A couple months ago, there was a single aesthetic
feature added to a game that made a small section of the internet-me included- lose
our collective minds. This feature served no gameplay purpose, changed
no mode of interaction, and yet it makes the game infinitely better. What was this feature? What the hell is a liquid shader? I...don’t know. It’s a game tech term. It means giving the appearance of liquid inside
something- but to be honest, the tech isn’t important. What matters here is that, a little while
ago, a Was added to Half Life: Alyx, and now, you
can do...this. Woooooo! Quite thrilling. Why do I care about this so much? Why do people care about this so much? There are a couple reasons. First, liquid in games is notoriously difficult
to get right. In a medium that now has pores in every character’s
skin, light bouncing around like no one’s business and photogrammatried shrubberies,
it still looks weird basically any time a character takes a drink of anything. Liquid in a glass, even in a cutscene, always
just looks kinda funky. The ability to shake the simulated booze in
here, make it bubble and swirl and slosh realistically, genuinely does feel like a huge tech step
forward. But more importantly, I care that this bottle
of beer feels like a bottle with beer in it because Half Life Alyx is a game about...objects. It’s a game about holding things. If you’ve seen a clip from Half Life Alyx,
it’s likely from the first five minutes, and it’s also likely the clip won’t be
about this magnificent vista, rooftops and wires and floating fortresses. No, it’ll be about this stuff. A pen that you can hold, and write on the
window with. A dryer that actually turns on. A bottle that genuinely seems to be full. Alyx gets that the dream of VR, the dream
of inhabiting another world, isn’t built on horizons miles away- it’s built on the
intimate. No matter how good the resolution or how complex
the AI, the single thing that connects us most to this virtual world is being able to
reach out, and do...this. Interacting with objects isn’t new, of course. Collecting “items” has been part of video
games since the very beginning, even when the items themselves weren’t actually visible. Anyone who’s played an early resident evil
knows the experience of pushing their character against a bookshelf or desk and pressing the
“interact” button, hoping to grab some ammo or health that just so happened to be
hidden there. Many early VR games were also simply about
the fun of...messing with stuff. Owlchemy’s Job Simulator offered all the
thrill of sitting in a cubicle, opening drawers and throwing staplers around. Oculus offers its “First Contact” experience,
which is basically a trailer where you can hold stuff and throw it. Even Valve, who developed Alyx, tested the
waters with “The Lab,” which is essentially a bunch of rooms where you can hold stuff
and throw it. This might sound like I’m being dismissive,
but I love these things; every time I show someone VR, I boot up this little demo where
they can just mess with everything. It is the most uncanny feeling. For the first time playing a game, it feels
like you can actually...touch something. And what Alyx does is pairs that incredible
there-ness of VR, the complete disappearance of the 4th wall, with another genre of games-about-stuff:
the exploratory walking simulator, best exemplified by Fullbright’s Gone Home. In Gone Home, stuff is the whole thing. Sure, it’s a story about a family and their
relationships with each other, but really it’s about their objects. Matchbooks and cassette tapes and picture
frames. Gone Home is a beautiful meditation on the
importance imparted onto our possessions, but I have to admit that it still has that
layer of video-gamey abstracted interaction over it all. Pushing a button to lift something, twisting
a joystick to turn it, it all feels kinda removed. And in Alyx… This might seem superficial- whether I pick
a note up with a button or my fingers doesn’t change the writing scrawled on it. But when a game’s story is built through
how you perceive and interact with objects, it’s a night and day difference. It matters that I have to open this cabinet,
reach inside, and pick up the thing. Of course, I’ve done this a million times
in real life- what I found so magnetic about this experience though is, in context of VR,
and in context of Alyx’s setting, a new importance is placed on every little item. Every object matters. And the bottles have liquid in them now, and
that makes them feel just a little more genuine, and that is everything. The legitimacy of stuff isn’t just place-setting
either, though it takes a little while for Alyx to fully show the use of its objects. It takes meeting Jeff. [“What the hell was that?” “That...was Jeff. Oh don’t worry, he can’t see. Hears...just fine though. Got an ear like Mozart.”] Jeff is the game’s standout level, and it
takes place, perfectly enough, in a vodka distillery! As if being able to juggle realistically filled
bottles wasn’t enough, Alyx puts you in a warehouse positively stuffed with them,
and then makes your life dependent on each and every one of them. Jeff is a big ol beefy gentleman, a pissed
off hunk with not much in the way of vision but some truly excellent ears to make up for
