Diving into Abe Sugarman’s Rock Bottom Exhibition

At the National Videogame Museum we are constantly championing videogame preservation in all it’s forms. This not only includes the games themselves but the stories, developers and artistry behind the scenes.  Something our Art of Play exhibition demonstrates. It is often the stories behind the games or the creativity in the way they’re designed that evoke personal connections, emotions and experiences that are equally as vital to preserve.

A new exhibition, Rock Bottom, which is currently running at London’s arebyte Gallery, aims to evoke the struggle towards escape by hitting ‘Rock Bottom’ in an immersive game experience. Created by artist Abe Sugarman, Rock Bottom is set deep inside a cryptic ocean trench, a bottomless abyss that no light can penetrate. Visitors embark on a choose-your-own-adventure journey composed of games, video works and sculpture.

We had the pleasure of chatting with Abe about this fascinating and immersive exhibition.

NVM: Could you tell our visitors a little about your current exhibition at arebyte Gallery in London. What is it about and what can people experience?

Abe: My exhibition at arebyte Gallery is called Rock Bottom, an immersive choose-your-own-adventure journey composed of videogames, film, and sculpture. The exhibition installation encourages players to become entangled within the game world and its material replication, through life-size monsters surrounding the playable videogame works.

Rock Bottom is set in a bottomless deep-sea trench, beyond the reach of sunlight. Upon entering this murky multiverse (the gallery), you become an agent within the game. You have fallen off the cliff, into the twilight zone: you have hit Rock Bottom. Decide your own fate through storytelling where the player is caught in a loop, of repeating and circulating and your aim is to leave this cycle.

 

Rock Bottom questions how to live at death’s door with catastrophes of many scales using seemingly non-compatible sites of discussion, such as: nutrient rich seas triggering blooms of Jellyfish, an encounter with SpongeBob SquarePants’ enemy Mrs Whiskers, and an exploration of the depths of Yorkshire’s Calder Valley’s flood system. 

Concepts of survival, Jellyfish life-cycles “queer time”,  escape and converge into animated characters, monsters and unsettling environments. 

Visitors will experience a wide range of videogames to play alongside a combination of eerie unsettling characters mixed in with childish humour and nostalgia.

NVM: If someone enjoys videogames but has not been to a digital art exhibition before, what hints would you give to have the best experience and get the most out of your show? 

Abe: One aspect I personally can struggle with in digital art is its sometimes seen as inaccessible either in its themes or location. It’s very easy to get bogged down by contemporary art discourse. To tackle this, I would approach it openly. Don’t be concerned over getting every part of what the digital art exhibition might be trying to get across. 

When entering Rock Bottom, you will be confronted with multiple areas to explore and paths to travel. You can choose your own journey through it. Rock Bottom is an immersive and interactive experience, the games respond to the viewer’s inputs, interactions, and choices, creating an individual experience. 

Every game has hidden elements. Each of these has some very specific references such as SpongeBob, Gordon Riggs Garden Centre and “Your Ex’s House”. Everyone will create a different experience from these. 

Videogames are personal, your experience with the art will also be.

Also, don’t be afraid to ask questions!

NVM: At the National Videogame Museum we really care about videogames and their place in wider culture. Why are videogames important for you?

Videogames form a huge aspect of modern culture offering unique opportunities for creative expression and engaging with contemporary issues. Games often reflect and comment on societal issues and trends. I believe especially with the increasing impact on younger generations, videogames are changing how we socialise, think, and interact with the world. 

I have used Roblox studio to build one of my games in Rock Bottom, ‘The River Calder’ a multiplayer game set in the fictionalised cave flood system of the Calder Valley. Using an interactive live server-based game was important to me, as it allowed people to interact with Rock Bottom outside of the gallery space, either knowingly as art or just as a Roblox game. 

 

 

This kind of interaction is what makes videogames and their use in art particularly important as they can be accessed so widely and create pivotal micro-interactions. One of the unique features of Roblox is its focus on user-generated content. It acts as a beginner friendly and accessible place to build games. It allows anyone with little scripting knowledge to come and start building videogames, this is what appeals to me about creating digital art. 

Also, Roblox as a platform can sometimes cultivate some darker subcultures and is forming a metaverse-esque world, something that is important to understand in both wider culture and videogames. 

NVM: You are an artist who uses videogame technologies in your work. Can you tell us how and why videogames influence your artistic practice? (Do videogames influence how your work is made, presented and experienced?)

