Gael Bourhis is nominated with Kristallijn for the A MAZE. Awards 2020. Kristallijn is a short first-person ambient game experimenting around the strobe effect. Gael gave us 15 wildhearts answers. Enjoy!

A MAZE.: How would you describe yourself?
Gael Bourhis: Never been good at that.

A MAZE.: Are you a wild heart? If yes, what makes you think you’re a wild heart?
Gael Bourhis: I sometimes makes more the impression of a machine than anything else.

A MAZE.: Why did you start making games or playful media works?
Gael Bourhis: I was struggling with painting and installation when I rediscovered this absolutely current medium and its possibilities. I think art should be contemporary and strive to make the world livable, by extracting beauty from it, and so it must inspect and infiltrate the most modern means.

A MAZE.: Who (or what) is your biggest inspiration? Think beyond games too - musicians, writers, filmmakers, artists, scientists, …
Gael Bourhis: Some small details, images and impressions. The musical patterns of a train on rails, deserted places, or some movement of light. The works of Bill Viola and Steve Reich, to cite any, have a great influence on me.

A MAZE.: Where can we find this in your work?
Gael Bourhis: I’m mostly trying to transcribe those impressions in a virtual context and see what happens, how those perceptions are altered and how some others emerge from rhythms and spaces.

A MAZE.: What message(s) are you sending out with your works?
Gael Bourhis: I’m not sending any message, only trying to translate a particular state of mind or perception into a form. I think that’s what art is about.

A MAZE.: Is there a repeating pattern in all of your works the players may experience?
Gael Bourhis: Some specific ideas are haunting my works: the circular nature of time, the discontinuity of perception, consciousness states & superimposed realities, ghosts, polyrhythms, polders... Which are naturally variations of the same.

A MAZE.: What influences your work more: Past (history), present (contemporary) or future (scifi) and what are your sources?
Gael Bourhis: All at once, but present is the most important.

A MAZE.: What does responsibility towards your players mean to you as an artist?
Gael Bourhis: The responsibility to stand to my personal vision, to let it assume form and listen to where it’s bringing me. The player brings all the rest.

A MAZE.: What impact is the current pandemic having on you and your work?
Gael Bourhis: Changing the aspect of passing time. A strange kind of present - unresolved. Bringing me strangely AFK, bringing me back to pen and paper.

A MAZE.: If there is something wrong in the field of games / playful media, what would you fix first?
Gael Bourhis: In all mediums today, creation often comes down to advertising a simple concept or a hollow novelty. We have to be careful not to become ad-people and rather give up this self-promotion and pay more attention to our surroundings.

A MAZE.: What are the three games someone who never played a game before should play? Why those?
Gael Bourhis: Here are some I would recommend imho :
-The Beginner’s Guide (D. Wreden) for a radical vision of what game rarely are and could be.
-The Witness (J. Blow) for the depth of its construction, and it’s impact on life.
-Inside (Playdead) for that sequence-shot and its use of framing.

A MAZE.: How do you relax and find balance?
Gael Bourhis: Mostly w/ drugs

A MAZE.: What are the main challenges for artists in your country to sustain themselves?
Gael Bourhis: To stay vertical.

A MAZE.: How do you see interactive arts in 10 years from now? In 2030! Tell us your vision.
Gael Bourhis: I’m afraid everything would in the end become advertising, yet I know that in some places some people will resist, on their prison's walls or hacking their microchip implant.

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