‘You didn’t even make it to the nightmare part yet!’
iii.
I think about what it is Mango wants to say. What it wants me to know, what it wants me to learn. Or, am I giving it too much credit, and it’s simply a meaningless slurry of sounds and images?
I consider that small experimental games often tend to be reflections upon the creators’ psyches, or sometimes a deeply personal journey through difficult memories or turbid periods of time. Commentary on the human experience. On the weight of existence. Mango is a representation of someone else’s thoughts and feelings, presented as a slurry of polygonal images. All media is a representation of someone else’s thoughts and feelings, in some way or another. The thing about a videogame, or a book, is that many hours, often entire days of your life, must be spent to fully consume this type of media. I wonder, am I consuming too much?
I compare the hour I spent in Mango, in which I learned nothing because I did not have enough time to learn anything, to the hour I spent in Leopold’s Preserve. In one hour, I had learned more of the area’s wildlife and history than I had ever expected to learn. Constantly shocked by what was sitting in my backyard this entire time. I think about how refreshing standing outside and making my own observations about the world was. How even a walk through the woods can scratch an exploration and knowledge itch. I think about how jarring running through Mango was. How it was so linear that exploration was not an option. I was simply being force-fed what the creator wanted me to see and hear. If I complete the game, will I feel enriched? If I attend an art museum, is it not the same? It’s more respected, certainly.
Mediated knowledge has its merits. A fresh or differing perspective; to know and understand what others do; to engage in a foreign experience. I think it’s important. Not always negative. However, it often requires one to disconnect from reality and many of us don’t seem to have the ability to limit ourselves. I struggle to step back from technology. It’s literally at my fingertips, at all times. It has reduced my attention span, left me unimpressed by things I should be impressed by because I’m trying to move too fast through the world. I don’t take enough time to have MY own thoughts. I don’t give enough consideration to MY surroundings. The information we can gather on our own is arguably far more valuable than anything we gain from media. It’s only a matter of taking the time to gather it.
