The online exhibition Each ending in a choice explores how embodied experiences are created through interactive, non-linear storytelling. With each click, keystroke, swipe, or choice, you are taken deeper into webs of poetic hypertext, interactive narratives, and games.

Emily Short’s interactive fiction Galatea (2000) revolves around a conversation with Galatea, a complex NPC (non-playable character) who keeps track of your exchanges and reacts depending on your interactions with her. Amanda Low’s ETERNALLYMOVING.COM (2017) personifies a website as a means of exploring the concept of “link rot,” which occurs when hyperlinks cease to point to their originally intended webpage, file, or server, and users are rerouted to a 404-error page. Ronnie Clarke’s Soundscapes (2020) begins with a choice and branches out from there to create an interactive digital space for dreaming, meditating, and moving while filling the steady background noise of isolation. Created by Anishinaabeg water carriers Sharon M. Day, Lyz Jaakola, Margaret Noodin, and Elizabeth LaPensée, Honour Water (2016) raises awareness about threats to water and offers pathways to healing through songs, art, and code in the form of a game. Kara Stone’s found-footage game Parts to Remember (2014) explores how somatic memories are stored and experienced within the body. David Clark’s interactive work The End: Death in Seven Colours (2015) weaves together a labyrinth of conspiracy theories, real events, and fragmentary stories of the death of historical figures, including Alan Turing, Sigmund Freud, Princess Diana, Jim Morrison, Judy Garland, Walter Benjamin, and Marcel Duchamp.

Each of the works presented in Each ending in a choice put you at the beginning of a narrative and then let you decide where to go next. Serving as a means to re-examine and expand our understanding of both the digital and physical world, these works create personal, intimate interactions where we interact, touch, and converse with code. As in “real life,” there is no winning or losing and no linear paths. Rather, there are many short lines, each ending in a choice.

https://owensartgallery.com/eachending.html