Collaboration with Orisa Pather

Pather and Johnston have produced a machine to induce rage. It takes the form of an arcade machine, with a twist: this is a game where the machine itself actively resists the player’s attempts to win. The arcade machine takes it upon itself to make you lose. The joystick, a primary interface for interaction, is connected to a system that increasingly resists the player’s input. During the game, the joystick shifts in the opposite direction, forcing the player to fight against the machine’s will. Similarly, the buttons themselves push back, occasionally pressing down by themselves, causing the player to have less control and potentially lose the game entirely.

The arcade machine possesses a form of consciousness, and through the game's narrative, we learn that the consciousness doesn’t want the player to succeed. It is at the bottom of the leaderboard, and if the player beats its high score, it will overwrite it and "die." This creates an existential conflict where the machine, as an artificial entity, seeks to avoid its demise by sabotaging the player’s efforts. The machine is screaming and fighting back. This work is part of a broader series exploring a speculative future in which governments have experimented with digital immortality, seeking to preserve human consciousness in machines. The arcade machine is one of the remnants of these failed experiments