Critical Hit

Video game installation, 2022
Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana, Slovenia

"Critical Hit is a speculative video game that draws the gallery visitors into a post-virtual vision of parallel reality, which seems like a walking simulator set in the convoluted infrastructure of the Dantean circles of cyberspace. With this project, the artist and designer Dorijan Šiško continues his eclectic research into the aesthetics and the medium of video games by reflecting on the alternative relations between virtual and physical spaces and digital and material cultures.

Entering the arcade, players try to orient themselves within a spatiotemporal haze, following various material hints – light signals, a reflective map and ritualistic objects. When they approach the portal, they enter an endless circling in a limbo of sensory hyperstimulation permeated by sensations of the end and a designed image of an accelerated world. Lost in the wormholes of a hellish neon void, they use their voice to fight a battle with more or less abstract images of the demons of our time. Shifting between levels-worlds, the players screamingly realise that they are the key agents of anxiety driving this lore."

Text: Maja Burja
Music: Msn Gf, Gabi98, Ascyth, Sin Aspirin, Fujita Pinnacle, Peter Ferlan, DJ Final Form
3D printing: Luka Frelih
Photography: Domen Pal / Aksioma
Production: Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, 2022
Part of U30+ production programme for supporting young artists
Financial support: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana