The images in this month’s gallery are from Switzerland’s largest transmedia project, Polder. You can read the full story about the rural and urban alternate reality games, the feature film, the concept and the project’s director and producer, Samuel Schwarz here.
Professional actor Luc Müller plays an addicted “NEUROO-X” technology User, in the Polder Alternate Reality Game in Bern
Cosplayer in Blutturm, Bern. Alternate Reality Game ‘users’ or ‘viewers’ encountered many dressed-up characters, or ‘cosplayers’. Without the participation of voluntary cosplayers, an ARG like this would not be affordable.
Set, cosplay scene, in which it can be seen that the influence of the Alternate Reality Game experiences flowed directly into the film development.
Arrival of the killer: idyll and violence: a crazy user reaches the boat and shoots around (Polder ARG in Sils Maria)
Nietzsche and ‘users’: Image from ARG in Sils Maria
Nietzsche’s ‘Übermensch’ on the mountain: The ‘super human’ philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (‘a book for all and none’), or more precisely the self-stylisation of the thinker, was an important inspiration. Such are the CEOs of the fictitious group NEUROO-X. Image from ARG in Sils Maria.
Übermensch on a donkey: Nietzsche’s concept of the ‘Übermensch’ was played out in the Sils Maria Alternate Reality Game
Set Maloja 2: On location where the evil Entertainment Group NEUROO-X hold a Game Convention in the Swiss mountains. Image from the shooting of the Polder movie.
Artwork visualisation 3, by Caspar Schmidlin, for a Polder ARG.
Artwork visualisation 2, by Caspar Schmidlin, for a Polder ARG.
Artwork visualisation 1, by Caspar Schmidlin, for a Polder ARG.
Profane and magical: An important effect on the ARG’s Polder is the mixture of magic and profanity …. the actor chose targeted effects of ‘familiar’ and ‘stylisation’. Picture from ARG in Sils Maria.
“Lilith gross und klein”: the older and younger Lilith witch characters.
Magical characters in the woods: the user encounters in the forest of the beautiful and eerie Kuchisake Onna, played by model Sira Topic (Polder ARG in Sils Maria).
Total Immersion: A ‘User’ immersed in a story supplied by the evil NEUROO_X Group. Using GPS signal, triggered AudioWalks were an important narrative element
Polder character Will Fritz: In Bern you could become Fritz at a Urban Game and play through the school shooting, as perpetrators and as a preventer, interrogating debates about violence in games. Image from ARG in Bern.
Ryuko, lover of the NEUROO-X game designer Marcus, is the main character of the ‘Polder’ Feature film.
‘Polder’ movie still: Zelda Madsen, Chief Content Officer, NEUROO- X.
