Description
Static Sky, And Yet It █████ (██落在夜空生成以前) is a collaboration between Justin Bortnick and Rhett Tsai. It is is a literary computer game based on the fear of and resistance to artificial intelligence. It imagines a future ruled by AI world models, where everything is generated by AI, reality is redefined, hometowns are reshaped, and symbols are reoriented.
In this future, the protagonist wears a RV (Real Virtuality) headset that claim to show “reality” within the “virtual.” The seemingly real traces revealed by the RV glasses (such as unfinished noise and uncolored white objects) trigger his mental breakdown and fear of reality.
By depicting this collapse and the disintegration of meaning caused by reality, Static Sky: And Yet It █████ presents a possible future of extreme artificial intelligence. The protagonist’s mental symptoms are a hypothesis about the broader human cognition of the future.
Static Sky is a “walking simulator” style game that takes players into the world of the protagoinst to experience a series of vignettes and scenarios – some from the protagonist’s lived experience, others generated by the generative AI Sekai.
For this project, I worked to conceptualize the game’s world and setting, as well as the way that the player would interact with the world around them.
Role:
Director, Game Designer, Writer, Narrative Designer, Proofreading
Platform:
Windows
Release Date:
25 February 2025
Website:
http://allfatherproductions.com/staticsky.html
Exhibitions
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- Shenzhen Guan Shanyue Art Museum (October 2024)
- “Game Om: Social Play × TANK Shanghai,” Shanghai (December 2024-January 2025)
- “Rear Window & Real Wonder,” How Art Museum, Shanghai (February 2025)
- “Transformer 2025: AI and the Future of Games” – Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA (April 2025, work accepted, showing canceled due to University of Pittsburgh travel budget freeze)
- “Hive – AI Utopia” – Hive Center for Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China (May 2025)
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Screenshots:
Video:
Justin Bortnick 