Video game, 10', France, 2022
In The 5th Interaction you play as a space explorer who travels to a desolate planet to confront the mystical beings that have been hunting her for hundreds of years. She will face numerous dangers, including the strange presences that roam the planet, compressing all organic matter in their path. These entities were conceived as beings that pulsate between multiple dimensions, depicted as gaping mouths on other worlds. What better way to represent these alien worlds than through live-action footage—a visual style radically foreign to the game’s narrative?
Representing otherworldly realms through the real amounts to reversing the fiction/reality dichotomy: the real is distanced in order to reinforce the reality of fiction, elevating the latter to the status of a dominant reality. By depicting this “elsewhere” using the tools of reality, do we not, by extension, virtualize the player’s reality? This interpretation of the incorporation of real images frequently recurs in simulation-based media; it can be found in depictions of dreams, hallucinations, or the afterlife.
With Icare Bamba, Mathieu Belkhenchir, Aloïs Carrez, Thomas Imbert, Julen Laborde, Elise Malbec, Fany Passet, Aurelien Rivat. And animators: Miguel Saura Drago, Theophile Lecroart. Comedians: Adrien Madinier, Giulia De Sia.