it. Jeff has the uncanny ability to stand just
where you need to go, but you can distract him! How? Throwing things to distract enemies isn’t
a new idea, but like most of Alyx, I have never actually thought about the throwable
objects like this before. In, say, The Last of Us, you press a button
to pick up a bottle, hold another button to calculate its throwing trajectory, and toss
it with perfect precision to distract a zombie pal. In Alyx, I have to actually hold it with my
shaky dumb human hands, actually throw it with my arms that never made it to the third
year of little league. The room for imperfection here makes it all
the more engrossing- I actually had the incredible horror movie moment of grabbing one bottle,
inadvertently knocking another one off the shelf, and catching it just before it hit
the ground. There’s another beat of this scene where
you have to trace a wire through the walls, and suddenly all the bottles are lethal traps. I’ve been joyfully flinging stuff across
the room the whole game, but now, each one needs to be gently picked up and placed down
again, trying all the while to not make enough sound to alert Jeff. Oh did I mention that you literally need to
cover your mouth, in real life, while you walk past him in order to not alert him to
your presence? Yeah you need to do that too. In general, the game forces a consideration
of the physicality of objects, and our own limitations regarding them. We’re pretty used to the “magic backpack”
of video games- Joel can hold a rifle, a flamethrower, 3 pistols, a brick, several pairs of scissors,
etc. And it makes sense- by disregarding physical
limits, games give players more options. But in Alyx, you have very limited inventory
space. You’ve essentially got two pockets, and
those pockets have to hold all your healing items and anything else you want to bring
with you. Only two!! What is really important to you here? What objects are important enough to take
up space on your physical body? There’s a clever way around this, but one
that imposes even more importance onto these objects that scatter the world. Because along with your pockets, you also
have two hands. So when I had the choice between either meds
or grenades, I put the meds in my pockets and slowly crept down the hall clutching one
grenade in each hand, holding them by clenching my real-life fists. I was more aware of the presence of those
grenades than in any other game I’ve ever played. Half Life: Alyx proves that it can do grand-
there are train derailments, collapsing buildings, explosions a-plenty. But it’s not by chance that my favorite
part of the game, the thing that stands out most, is the tiny. Desperately scrabbling for a single bottle
to throw across the room and distract a single bad guy. Trivial objects. Small wares. Trifles: My favorite parts of Alyx. Artistic depictions of these used to be known
as “Rhopography”- from the Greek word Rhopos, meaning, well, exactly that kind of
ephemera. I love how it sounds- Rhopography, like it’s
a field of study. Archaeology, astronomy, rhopography. However, you’re probably familiar with it
by its much more common, much less interesting name: still life. When I was a kid, a still life was my absolute
least favorite kind of painting. I mean you have these unbelievable landscapes,
surrealist nightmares, battle scenes, and then- what, a picture of fruit? I’ve seen fruit! I know what it looks like! The titles themselves were especially egregious
to me. What kind of artist names their work “bowl
of fruit number 12”?? Aren’t they supposed to be creative?? What I’ve grown to appreciate over the years
is that treating a still life like a random photograph of a bunch of stuff is really missing
the point. That idea, rhopos, of trifles and trivial
objects, makes a painting like this feel almost...challenging? Like sure, of course this giant battle scene
deserves to be hung in a gallery, no one questions why this is important. Hanging a painting of a bowl of fruit in the
same space as this is a demand to treat our least dynamic, most everyday scenes with the
same level of contemplation. I kinda love that. Like “hey, I’m gonna spend dozens of hours
honing my craft to MAKE you think this fruit deserves your respect. Is it...punk? Can a still life be punk? Anyway. What’s really fascinating about a still
life is, and this is a concept you GAMERS out there will already be familiar with, is
that the selection of objects included is super important to the overall vibe of the
painting. Not all food is created equal! Compare Jan Davidsz’s “Table” with its
overturned silver and casually discarded edible luxuries to Juan Sánchez Cotán’s incredibly
sparse pieces, food unprepared and strung up almost clinically. There’s a huge difference in tone and style
and intention. It might feel like baby’s first art analysis,
but why does this one say “excess” while this one doesn’t? What is the artist indicating by choosing
these objects? Because, just like a game, none of this is
naturally occurring- no one is stumbling upon a table like this and spontaneously whipping
out an easel. No matter how simple, this is an artist creating
a visual narrative and asking us to consider it. Also, just like games, still lifes are often
