The Hortus Conclusus is acting as a starting point for this Media Studies project. It explores the garden through the idea of being a hidden sanctuary, a threshold to between reality and fantasy, between being shut out and being included. It’s a garden to create an ideal spiritual place. From the Hortus Conclusus as a safe space I want to draw analogies to a space created for self-expression through a game, in face of an increasingly normative technological age.

With no prior experience to coding or game engines, I’m first and foremost researching the language of codes and creation of games in general and how a personal story can be told through an imagined game world, in my case inspired by an enclosed garden – a utopian island. The game takes the form of a kind of mind (and fantasy) palace, but set up like a Hortus Conclusus, as depicted in many religious medieval paintings.