Lost in the Asset Store

In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations! 

- Allen Ginsberg, “A Supermarket in California”

Lost in the Asset Store is an exploration of prefab digital platforms, creating a virtual environment with free assets from the game engine Unity’s Asset Store. Players are let loose in an arbitrarily expanding grid of 3d models, unexplained fireworks, player control logic, free music, circling cars, reflective water, and explosions. Nothing quite fits together or does what it’s supposed to, but everything does something, and carries the name of the user who made it. The project aims, with mixed success, to also explore what it’s like to live mediated by by various digital platforms and means of exchange (beyond games web frameworks, social networks, etc.)