The video game that the climate apocalypse looks good

Almost a hundred years ago, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and Harland Bartholomew designed a master plan for the city of Los Angeles, who pulled a ring around the river. The plan dealt with its concern about the rapid urbanization of cities in the west, which often pushed nature into the outskirts. By centering the river and the free to move freely in fields and wetlands, the planners introduced themselves to a public green space in which distant districts could come together as one.

However, the plan was quickly rejected as the industrial vision of the 1920s and 30s. Then, in 1938, after a devastating flood, the US Army Corps of Engineers began to build concrete channels that separated the river from its ecosystem and continued to limit it today. There are still copies of the original plan, one of which is sitting in the public library in Los Angeles, where he fell into the hands of the artist and the video game Alice Bucknell.

For Bucknell, the plan served as an essential bridge to the past and laid the foundation for its visionary project. The alluvials, A computer -generated, speculative world of fiction that is accessible to both a film and a video game. The alluvialsThe LA is reinterpreted by the lens of water and the natural world, the lost dream of the Olmsted Bartholomew Plan to life remixed as a private development, which is known next to LA, where the river has been converted into a swimming wetland, which is full of light rays of light. The audience leads a number of essential voices through an air-conditioned western water system, from the dry pool of the Hoover dam to the Malibu coast torn by fire.

How the plan that inspired it The alluvials Is a warning about where society leads. In the middle of his eco-surrealistic images, Bucknell offers a strong picture of the future: an abandoned city center, almost complete drought and corporate control over the remaining water resources. Through the infusion of this dystopian landscape with alternative stories, from the report from Olmsted-Bartholomew to an indigenous holy location, Bucknell offers a convincing idea of ​​what Los Angeles could have been and what it could be.

The film version of The alluvials is divided into seven chapters and the video game contains interactive versions of four of them. The film begins with aerial photographs, which has become a half desert, and then cuts rhythmically through the region's aquatic ecosystems, each of which is rendered in the digital universe with a neon-tech no aesthetics. On the way, the spectators meet a occupation of well-known characters: The Celebrity Mountain Lion P-22; The Mulic pack of gray wolves from North California; And El Aliso, a Sycamore tree that once served as a meeting point for leader of the Kizh Gabrieleño tribe, the original residents of the La River Basin.

Bucknell offers a convincing idea of ​​what Los Angeles could have been and what it could be.

Bucknell went through the streets of downtown La, a few blocks from the Sci-Arc of the Design School, where they taught when they stumbled on the badge for El Aliso. The monument was created in 2015 by members of the tribe to honor the tree, which had served as a place of adoration and collection for a long time. In concrete from Highway 101, however, the story is almost disappearing – and it is exactly the type of story that Bucknell thought important to concentrate in their work.

In The alluvials GamePresent El Aliso grows up in the reimbursed earth of Next La. The Sycamore tells the players its own story: How it lived for more than 400 years, how he experienced waves of colonization and shading lush wineries before it was falling to make room for commercial development. The memorial plaque, which is shaped as a huge hologram, hangs in front of the tree, like the introduction of a curator into the work of a revered artist. In this fictional world, which is scarred by climate academa, El Aliso appears like an oasis, a quick look at what a worthy funeral could look like, and a memory of the many stories that can still tell 400 -year -old trees. Bucknell strengthens the power of El Aliso's history by bringing this non-human to living life.

The artist also celebrates the long history of the Yucca moth, which often exceeds from his legendary companion, the Joshua tree. In the dry upper pool of Hoover Dam ,, The alluvials tells the symbiotic relationship between the Yucca Moth and the Joshua tree and describes it as a strenuous love story that goes back more than 40 million years. The representation is not only uplifting because it throws a flood of white moths like snow against the red rock; It is also a memory of how complex relationships can be maintained over many era of the earth.

The alluvials The universe is the strongest when the viewers completely immerse themselves in the uncertainty of time. If you do not recognize along the lush river in LA whether you will be deep in the future, the artificial paradise of the next La or in the past will experience the imagination of Olmsted and Bartholomew. For the same reason, the magic is broken when the script resembles modernity too closely. In a later chapter of the film, the audience, for example, learns that the next private water developer from Next La brings mood stabilizers in bottle water in order to combat chronic fear of constant forest fires. It is a satire that hits too close to home. Bucknell's characteristic cyber punk – from the striking electronic score to fluorescent animal silhouettes – largely deletes the time.

When I stared at the dense galaxy of animated stars, I almost wished, I didn't find it so nice. I was born in the mid -nineties and remember the exact years in which my colleagues deviated to those who spent more time offline, laced boots and drove outdoors, and those who found more fulfillment in the community and self -expression. Both worlds offer their own comfort and their own feeling of control, and sometimes I don't know what I find more breathtaking – the natural cathedrals of mountains and oceans or the technological systems that are made possible by generations of human hands and thoughts.

Through The alluvials, I was particularly grateful on the banks of the river to live in this age of the earth if one person can make their imagination so completely an urgent experience that others can enjoy. Regardless of the restrictions of the human world, artists can overcome them and create miracles who never put it into reality. This work goes hand in hand with a representation of interests. In the development of her game, Bucknell worked closely with the non -profit friends of the LA River, which has worked for decades to build more connected green space along the river.

I was grateful to live in a time when one person can make their imagination so completely immersive experience that others can enjoy.

Some critics can be released quickly The alluvials Because his style or poetic thrives, but they cannot deny their growing audience. The film and the game were presented in over a dozen exhibitions and festivals from Los Angeles to Madrid, and Bucknell continues to offer access to both inquiries on request via their website.

Computer -generated worlds in the shadows steadily stands in the shadows in the areas of traditional storytelling formats such as books and magazines. In this context, Bucknell's work is a convincing contribution to California climate and repeats the legacy of the speculative fiction of Octavia Butler, which for the first time offered scenes of a fire in the 1990s for the folk imagination. But times have changed; Bucknell and other 21st century artists no longer have to imagine what this future could look like. Your task is much more difficult: you remind us that it is still an act of hope to paraphrase butler and look into the future.

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This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine in March 2025 with the heading “Welcome to the next LA”.