Abstract

Digital sites have become increasingly popular places where bereaved individuals choose to enact grief and memorialise the deceased. Various online sites, including social media and video gaming sites, are frequently revisited by bereaved individuals, not only as an act of remembrance but also as a way of storytelling, given that certain representations of the deceased continue to live on in these digital/virtual realms. Considering this active turning and returning to virtual environments to enact mourning and to digitally perform multilayered narratives of loss—specifically in video games—I ask what the implications are for art- and image-making. Pilgrimage is an important and popularly used metaphor or trope in video game narratives, especially in role-playing games. In this article I surmise that the experience of immersion into video game narratives as a ritual of mourning allows individuals to experience greater agency by undergoing a video game pilgrimage. Moreover, I argue that related engagements and interactions with works of art informed by such imaginary worlds may shed more light on the “art” of mourning in general.

摘要

数字网站已成为越来越受欢迎的地方，失去亲人的人选择在这里表达悲伤和纪念死者。各种在线网站，包括社交媒体和视频游戏网站，经常被失去亲人的人重新访问，这不仅是一种纪念行为，也是一种讲故事的方式，因为死者的某些表现形式继续存在在这些数字/虚拟领域中。考虑到这种积极转向和回归虚拟环境以表达哀悼和数字化地表现多层次的损失叙述——特别是在电子游戏中——我想问这对艺术和图像制作有什么影响。朝圣是电子游戏叙事中一个重要且广泛使用的隐喻或比喻，尤其是在角色扮演游戏中。在这篇文章中，我推测沉浸在电子游戏叙事中的体验作为一种哀悼仪式，可以让个人通过电子游戏朝圣之旅体验更大的能动性。此外，我认为，通过这种想象的世界，与艺术作品的相关接触和互动可能会更多地阐明哀悼的“艺术”。