Aaron Berry, Fourth Era, digital video, color, sound, 23' 55", United States, 2016. Made with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim © Bethesda Game Studios
Watching the world go by, the expansive forest, snowy plains and castles fill my view. Wandering the arctic wastes I sit thinking of where to go next, an expanse in front of me. I hear voices and whispers in the wind, shadowy figures hidden in the snow. Something out there is calling me. I come to a town filled with people going about their day, farmers, blacksmiths and guards all turn to me as I arrive. I pause the game to make sure I'm still on track each person is now frozen in time, apart from me, sitting there controller in hand.
Baltimore-based artist and activist Aaron Berry’s Fourth Era created in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, pulls from observational film tradition investigating the digital landscape with earnestness and intimacy. Berry sketches out an impression of Tamerial’s fourth age through bustling towns and isolated valleys. The emperor has died, and the throne sits empty. Authoritarian regimes try to maintain power as bandits, demons and corruption subjugate the general population. Focussing on the details of the landscape Berry attempts to retell the narrative of the game's story. The uncanniness of Skyrim paired with the honesty of the player camera highlights the game's otherness and suggests existence when we are not there.
A machinima film in the style of slow cinema Fourth Era pays tribute to James Benning’s California trilogy. In Benning’s trilogy (El Valley Centro, Los, Sogobi) each film is constructed in the same way 35 shots, 2 minutes and 30 seconds in length on a static 16mm camera. Berry imitates the form with 15 shots all 90 seconds in length (note 1), using this formula in this new untapped, untainted virtual world.
A close-up of jagged ants journeying across the screen, the sharp contours of the polygonal landscape highlighting the world's fabrication. Whispers of merchants selling goods and soldiers repetitively chopping wood, a place of worship atop a mountain - the emptiness and serenity present when the player simply does not play. This stillness pays great respect to the people and the environment of this digital world and makes it feel alive, the wind, the rain breathing life into the artificial land.
An experience known to the Skyrim player base, the role playing game lulls the player into slowing down. There is no mount or way of traversing the landscape other than walking in the initial sense, the game forces you to travel by foot across its landscape. The environment is filled with small details that convey a real alive world, present in each step you take.
Slow cinema is a kind of worship, an image on the screen, the object of our gaze absorbing our devotion: the everyday acts of Jeanne Dielman, the fishing boat in Leviathan, the desert of El Valley Centro. This form being remediated here through machinima, questions the digital environment and the transcendental elements of “nature”.
Aaron Berry, Fourth Era, digital video, color, sound, 23' 55", United States, 2016. Made with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim © Bethesda Game Studios
As Aaron Berry writes,
More than anything, I see a bigger connection between death and life throughout the world. It starts with a shot of the dead elk, and ends on top of a mountain where a dragon circles around the peak. I guess one can see a bit of transcendence or afterlife imagery through that lens. The idea of nature as a transcendence from the struggles of man and closeness to the divine goes back to Thoreau’s Walden. James Benning is fully aware of this, invoking Walden several times throughout his films. At the time of making Fourth Era, I was still an atheist and was fascinated by nature on an aesthetic level. Now, as someone who is more agnostic yet has found solace in African-American spiritualism, I definitely see where the lines of prayer and nature meet. ~ Aaron Berry (note 2)
Within Skyrim there is an overarching religious belief of the Nordic Pantheon made up of various deities, relating to different aspects of the world, gods of birth, death and time. Journeying through these landscapes and towns you can feel their presence within Fourth Era. Each shot feels like an ode to these deities, gods of the digital realm. The empty towns and rolling hills stages for their appearance, which never comes. Without the prophetical main player character “the Dragonborn” these areas of action and miracle are left deserted. Is this world better for it, no divine being, no unquestionable force?
With such earnestness, it is hard to disregard the possibility of their existence, these walking lines of code and fictitious mythologies. Watching the wind blow through these “uninhabited” landscapes feels as if I am searching for something or someone, the way my eyes dart around the screen looking for something. Maybe what I am looking for is something unknown, invisible to my eye.
I know when I turn the game off it stops, but it doesn't feel like it does, the image permeates and continues to play in my mind, on and on.
Harry Bayley is an artist and curator, blending his expertise in film and screen media with curatorial skills. His diverse experience, from designing CRM systems to curating film programs, reflects his commitment to enhancing audience engagement and his capability to handle both creative and logistical aspects of projects. Currently advancing his academic research in machinima film practice at Birkbeck University London, Bayley contributes to the arts community through his innovative approaches to curation and exhibition management. Bayley works and lives in London
Notes
(1) the final shot exceeds this timing.
(2) personal communication with the author.
LINK: Aaron Berry
