Museum Hall A is an interactive game installation with live-action characters dwelling under a lockdown in their virtual spaces. The audience could speak through a microphone or type ‘command’ to the character, transforming the exhibition space into a live theater. Wordplay and articulation brought up by the vocal recognition system are essential to the story, in which characters give meta speeches questioning the power structure inherited in language and definition.
The alphabet characters, Aru, Be, See, and De, live in a deconstructive world with a museum, room, dumping ground, and a tomb layering on top of one another. While the ultimate goal of the audience is to help them ‘find a way out’, both physically and within their individual fates, the concept of the outside is nihilistic. This leads to the discussion of the representation of meaning and existential crisis.
Entering the space, you found characters directly staring into your eyes. A microphone and a keyboard lie underneath the giant figures, waiting for someone to pick up and talk to. You entered their museum, their room, their dumping ground, and their tomb.
There is Mueum Hall A, a live-action video game installation.
In their deconstructive ‘house’, characters Aru, Be, See, and De live in their own rooms under a lockdown. Only one day of the year does the storm stop, and this day is coming soon.
In the past, there are only mirages and ghosts waiting outside, and they never succeeded to pass. However, this time it is different.
Under Aru’s secret planning, the house is being transformed into a museum. You, the audience, will enter their world and rewrite their destinies.
Characters A-D
A, Aru | The flawless servant
A is the servant. Her name is Aru (ある), meaning the existence of unconscious things in Japanese.
She only follows commands, because her mind was too complicated to understand. She knows that the ‘real self’ is incomprehensible, so it doesn’t matter – as long as staying silently obsessive, everyone could accept you, right?
Aru has a secret dream: to become an inanimate exhibit in a glass box, forever beloved.
One day, this house will become her ‘museum’, her tomb.
B, Be | The boss of the house
B, their boss, is the master of the house. Be in English means actual, objective existence, LIVE.
Of course, Be was a nice person in life, always smiling. He explained to the audience the rules of reality here, the most important of which is: to speak clearly. Yes, if you can’t speak clearly, and the voice recognition system installed only in English can’t understand it, you will have to ignore you. What? Have an accent? can not say it clearly? Practice! Believe in yourself, you can do it! However, B corrected the original pronunciation of A’s name “Aru” and only called her “Aru”
As a responsible and good host, B is determined to lead everyone out of the blockade. But he never managed to traverse the mirage outside.
In fact, he was trapped in the identity of the owner of the house by a contract and could not be freed.
C, See | A Cat, or A Dog
See likes to eat and See likes to play! Among the trashes she dwells. See is a little cat, or a dog – who knows? See lives with only intuition. When she gets bored she will yell: “let me see them! let me out!” Though, no one knows who “they” are.
Nonetheless, her name is “see” yet she has a blindfold on, so how can she see them? No one takes her word seriously. Though, everybody loves her. See is their spoiled child, a pet with no worries at all.
D, De | The ‘De-‘ Person
De is never someone easy to deal with. She evenly dislikes everyone, and that includes herself. She locked herself in the room every day, disinfecting. Only through sanitization can she re-establish a hierarchy of the world and restore order back.
However, what does “dirty” imply? What id the real “danger”? In her eyes, the world is over: while everything regarding rules and meaning has gone to an end, definitions have become a random permutation of characters. ‘D’ is also one of that characters. Their existence – all Aru, Be, See, and De – are nothing but remains of the end of the world. Her disbelief towards everything leads here to realize the virtual nature of the game. To her, the idealistic museum that Aru dreams about is essentially impossible.