bleed-dev

ontological bleed development log

Attempting another digital garden to keep my thesis thoughts together.

ABSTRACT

‘ONTOLOGICAL BLEED’ is a research-creation masters thesis that uses the production of a database simulation game to develop experimental mechanics and a speculative fiction narrative that model and trigger the experience of ontological and ego bleed. This project investigates the affordances of the database simulation genre and multimedia narrative fragments to support this experience, developing strategies for narrative effect. Using the frameworks of cognitive and unnatural narratology, and possible worlds theory to discuss the players experience of moving from the actual world into the fictional world, discussing bleed - “In which emotions/identities/physical states/cognitive constructs spillover between player and character” (Bowman 2015; Hugaas 2024) as a form of metalepsis -” any intrusion by the extradiegetic narrator or narratee into the diegetic universe (or by diegetic characters into a metadiegetic universe, etc.), or the inverse (Genette 1980; Bell 2016). The game places the player as a research intern cross-referencing databases and physical artifacts, uncovering a supernatural mystery, and interfacing with mysterious entities associated with a reality that is encroaching on our own - much like how fictional game worlds intersect with ours, with the player as pivot point, existing at once in the actual world and the virtual world of the fiction.