GAME ART: INTO MUDDY WATERS: 2GIRLS1COMP, CONSPIRACY, AND THE SWAMP MONSTER OF LOS SANTOS

Press ‘H’ near Lago Zancudo and Grand Theft Auto V starts to behave strangely. The mission markers, heists and side quests recede; instead, an audio essay fades in and will not go away. The game’s camera steers you through reeds and mud, scripted events punctuate the trip, and a voice begins to unpick the rumour of a “swamp monster” that has circulated for years in GTA lore. If you want to stop listening, you do not toggle a setting: you kill the process.

This is Into Muddy Waters, a new project by 2girls1comp, the duo of Alexandra Pfammatter and Marco De Mutiis that reinvented artistic modding as we know it. Released on the leading mod platforms (GTA5-Mods and Nexus), Into Muddy Waters is described, as “a mod for GTA Vthat investigates the in-game legend of the swamp monster.” In practice, it is closer to a playable essay on conspiracy culture, digital folklore, and the politics of circulation. GTA V her becomes a context, or perhaps a carrier, for an argument about how stories spread, mutate, and leave the screen.

The starting point is a piece of fan-generated mythology. Players have for years speculated about a creature supposedly living in the marshes around Lago Zancudo, extending GTA V’s long history of hidden UFOs, Bigfoot sightings and “secret” events. 2girls1comp treat this rumour as a kind of in-game cryptid, but also as a textbook case of what sociologist Stanley Cohen once called a “folk devil”: a figure onto which collective fears are projected and then circulated as fact... (continues)