Seventy Five Threads
2023 - 2024
Produced during a digital residency with County Durham arts organisation No More Nowt, SeventyFiveThreads is a digital game space reflecting upon the history of the British New Town of Peterlee. Comprised of a vertical stack of town plans, the work is a collage, an approximation, a fantasy, and a psychogeographic labyrinth.
It is impossible to tell the story of Peterlee, its 75 years, or to chart its course forward without first reckoning with its multitude of cancelled futures. Phantom plans that continue to haunt the minds of residents, architects, historians, and artists, all curious about what once was, and what might-have-been.
Within the game world users are free to walk (and warp) at their leisure, listen to tape snippets from residents, push a trolley into a pond, and see and hear the work of four artists invited to showcase work within the game space.
North East musician ako,
Peterlee graphic designer David Scott,
US/Berlin noise and experimental duo STUMPED,
US based painter Boryana Rusenova-Ina.
The embedded pdf functions as a devlog, chronicling the games progress, and touching upon the influences and theory that underpin the project. It can also be opened in a new tab for legibility.
Below are screenshots and a video walthrough of the game world, as well as interviews conducted with residents of thw town that are then added to the gameworld as tapes to be found and listened to.
A shopping trolley atop the proposed burial mound dreamed up by one town councillor to conceal Victor Pasmore’s landmark “Apollo” Pavilion. Sunny Blunts neighbourhood.
A burning shopping trolley doubling as a hangout spot and warp point along Blunts Beck. In the distance part of Berthold Lubetkin’s proposed A19 reroute can be seen. This proposed road was to have multiple bridges spanning Castle Eden Dene, linking the unbuilt sports complex to the towns centre.
View towards Victor Pasmore’s unbuilt second pavilion at the South West Phase V development. Similair to the Apollo it was to be accompanied by an ornamental lake in close proximity to housing, in game this phantom is engulfed in a swirl of the structures elevation plans, the only remnants left of it’s design.
View directly up from the SW Pavilion, looking through the dissected plans for Phase V throughout the 1960s, showing the outline of the structure disapearing, and the lake switching in orientation before also being abandoned. The final plan before construction has only a tree and pathway to mark the spot.
View insde of one of the many ubiquitous terraced garages of the town, here populated by old radios.
Scaffolding links Helford Road playing fields near to the Hearts of Oak public house, affording the oppertunity for some light platforming gameplay. Below in the mist is the unbuilt high rise town centre put forward by Berthold Lubetkin.
Installation of the project (ver1.0) in an empty unit of Castle Dene shopping centre, Peterlee, January 2024.