Monomyth: gaiden is primarily a 4-part video series exploring the intersections of ‘reality’ and ‘fiction’; of cinema and animation and video games.

Developed between 2018-2020, the project is supplemented by this archive that aims to bring together the variety of research and methods that played a part in its development. You can watch the videos + download a little VN game + read through some resources + play a dressup game - enjoy!

Monomyth: gaiden centers the space between the layers that make up the images that construct our worlds, in the holes in the digital landscape where the player never visits. By pushing these small gaps into focus, you can take up an ongoing ontological position, and rethink what constitutes a self or a mode of experience.

At the start of the 4-part video series, the camera lingers on the worlds that arise at the intersections of the real and fictional. It’s an experiment in creating realms that depict one scene from multiple angles at once, forcing the protagonist of the videos (and the viewer) to continuously negotiate between multiple lines of sight. Throughout the series this attention gradually shifts, and starts gravitating towards the protagonist/digital avatar herself who inhabits these realms – looking at the different forms of vitality that animated worlds open possibilities for.

Deborah Levitt puts it succinctly in her book The Animatic Apparatus: questioning ‘where images end and bodies begin, where truth or the real might reside, or on what side of this vestigial division between spectator and screen we find “life”.’