Night Walks

Night Walks Instructions

After extracting, open the folder in your Linux terminal.

Set the terminal width to around 115.

Make sure you are in the NightWalks_Linux folder.

To run the project once from beginning to end (lasts about 10 min), type ./NightWalks_run_once.sh.

To run the project on an infinite loop, type ./NightWalks_run_loop.sh.

CTRL+C to exit.

This project uses a network connection to send and receive in-world events between different instances of the project. 

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This is an autonomously-walking death meditation. In it, the player is wandering lost in a semi-wilderness, on the edge of a once-inhabited environment. They go from area to area, trees, marsh, empty roads, in each place experiencing the world through their senses as well as their thoughts. They also sometimes encounter bodies on the ground. Sometimes they bury these bodies. Occasionally they encounter mounds where someone or thing has been buried. They are wandering at night and at the break of dawn they lie down to sleep, dream, and then die. The position where they died is uploaded to a server to potentially be found and buried by another instance/repetition of the software, another ‘player’.

The server provides the memory of each play session, a life that transcends the death of each individual 'player'. The individual dies and becomes a piece of shared data or an invisible web of relationships. A similar process happens in physical death as our bodies continue to be used by the environment without our agency.

- from "Observing the World Without You: Automatic Walking and Death Meditation"