CONSPACE ROOMS

CONSPACE ROOMS

Eighteen paintings hang in a labyrinth that your browser builds as you walk. There is no map and no signage. Put on headphones and go slowly.

What it is

A walk-through web installation by Sinaida and UVALISS (Alisa Feer). The works come from the SOULS series by UVALISS, a series about looking into your own inner world and accepting it as it is. The labyrinth walks the same road. First come hospital corridors of fear, then a grandmother's flat full of memory, then pale rooms that dissolve into lace and light.

How it plays

A rose in the corner grows with every work you meet.

Find all eighteen and an arch of roses lets you out.

The works hang wherever the corridors put them, so every visit meets them in a different order.

Candles are the map.

A rare door gives way for a moment if you stand still in front of it.

The vibe

Half-remembered late Soviet interiors: green oil paint under whitewash, humming tubes, rugs on the walls, a television left on in an empty room, beds and drip stands the hospital left behind. Liminal stillness, with a green terminal screen for a front door.

The sound

Every work hums its own note. The music is generated as you walk and is never quite the same twice. In the hospital, lo-fi piano with a ward monitor, 80s Soviet synth and a basement techno heard through concrete take turns, and a radio sometimes breaks through with the time signal. In grandmother's flat, gramophone records play as if from the next room: a waltz, a tango on a bayan, a 70s estrada ballad, a romance on a guitar.

Controls

Keyboard: W / S or ↑ / ↓ to walk, ← / → or the mouse to look, E or click to inspect a painting, Tab for the menu, F for fullscreen, N for sound on and off.

Hands (optional): a fist walks, a pointing hand turns, an open palm holds a painting. Both palms open and spread or pinch to zoom. This asks for your webcam. The image never leaves your device.

Phone: hold the top half of the screen to walk and drag to turn. It runs in a lighter mode.

Good to know

Needs WebGL2. Chrome, Edge or Firefox on a laptop works best.

No accounts, no analytics, nothing about you is stored.

Flicker can be turned off in the menu.

The game is in Russian and English.

Playing time is about 15 to 30 minutes.

Credits

Paintings: UVALISS, http://uvaliss.ru, instagram @uvaliss.
Labyrinth, code and sound: Sinaida, http://sinaida.eu, instagram @sin.ai.da.