Radiohead: Kid A Mnesia Exhibition
Kid A Mnesia Exhibition is a virtual Radiohead art museum featuring music from the two albums Kid A and Amnesiac. The game was released in 2021 and it can be downloaded for free on Epic Games for macOS, Windows and PlayStation 5. Although the exploration game doesn’t use virtual or augmented reality, I want to write about it because I think it is a great example of virtual exhibitions.
The journey starts in a forest. You don’t get any instructions about where you are or where to go. So you just wander through the forest until you find the entrance to the exhibition. When you enter the exhibition, the style of the game changes. From now on, you can explore the different rooms of the exhibitions with different artworks or installations while listening to music of Radiohead. For example, there is one room with lots of televisions on the wall on them, which displays are always changing. In this room, you here a unnerving yet familiar version of “The National Anthem”. In another room, there is paper all over the floor, which starts to fly away and reconstruct the room. There are also several hidden interactions, which can be discovered for example when you step on a specific object. Also, you are not the only visitor of the exhibition. There are other creatures walking through the exhibition as well. On many creatures you can see the smile with the pointy teeth from Radioheads logo.
Although you can only walk around and zoom in/out, it is very entertaining. There are little details hidden in the exhibition and you to take a closer look to encounter them. The rooms, installations and artworks are changing over time, so it would not be a good idea to rush through the rooms. Although the exhibition is a bit creepy, you can find beauty in every room. The game is definitely worth a try, even for people who aren’t the biggest Radiohead fan.
