Game Art: Antoinette LaFarge's "Playing The Rapture"
"Playing the Rapture revolves around two characters who are playing a computer game set in a post-Rapture world. Designed by one of them, the game posits a choice for those who have been left on earth between conversion to Christianity and joining the Antichrist. As the two gamers beta-test this new creation, they engage in an intense struggle over everything from the rules of the game to the problem of belief. In striving to win their apocalyptic showdown, they must also come to terms with how Rapture theology offers hope and a promise of escape while fueling their sense of alienation and despair.
In bringing the worlds of religion and computer games into collision, Playing the Rapture raises questions about the assumptions that govern each field. Are games really as trivial as they are often made out to be? Can religion be understood as the world's most serious game? At what point does "just playing" turn into "playing for keeps"?
In Playing the Rapture, the audience enters the gamers' imaginary world via large-scale projections within the performance space. Many of these projections are machinima videos, created from an actual computer game set in a post-Rapture world. Thus, the real world, the game world, and the stage world are inextricably entwined from start to finish. In their struggle for dominance, the protagonists discover that while they are playing the game, they are also part of the game." Link: Playing the Rapture