Lair of the Marrow Monkey and its sequel Chroma are two interactive, abstract animated movies by the digital artist Erik Loyer. Together they comprise the first two parts of an unfinished story about an ancient ‘natural cyberspace’ called Mnemonos. The story follows Dr. Ian Anders, the man who rediscovered Mnemonos, and his team of three explorers, known only by their pseudonyms: Orion 17, Duck-at-the-Door, and Grid Farmer Perry. A fascinating and mysterious meditation on consciousness and cyberspace.
Lair and Chroma combine interactive graphics with a linear storyline. In fact, it is much like a picture book with interactive illustrations—except the illustrations are symbolic, abstract, and downright psychedelic. The experience of playing Chroma all the way through in a single sitting is nothing less than hypnotic. Some might view this limited interactivity as a drawback, but I don’t think “interactive story” has to mean “choose your own adventure book.” In the case of Lair and Chroma, the effect of the interactivity is that the user’s experience mirrors the characters’ experience—floating in geometric dreamtime, adrift in a sea of signal and noise. The non-linear is pressed into the service of the linear, and does its job beautifully.
Thinking of possibilities for expanding this kind of work, one potential path to take would be to add an exploration element, to reimagine the images as a place for the user to navigate through, closer to a video game than a movie. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game or interactive art that explores the idea of navigation through a purely abstract space—I’d love to know if anyone’s heard of something like that before.
Lair and Chroma are both built on a decade-old version of shockwave, and as a result they can only run on Internet Explorer, and only with the old shockwave installed. Loyer’s website will prompt this installation, but it can’t be done on a WPI computer without administrative permission. However, segments of the movies are on Vimeo, and although in this form they are no longer truly interactive, they are still very much worth watching.