d/Lux/MediaArts
The Garden of Forking Paths
 
CuteXDoom II
Anita Fontaine (Australia) & Mike Pelletier (Canada)
2008

CuteXDoom II is psychedelic video-game mod that takes a violent shoot em up and converts it into an experience of popular cultures obsession cuteness. Your character has joined a supermodern religious cult which believes that the worship of cute material objects will lead to happiness and enlightenment (or nasty experience!!).

Once granted access to the cult; thus completing level one, the character then finds themselves awoken from a paroxysm to a now hauntingly surreal landscape: the once hyper-cute characters have been altered to appear malevolent, predatory.

Anita Fontine and Mike Pelletier - CuteXDoomII

The protagonist has essentially been 'poisoned' by the cult, and the objective undergoes a paradigm shift to escape the cult. The character must then mediate a psychedelic hyperspectra of disorientating hallucinogenic optical effects. Fontaine draws the parallels between the 'poison' of vapid materialism allowed to run rampant, and literally peels back the facade of 'cuteness' to reveal a problematized cultural landscape.

www.anitafontaine.com