blindingly obvious, as evidenced by the just mountains of paintings with skulls in them. “Oho, my still life has a skull in it, what
could this mean!” is basically the great grandfather to gaming’s environmental storytelling
through the world’s most literal graffiti. Although the title “still life” implies,
ya know, stillness, it’s also been really fascinating to watch how the genre evolves
through time. They have, of course, been influenced by various
artistic styles- Picasso did still lifes as Picasso, Matisse did them as Matisse. But as Margit Rowell notes in her book “Objects
of Desire,” there’s also been a move towards more intimate objects, and more personal stories. Freed from the...realistic fictions solicited
by a predetermined clientele (whether church, state, or an individual client), twentieth
century artists can, generally speaking, indulge in the formulation of their own narratives,
their own structures and objects of desire. Since the twentieth-century avant-garde artist
takes a position outside (often in opposition to) the values of bourgeois culture, art and
its narrative are more closely tuned to individual histories and creative ambitions, timely as
opposed to timeless discoveries and pleasures, and even irony, subversion, and transgression. Is it a surprise that I absolutely love this? Artists taking an incredibly formal school
and shaping it to their own expression, with all the weirdness and experimentation that
comes with it?! The “rules” stay the same- just objects,
just the rhopos. But the more personal they get, the more they
say about the world outside their borders, the more they can pull us into that story. They don’t even have to be paintings! The 20th century sees a host of bizarre sculptural
still lifes, like Claes Oldenberg’s “Soft Typewriter” or Robert Therrien’s “Stacked
Plates,” each obviously atypical but pulling the same focus onto the minutiae of everyday
life. If you want to get really weird, you could
check out Charles Ray’s “Tabletop,” a sculpture that appears uniquely boring,
all of the sterility of an old still life with none of the paint, until you realize
that each object is very slightly turning, towards or away from each other. A still life that isn’t still! Stop the presses! Alternatively, if you want to experience the
modern still life, you could play Mountains’ 2018 game, Florence. And look- watching this video won’t ruin
Florence for you, but also it’s a $3 phone game that takes 30 minutes to play and it’s
one of my favorite games of all time. Go ahead. I’ll be here when you get back. Florence, of course, breaks the rules of a
still life right off the bat: there’s a person in it! In fact there are multiple people. The game is in large part a romance, we wanna
see them KISS. There are plenty of portraits in Florence,
but part of the reason the game is so enthralling is that it also really lingers on how relationships
affect the lives of the people in them, and it does so through- you guessed it- their
stuff. When the game starts, our titular character
is living the dream, employed at a place that’s so draining she doesn’t really have the
energy to do anything else. To place us immediately alongside her, Florence
asks us to perform some uncharacteristically...boring actions. One of the first things you’re presented
with is her toothbrush, which you pick up and wiggle around for a while. Or a colorless tray of sushi for dinner, which
you eat in whatever order feels right. Florence’s items become our items, toothbrushes
and food and phones which we absentmindedly swipe through. These are of no particular importance to Florence
herself, but their presence, gamified, makes us examine them anew, in the same way a painting
of fruit does. What does it say that this sushi appears so...uneventful,
that it can be so thoughtlessly picked at? Florence isn’t just a game about routine
though. She meets someone new, she starts to date,
and while her world immediately becomes more colorful, a more subtle change is that the
way you interact with those rhopos begins to change. We can even stay on food! During the honeymoon stage of Florence’s
relationship with Krish, there’s a breakfast scene where the screen is composed just like
the earlier sushi dinner. But this time, it’s bright and colorful,
and this time Krish is there and we just can’t take our eyes off him, and this time the selection
of toast/strawberry/coffee feels light and playful. The framing is the same, even the subject
is the same and yet the two scenes couldn’t be more different. There’s also a scene in which they cook
together, and it’s so wonderfully active, taking the pan off the heat and tossing the
contents around before putting it back on the burner, full of different colorful morsels. The game communicates completely different
tones of relationship and comfort, all through food, all without words! I love it I just love it. There’s also the reframing of old items
that comes with entering a relationship. As Krish, you clean your room, straightening
posters that have probably faded into the background for years, putting away nerdy stuff
that he maybe wants to wait until the third date to introduce (show her your Amiibos Krish
you coward!). My absolute favorite version of this is when
the two move in together, and you consider which of each person’s rhopos gets to stay. Some of Florence’s books move to make room
