Recognizing Oneself in the Unknown: An Interview with Llaura McGee about Contact

On the occasion of Game Collection Vol. 2, the virtual exhibition curated by Pietro Righi Riva, presented on the occasion of the 23rd Triennale Milano International Exhibition, Giulia Trincardi talks with Llaura McGee, game designer and founder of Dreamfeel, about what it means to recognize oneself in the unknown.

Western culture has constructed countless metaphors for humanity’s complicated fear of the unknown, which often takes the form of a monster. Nosferatu and Frankenstein (to name just two famous monsters), as well as the extra-terrestrial creatures of Hollywood blockbusters like Independence Day, embody the fear of a potentially inhuman future in different but totally parallel ways: fear of a society that is only capable of devouring, of an uncontrollable technology or of an invincible external threat. The encounter with the unknown does not have to be terrifying, however. On the contrary, it can be a reassuring revelation when we recognize a part of ourselves within it. The alien—etymologically, what is different from us and metaphorically, an extra-terrestrial creature—can be a mirror and a friend, especially in a world that finds it so hard to acknowledge us.

In the context of the 23rd Triennale Milano International Exhibition Unknown Unknowns. An Introduction to Mysteries, and as part of the second edition of the Game Collection curated by Pietro Righi Riva, the institution presents Contact, an interactive work created by the Irish designer Llaura McGee. Contact reconsiders the common fantasy of an encounter of the third type as a memory archived in the brain, in this case of the protagonist, which resonates familiarly until the day she finds a definitive sense of identity. We spoke with the author about the themes of the game, queer identity and what it means to recognize oneself in the unknown.

As human beings, we observe the world through screens and patterns, but our vision is also influenced by the people we meet. When we think about space and what may be hiding there, we often imagine aliens as small, grey creatures because our imagination is full of preconceptions. But alien is also a term used for plants and mushrooms—I’ve been doing a lot of research about mushrooms recently and about how they communicate with each other underground—and they have the same strong desire for communication that we do. That was the initial inspiration for Contact. I grew up in Donegal, Ireland, feeling different from other people. I was always told I was supposed to be a certain way, which always seemed unfair to me. I figured there must be other people who felt the way I did. Towards the end of the game, something happens that I experienced myself as a trans, thinking about my life and the people I’ve met, which is that “strange” people know how to find each other. It is very common, among neuro-divergent and queer people, to recognize themselves in an invisible bond. Growing up in a small town is different than growing up in a big city. Saying to yourself “I’m gay” or “I’m part of the LGBT community” and being able to say it out loud, publicly, changes radically depending on the context you are living in. Contact is based on a true story—even though I should check a few details with my brother, who probably remembers better than I do—about an encounter I had as a young girl with two trans people. They were just behaving naturally, as themselves, and that triggered something in my brain. Speaking more generally, the game recounts the feeling you have when you find yourself, for example, at an event and notice another trans person. You want to strike up a conversation, but of course that’s not always possible because you could make him or her uncomfortable. Or you think it may be an opportunity to establish a new connection; you want to know more though you don’t know why. The metaphor of the alien works in this sense, too, because—as LGBT people—we want to know “if there is life out there”, if there is meaning in this vast universe and if that meaning can perhaps be found in caring for others on Earth. If we consider the fact that we are here, on Earth, in an arbitrary, senseless way, we realize that people have much more in common than we thought.

Sometimes we even believe the people who we think are like us know more than we do. When I see these people, I think that they’ll be able to tell me exactly what I should do, but I know the opposite also happens, too, where I am at the other end of this invisible flow of communication and other people see me and think “she’ll know what to say, what to do”. Obviously, the truth is that each of us is looking for a path. Those two people I met as a girl on the beach seemed like aliens to me, absolutely incredible presences—and yet they were just two people on vacation. And they don’t have the slightest idea that they inspired a videogame nearly twenty years after our encounter.

Yes, they are concepts that reappear, including in the latest game I produced, If Found, where the main character fights against the image that other people have of her—not just her mother who thinks of her as a son, but also her friends who want her to be a certain way, while she just wants to be herself. The alien in Contact is a metaphor for all this and for how we process information to try to give meaning to our experience.

First I spoke with Pietro Righi Riva, who explained the theme of the 23rd Triennale Milano International Exhibition and asked me if I wanted to propose a work. I already had a version of this story, but the next step was to ask myself, “How can I make this into an interactive work?” In 2015, I created an installation, Fluc, in which one or two people go into a tent and interact with an instrument that conditions the images they see around them. In the same way, the concept I was working with in Contact is the decoding of signs. The challenge was to work on a mobile support and with touchscreen technology. I wanted the touch elements to appear without obscuring the images too much.

For the visual part, I collaborated with the artist Bri Chew, who created some of the game’s collages based on my texts and on some prototypes I had made. I wanted to reproduce the aesthetic of the early internet that let people communicate collectively and extensively, like mushrooms. To make the parts of the game consistent, I worked the way I usually do, producing many iterations and deciding on the most workable aspects a little at a time. The strictly interactive part also went through a number of phases. At first, the visual part was gathered behind little windows, but since we were working on mobile support and thus generally small screens, we decided to give the images more space. This then conditioned the written part, because initially the text was rather cumbersome. In the end, I chose to associate each piece of the narration with a key word that appears fairly discretely as an interactive button. When talking about videogames, people often think it’s all a question of choices. I have a different vision, though. I want the player to feel a pleasurable involvement. Playing Super Mario is a choice (jump here and jump there) but in the end, the point is to feel involved in the experience of gaming. In Contact, you hear the words of the story at the same time as you are interacting with the visual elements.

A major source of inspiration, in terms of the sound, were old science-fiction products like the 1956 film Forbidden Planet, with its many synthesized sounds. I should say that Laura Ryder, the sound designer who created the music, was truly phenomenal also in the way she added effects to the voice, giving it a unique quality. It’s funny how so many people have the same fantasy about aliens and how that fantasy is connected to an imported culture, mostly from the United States. When I was a child in Ireland, I remember that we were sort of ashamed of Irish culture because, for us, culture was something that came from abroad, from the United States, from Hollywood and, obviously, from the United Kingdom (there’s no escaping the United Kingdom!). The obsession for that type of culture and fantasy is present in the game design as well. Why would a studio in France decide to make a game about Highway 61? There are so many interesting places around here.

Right! Contact, for example, is set near the places where I grew up. Making it, I asked myself what would happen if aliens arrived here, and also what it would be like to set a Hollywood style film here, in Ireland.

It was interesting to test out Contact in Italian a few weeks before it was released and to hear Marta’s voice. It’s different than mine and it’s almost as if we created two different versions of the game.

Yes! My voice is less professional that Marta’s, but, as an artist, it was essential to me to narrate the game in the English version. It’s a very personal experience that doesn’t happen often in videogames. It was interesting to juxtapose important concepts associated with space with the extremely relative reality of a small city and of me at thirteen years old. Using my voice gave Contact the quality of a self-produced magazine.

The protagonist of Contact identifies herself as an alien—an identity she asserts in opposition to a very limited definition of “human being”. I really appreciated the way it presents being an alien as a right, embracing a diversity that is simply one’s true nature. Do you think a positive vision of diversity is rare in the way we speak of identity today?

Yes, absolutely. The protagonist embarks on a journey that starts with being afraid that she is something terrible and seeking to avoid it at all costs and ends with her realizing that it is perfectly fine to be herself. Actually, there’s even a revelatory aspect. The world is full of people like her, who are not defined exclusively by the fact of being aliens – or being trans people, if we want to move on from the metaphor of the game. Some are good and some are bad; some are fun and some are boring. In short, being “alien” is only one part of them. And it’s normal. For the protagonist, seeing two “aliens” on vacation means recognizing that they do things the same as everyone else. The metaphor of the alien is enjoyable because it also allows for a welcome vindication. Let’s say you really are an alien. You know what you can do? You can fly around in your spaceship!

Contact expresses a metaphor but it is also a way to say that being “alien” is not the only thing that defines you, and, what’s more, it allows you to do incredible things. People who dehumanize us and want to separate us from the others will always try to show that we are different. So, I learned that it’s better to say yes, we are aliens, we are different, but that is a beautiful thing. I think that this is the message of Contact: don’t hide your “alien” nature; welcome it. And of course, every person deserves love, including “aliens”.