Interactive Multichannel Videogame Installation, Single-Player PC Game, NFT Collection, color, sound.
Comissioned by Serpentine Arts Technologies in association with Julia Stoschek Foundation.
Prix Ars Electronica ‘Award of Distinction’ in Interactive Arts+.
Comissioned by Serpentine Arts Technologies in association with Julia Stoschek Foundation.
Prix Ars Electronica ‘Award of Distinction’ in Interactive Arts+.
Prix Ars Electronica Jury Statements
“In Third World: The Bottom Dimension, artist Gabriel Massan offers a new pedagogy, a guidebook for resistance.”
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“In Third World: The Bottom Dimension, artist Gabriel Massan offers a new pedagogy, a guidebook for resistance.”
(•••)
by Gabriel Massan
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Lead Artist, Creative Director, 3D Sculptor, Concept: Gabriel Massan
Featured Artists: Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro, Novíssimo Edgar and LYZZA
Sound Design: LYZZA
Unreal Development: Alexandre Pina, Marchino Manga and Ralph McCoy
Capture Mode Development and Unreal Consultant: Iraj Montasham
Animation, Cinematography and Film VFX: Carlos Minozzi
Additional Cinematography: Alexandre Pina
Graphic and UI Design: Masako Hirano
Writing and Narrative Design Support: Sweet Baby Inc
Translator: Adriana Francisco
Translation Support: Manuela Cochat
Mastering Engineer: Rainy Miller
QA Testing: Keiran Cooper
Curator: Tamar Clarke-Brown
Producer: Róisín McVeigh
Additional Support: EDP Foundation and MAAT, Lisbon
The Project
‘Third World: The Bottom Dimension’ is a multi-part project conceptualised by artist Gabriel Massan in collaboration with invited artists Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro, Novíssimo Edgar, and vocalist and music producer LYZZA. Together, their work explores Black Brazilian experience as it intersects with the impacts of colonialism.
Through the lenses of decoloniality, queerness and decentralisation (technological, social, economic, and ideological), ‘Third World: The Bottom Dimension’ challenges us to rethink the ways in which we understand and orient ourselves in the world.
Built with practitioners who are concerned with deconstructing colonial knowledge systems, ‘Third World’ challenges destructive narratives that continue to shape our physical and digital worlds. In development since late 2021, the experimental project prioritises ‘consciousness-raising’ and worldbuilding, convening a wide network of researchers and practitioners, including artists, developers, animators, filmmakers, and more. Across its multiple parts, ‘Third World: The Bottom Dimension’ gathers interdisciplinary responses to what the artist calls our contemporary ‘state of emergence’.
The Video Game
‘Third World: The Bottom Dimension’ is a free-to-download, multi-level, single-player PC game commissioned and produced by Serpentine Arts Technologies. Conceptualised as a consciousness-raising tool, the game explores Black Brazilian experience as it intersects with the ramifications of colonialism across physical and digital realities.
‘Third World’ invites players into a fantastical and disorienting world populated with Massan’s digital sculptures, bespoke animation, films, and camerawork, accompanied by sound developed with their collaborators. The game uses worldbuilding and collaborative storytelling to challenge colonialist concepts of ‘exploration’, ‘nature’ and ‘knowledge’ to encourage a different kind of wayfinding. Developed in dialogue with the artist’s interests in decentralised knowledge exchange, fictional archaeology, ecology, and the critical role that collective memory plays in constructing futures, ‘Third World’ is a platform for Massan’s collaborations with artists, technologists and thinkers.
Close your mind to start.
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Each level or “episode” in the game is conceptualised by a featured artist who worked in collaboration with Massan to bring themes central to their practice into the lore of ‘Third World’. Playing as characters ‘Funfun’ and ‘Buburu’ – agents deployed to the ‘Third World’ by a resource extraction organisation, as you navigate these kaleidoscopic and disorienting realms, you encounter not only new lifeforms, languages, and ways of knowing, but also an increasing reckoning with your own actions. A worldbuilding platform in which a multitude of stories and perspectives converge, ‘Third World’ invites you to raise your awareness of other ways of being through play, and to embrace the idea of ecosystem as a true ‘main character’.