Trench
Looped / Executable File (computer game engine)/ 2016



Trench is an interactive media artwork that creates a landscape of individual sensation. Trench is a labyrinthine no-place created with the digital mimesis of 3D sculpting, photographic displacement modelling and animation. Inside Trench, the viewer (or player) encounters a series of sculptural apparitions, each engaged in their own ritualised inhabitation of the landscape. Some of them walk together, whispering in fragments, some of them guard corners of the trench, as they disassemble themselves and caress the rocky walls. Each character is coded into an endless ritual mode of spatial inhabitation, collectively offering a discrete mode of being with the Trench. In the midst of this landscape choreography, the player can decide their own mode of inhabitation. As the game escalates, the player can seek to escape from the trench, or eventually be killed by the other inhabitants. Both escape and death return the player to the start of the Trench.

Trench is a digital video - without player interaction, it will gradually restart itself on an endless loop. Trench is a real-time sound generator - the procedural iteration of tis objects creates a dynamic soundscape. Trench is a game - it can be played to the death or the emancipation of the player. Trench is a landscape - it is a place composed of a discrete number of arranged components.



Peter Nelson is an artist from Sydney who works between drawing, sculpture, animation and digital media. He remixes and distorts historical works of landscape based on the idea that they are all cultural portraits of an evolving relationship to the physical world. From this assumption, he digitally recreates and combines fragments from other artworks into new landscapes and imaginary environments. Artworks can interact like fragments of data, time can be compressed into an eternal present, and new narratives can be observed along the strings of these cobwebbed interactions.
Peter Nelson studied painting and drawing at UNSW Art & Design and graduated with Honours, the University Medal for Fine Arts and a Masters by Research. He has been an artist in residence at Red Gate Gallery (Beijing), Cite Internationale Des Arts (Paris), Taipei Artist Village (Taipei), Organhaus (Chongqing) and Serial Space (Sydney). He has held solo exhibitions in Sydney, Taipei, Hong Kong and Chongqing. He is currently undertaking a PhD at the School of Creative Media, Hong Kong, specialising in the interaction between landscape art history and computer games.