Spiralscape VII: World’s Healing Sluice is a text-based adventure video game that opens gateways to other universes. Players take on the role of a “stonehealer”, a part-craftsman and part-mage character who hails from a world of statues, navigating ruined landscapes in need of mending. Guided by branching narrative choices, written responses and digital sketches fed into the game, players explore fantasy worlds in disrepair, each defined by a central landmark: a fountain, a bridge and a façade.

Inspired by early hypertext interactive fiction and branching narrative gamebooks, Spiralscape VII prompts players to make choices, reflect and shape their own journey. With players’ consent, their responses are preserved as an archive of their emotions and experiences. The video game features a soundtrack by the collaborative artist group elekhlekha อีเหละเขละขละ, drawing from their live coding performances that explore Southeast Asia’s sound cultures and shared sonic heritage. 

Spiralscape VII uses hypertextual encounters to rearticulate histories of public art as navigations of space and context. It moves towards a dislodge of the world-as-is, echoing artists’ political invocations across time for futures of regeneration, redistribution and sustenance.