Dreaming in the Witch House

An Esoteric Approach to Computer Games Research

Abstract The following text is a shortened transcript of my lecture performance Dreaming in the Witch House, which centres around the narration The Dreams in the Witch House written in 1932 by American author H. P. Lovecraft. The lecture focuses on the theme of research in which the architecture of Lovecraft’s witch house serves as a catalyst for different strategies to find the hidden and the unexpected. By combining the efforts of Lovecraft`s characters with different unpredictable player behaviour in video games, the lecture argues towards an idea of esoteric computer game research. Within the lecture situation, Lovecraft’s text fragments were played back in audio. The pre-recorded female voice served both as a narrator and as a dialogue partner.

Keywords Artistic research, computer game research, game space, play behaviour, glitching, H. P. Lovecraft