Alice Bucknell Explores Climate Futures in The Alluvials Game
Artist Alice Bucknell presents The Alluvials, a 2023 video work and 2024 multilevel video game taking players through a speculative future Los Angeles shaped by climate change.
Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event
- An immersive art project by Alice Bucknell evolving from a 2023 video work into a 2024 video game.
- Depicts a near-future Los Angeles overtaken by desert dunes, dust, and sediment.
- Players experience the world through non-human perspectives like moths, wolves, and trees.
- Exhibited across various art spaces in the US, Europe, and Asia, including Basel and Los Angeles.
Artist Alice Bucknell has introduced The Alluvials, a speculative art project that originated as a 2023 video work and has since evolved into a multilevel video game in 2024. The project transports viewers and players into a speculative version of Los Angeles in the near future, where beaches and urban sprawl have been overtaken by dunes of sand and dust, transforming highways and skyscrapers into a dried-up desert landscape.
The title refers to alluvium, defined as clay, silt, sand, or gravel deposited by running water. In this digital world, Bucknell places players in an alluvial ecosystem where sand accumulates in place of water. The game features four distinct levels that allow players to adopt the perspectives of non-playable characters (NPCs), challenging traditional gameplay dynamics through what the artist describes as queer and ecological game mechanics.
Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event
For instance, in the level titled Extinction Burst, the game opens in a vibrant red forest with a mountain lion navigating a fuchsia path. The scene transitions to a dry basin filled with drifting white flakes that reveal themselves to be moths. Approaching a desert tree near the center prompts a blue hazy question in the sky: 'ARE YOU MOTH OR ARE YOU TREE?', leaving the choice of path to the player.
Other levels invite players to walk through a forest fire, inhabit a barren wolf roaming through sand-choked Los Angeles, or pilot an airboat speeding down the Los Angeles River at dusk. By offering these alternative viewpoints, the project challenges player agency while fostering an embodied understanding of natural elements and non-human entities that humans often take for granted, such as a yucca plant or a body of water.
Alice Bucknell's The Alluvials merges speculative fiction with contemporary game engine technology to address the escalating climate crisis. By subverting anthropocentric thinking and forcing players to view the environment through the eyes of non-human entities, the project critiques human-driven ecological destruction. It serves as an interactive parable, illustrating the potential real-world consequences of unchecked climate progression while proposing a posthuman perspective rooted in natural logic.
The project has been exhibited internationally across the US, Europe, and Asia in various film and video game formats. Notable exhibitions include a four-channel screening at LUMINEX in downtown Los Angeles, where forest fire scenes illuminated building facades, and a presentation at HEK Other Intelligences 2025 in Basel, Switzerland, where visitors played the two-channel game seated on pink camouflage beanbags inside a fuchsia-drenched room.
Source: designboom
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