for Krish’s albums, her messy containers for leftovers get replaced with his neat stacked
set, his toothbrush...fits. There is so much communicated about each person
and the dynamics of their relationship, all without words, all without even seeing them,
just by what gets to go on the bookshelf and the kitchen and the bathroom. You are building your own still life. Some of my favorite paintings in the genre
come from Paul Cézanne, who made- look he painted food! Tables of food! You swing a stick in a Cézanne gallery, you’re
gonna hit a bowl of apples. But I think we’ve already made clear that
the literal content of a still life is far from the whole story. Cézanne has this style that sits somewhere
between impressionism and realism, where his scenes are well-defined, with every crease
of a tablecloth and shine of a bottle intentionally rendered, while still having a sort of...warm
fuzziness to them. His paintings are a little altered, a little
skewed, it sometimes feels like you’re looking at multiple sides of something at the same
time. And yet I find them incredibly comforting. Something I’d never thought about before
playing Florence is the way the format you’re playing a game in changes your relationship
with it. Most things I play on my TV or computer, both
fairly straightforward experiences. But Florence is a phone game, and I played
it curled up on my couch, and the closeness of that experience, the lack of space between
me and the game, made it feel much more personal than I was expecting. There was no room for the message to get distracted,
nothing to divert my attention. It felt unbelievably...intimate. Florence eschews so many of the things I thought
I needed from a game, self-imposes such restrictive boundaries around its form, and somehow becomes
more personal because of it, not less. Much of Florence plays out like a Cézanne
small and warm and comforting, but then it doesn’t. When things start falling apart, you revisit
those same scenes from before in a radically different context. You return to the kitchen and the bookshelf,
forced to re-separate those items you so thoughtfully arranged together, those pieces of yourself
that felt so perfectly individual and distinct and now have faded into the same lifeless
gray like the rest of the world, and it feels like ripping your heart in half. The still life has been changing ever since
its creation; there has never been a “perfect version,” not one model that everything
else has broken from. But this isn’t a rebellion, it’s not a
dismissal of earlier form. Instead, as Rowell notes, artists are growing
from those who came before them in reaction to the new world they inhabit. What may be initially perceived in the more
contemporary interpretations of the genre as a radical subversion and destruction of
earlier traditions is in fact a progressive development of new metaphors corresponding
to the ideologies of the modern world. Art, and the way we frame it, is inextricably
linked to the world we live in. Not even a bowl of fruit is truly removed
from the context of its creation. And so I think it’s not just fun, but really
valuable, to take a minute to examine the role that the most trivial of objects play
in the works we connect with. Appreciate the million technical milestones
that came together to deliver the experience of Half Life Alyx’s “Jeff.” Marvel at how Florence draws upon our lifetime
of living with people and living with stuff to create an emotional wrecking ball using
a kitchen cabinet and a couple images of food. Rhopography: a depiction of a subject matter
considered insignificant or trivial, often referred to as a “still life.” Hey, you like video essays, right? I mean, you just finished one, so unless this
was a total spite-watch for you, I’m assuming the answer is yes. Well then I’m sure you know about Nebula
already, right? You know, the platform made by and for people
making the highest quality video essays available? I’m sure I don’t even need to tell you
that everyone from Super Bunnyhop to Adam Neely to Sarah Z is on there, always without
ads, sometimes even with exclusive content. We’ve ALL HEARD ABOUT how Nebula is a better,
healthier way to support creators than being here on this heap of algorithms. But that’s not enough, huh? You want a second dessert? Well cool. Because this video’s sponsor, CuriosityStream,
is going to do just that. Not only does CuriosityStream offer thousands
of documentaries and other nonfiction titles, but when you sign up at CuriosityStream.com/JacobGeller,
you’ll also get a free YEAR of Nebula. Two great services for less than twenty bucks
a year. In this video, I talked a lot about how still
lifes have grown and evolved over time- CuriosityStream has a whole program called “Art of the Future”
that basically takes this concept and runs with it, trying to predict where dance, theater,
photography will go in the coming years. It is really cool and well worth watching
if you were interested in...well, anything I talked about in the last 20 minutes. So, one more time: Nebula, a site to watch
all your favorite creators. CuriosityStream, a place to explore a vast
library of educational film. Get ‘em together and cheap, just by going
to CuriosityStream.com/JacobGeller
