Ekphrasis is a concept from ancient Greece (which loved a good concept) that describes the act of creative writing inspired by a work of art. Is a Ryanair Boeing 737 safety manual art? Well, Johnson A Plane Man did some ekphrasis with it, so I say yes. It is a short browser Itch game which chronicles the life and times of a man named Johnson, his love of yellow life jackets, his existential feelings of confinement (despite the multitude of easily located exits), and such emancipatory joys found only in yellow slides.
“It has always been a dream of mine to be able to produce interactive works purely with the phone in my pocket, and I think that this game has been very satisfying for me,” says developer Breogán Hackett, aka Hyphinett. Kat Brewster previously wrote some nice words about Hyphinett’s playing Glassy and other Bitsy horrors in this piece about how the engine lends itself so well to lo-fi hauntings. You can find Hyphinett’s collectibles here.
There may be something lofty to be said about how finding inspiration in mass-produced, utilitarian images appeals to the zeitgeist, but I think Hackett mostly just wanted to do something fun on a long plane ride. I mostly spend long trips cataloging the increasingly irritated facial expressions of the person who keeps bringing me free gin and tonics, so this seems much more productive.
But I’m very interested in how the mind naturally turns to narrate inanimate or otherwise prescriptive images, and how the jokes of subverting symbolic meanings feel like a very old and very instinctive game. A very small example of this is the “No damn trumpets, buddy” to draw. It also reminds me a bit of Joe Richardson’s adventure games that use Renaissance art like Four Last Things. And then there is The pedestrian – a puzzle game where you play as a public signage silhouette.