opera – a future game is an interactive, first-person playable digital music theater video game essay created within a game engine. The installation is based on the music theater work opera, opera, opera! revenants & revolutions — the lost fourth part of the climate trilogy by the award-winning Austrian playwright Thomas Köck and composer Eloain Lovis Hübner. Users encounter this future game in a hybrid format that blends a gaming experience with an interactive video art exhibition, where the opera becomes playable as an open-world game.

The narrative premise could hardly be more topical: far in the future, after a devastating catastrophe, a choir with partial amnesia engages in conversation with itself and a cyborg. From their cloudy memories arise hauntings—individual and collective recollections of real and longed-for events.

Suddenly, they find themselves in the barren cultural landscape of an abandoned and decaying opera stage, and the choir believes it finally knows who it is: a rebellious choir in the middle of a grand opera that is said to have sparked a revolution and the founding of Belgium in 1830. What place do these historical turning points and utopian longings have in a present that seems only able to envision the future as catastrophe?

Through this dystopian open world, users control their avatar with a controller, while the image is displayed on three ultra-wide screens (48:9 aspect ratio). Meanwhile, other spectators in the space can watch the action, comment, and interact.

Accompanied by an inner voice, users wander through a world that tells of the disappearance of the present and a society seemingly only capable of imagining the future as disaster. The work integrates elaborate film footage, advanced 3D animations, an original composition, and audio recordings with a full orchestra as well as experimental sound compositions.

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