Abe: An important element to Rock Bottom is each game is a different game ‘medium’ or technology. I made ‘Gordon Riggs’ as a html web browser-based game which was influenced by early videogames and their adaptability and history. ‘Rock Bottom’ the central game was made in unity and blender which took inspiration from open world games and the SpongeBob games. ‘The river Calder’ was made in Roblox Studio, I thought a lot about first player shooters and their larger social significance. Using all these technologies was important as it creates such a different interface and involvement with each game. They were all influenced heavily by different games and technologies. 

 

The monitor or screen when playing videogames acts as a place of theatre and collaboration. I wanted to emphasise this by using boarders for each screen and environments with life-size characters for the screen to live in. I made individual modified PS4 Controllers into squid-like tentacle sculptures for each game, this creates a physical tactile metamorphosis between each player.

I see the controller as a highly personal and domestic bedroom entity and the point of familiar contact with gaming experience. By transforming these into playable tentacular sculptures I hoped to bring the games further into the physical while morphing the boundary of gaming and sculpture in a gallery space.

NVM: How do digital technologies like videogames create a different kind of artistic experience to traditional media like paint and drawing? Do you think videogames themselves can ever be thought of as artworks?

Abe: Digital technologies form a different experience to traditional media, as they are not only more accessible, but can form new relationships and interactions with the viewer. 

Videogames can definitely be thought of as artworks. I believe many non-art games to be artworks themselves. I guess the question is how and where you decide to view the game/work. I made my characters in my games using sculptures from clay and plasticine, digitising them through photogrammetry, then digitally painting, animating, and rigging them in a 3d software, before programming them into the games. Using a traditional medium alongside a newer digital medium creates a blurred boundary that questions how and when the digital becomes art, allowing different points of entry and experiences for the individual.

NVM: We are in Sheffield – in some of your descriptions of the work you have talked about “Northern values”. What is special or unusual about the North of England for you and why?

Abe: In Rock Bottom a lot of the locations are set in West Yorkshire, in the North of England, where I have grown up and live. I focus on the river Calder and its surrounding area (e.g. Halifax is in Calderdale – the Calder Valley). I am interested in the North of England’s industrial past and its effect on the environment and culture, concentrating on the Calder Valley’s industrialised legacy such as the straightening of the river, the yearly burning of the moors by private landowners for grouse hunting, deforestation, building on flood plains and the pollution left over from the now disused and crumbling (or developed into unaffordable luxury flats) mills. With flood water as the catalyst; I use the games as a way of rethinking these post-industrial landscapes as places of restarting or reimagining.

 

 

I think what is special about the North of England is its deep and important cultural heritage, I am hoping to attempt to highlight the inadequacies of things such as arts education, ecology disasters and funding by creating works that amplify these issues and create accessible works that can be played anywhere such as the ‘River Calder’ game. I have used a northern garden centre as the epicentre for my discussion on ‘northern values’, turning it into a hyper-world. Where the garden centre owner, an old man, only exists through statues of himself within his glasshouse, the emblem of West Yorkshires patriotic past sits in a garden centre café. The aim of this game is finding all the items and to escape his wrath. 

NVM: We love videogames! Do you? What are some videogames that have been important or influential in your life? 

Abe: Videogames are incredibly influential to my work and my life! Some of my favourites are Minecraft, Age of Empires, RuneScape, Dwarf Fortress, Skyrim, Abe’s Oddysee, DayZ and Roblox to name a few. 

The Arcade machines of Scarborough and other northern seaside holidays I often went to as a kid, also influenced me immensely. These vast rooms of spectacular colour and noise formed a huge impact on my life and love of games. 

NVM: Lastly, if you could choose one videogame or piece of gaming tech to present in our museum, what would it be?

Abe: If I had to choose one videogame or piece of gaming tech it could well be Dwarf Fortress. It is a crucial example of how gameplay, artful design, and procedural generation (an algorithm-based method of creating unique content on-the-fly) can captivate players. This technique allows the game to generate complex and seemingly infinite worlds, complete with diverse ecosystems, civilizations, and histories. As an art form, procedural generation challenges the traditional notion of a static artwork. It requires you to surrender control over the final product, allowing the algorithms to take centre stage. The result is a dynamic, evolving world that is both the product of human creativity and the unpredictable chaos of computational processes.

 

 

If I could choose one of my own works, it would have to be the ‘Rock Bottom’ game. In the game you meet and interact with multiple characters, and in doing so the characters begin to share their true selves with you. The monsters you meet question our ability to see clearly in a state of desire, or whether resisting the urge is possible. The way to escape the monsters you encounter is by accepting the balloon from the untrustworthy Anglerfish at The End of The Line. The vertical road reaching high into the dark waters above is the only way to leave the trench. The transaction of the seemingly impossible escape asks whether the protagonist wants to restart and try again or leave the world forever.