If We were Allowed to Visit: The Procrustean Interface and Media Trauma

This study examines the game If We Were Allowed To Visit, which represents a radical experiment in the remediation of graphic poetry. The game evokes shock and resists full perception, encountering a certain limitation or remediation block. The aim of the study is to explain this phenomenon, refine existing ideas about the specifics of perception in digital art, and identify the social issues that the game’s interface may potentially reflect upon. The analysis revealed that computers manipulate symbols and data far faster than the human brain and that imagination slows down when mediated by language. As a result, the perception of such digital interface where reading is embedded in the process of graphic generation exceeds our cognitive capacities. The case of If We Were Allowed To Visit is examined as a Procrustean interface — one of several types of shock interfaces (alongside unconventional, broken, and incoherent interfaces). An analysis of the Procrustean interface from the perspective of media archaeology and remediation mechanisms also suggests that it may serve as a means of pointing to the trauma we experience in the process of adapting to new media.