Reality Break

Our latest mini-series on the New Weird begins with the premier of Philip Speakman’s, Reality Break, a 15 minute audio work, which follows the recollections of 4 facebook employee’s Dungeons & Dragons game in the summer of 2020. Set before Facebook’s Metaverse was released to the public, Reality Break explores the social conscience of these worldbuilding employees. Timed to distract from Frances Haugen’s whistleblowing, which revealed how Facebook’s understood the harm their algorithmic choices made, we address what weirding can do or make sense of, as worldbuilding becomes increasingly co-opted by tech corporations such as facebook. Speakman is the unheard dungeon master at the edge of this piece, drawing analogies between the historic connections of multiplayer games and dungeons, from MUD systems in the 1970s, to 4chan, the metaverse or the weird basement that appears at the end of the work. Together we ask if weirding is a more accessible tool to reimagine our present, that doesn’t require the commitment of imagining a new world, and how the uncanny draws attention to norms enforced by late stage capitalism.

For our regular listeners, you’ll also notice our newest member of the Future Artefacts FM team, Rebecca Edwards, who we’re thrilled to have developed our latest mini-series on the New Weird, and more projects coming soon!

Artists @philipspeakman 

Host @influential_bro @_rebecca.edwards  @niamhschmidtke 

Music @joemoss1

Broadcast through @rtm.fm

Philip Speakman’s practice explores fiction as a technology, and how the imaginary transgresses its unreality through the media, communication and narrative technologies of its times. In the last year he has screened work at Flat Earth Film Festival 2023 (Iceland), delivered a workshop ‘A Self Induced Hallucination’ at the Lethaby Gallery (London), and presented Katabasing, a mixed reality performance for Gossamer Fog’s Alt_R virtual reality studio. His essay '“It May Start Out As A Game But It Ends Up A Whole World”; Creepypasta, QAnon, and the Anomalous Tales of the Internet' is to be published in a special issue of the journal Contemporary Legend later in the year. He graduated from MA Fine Art at the The Slade in 2023.