Alice In Darknet (AiD) work-in-progress
- AiD is a thought provoking post-truth VR experience, with gaming elements, that appeals to mankind’s deep rooted fascination for the unknown. It draws inspiration from monumental literary works such as Dante’s “Inferno”.
- The themes are privacy, control and identity in our contemporary data- and technological driven society; dominated by ubiquitous artificial intelligence and the proliferation of deepfakes, characterised by the continuous blurring of the boundaries in our IRL and URL lives.
- Upon arrival the player is enlisted by Alice to help her to find her missing parts and stolen identity. But who or what is Alice, and why would we save her? While travelling through the spectral landscape of the Darknet we discover more about Alice but also about ourselves and the world we live in. When push comes to shovel the player has to make a moral choice. Through its immersive narrative and thematic depth, AiD offers a compelling exploration of the profound implications of emerging technologies on human consciousness and societal dynamics.
Artistic Intention
“The subcutaneous fascination with the underworld is an archaic and deeply rooted human fascination. The Darknet is a very interesting spectral landscape because fact and fiction, good and evil intertwine in total obscurity, ambiguity and illegality.
The challenge was to depict the Darknet not only a place of crime, malware, dark networks, etc., … but also a place of freedoms (e.g. whistleblowers, freedom of the press) that support a democracy from the ‘underbelly’ of the digital society or even can be a source of a new (visual) culture. AID is therefore in a certain sense a ‘child’ of a post-truth society; deep fakes, surveillance capitalism, web influencers and stolen identities, blackmail and ransom money, hackers, bots and malware, conspiracy images and ‘dark’ markets, e-waste.” _Frederik De Wilde
The project is supported by the Flanders Audiovisual Fund and Tax Shelter. Producer Polar Bear – Co-Producer Studio De Wilde
