Techno Apple Superstar

Are the apples that we buy in the supermarket as perfect as they look?
How can art-horror trouble the assumptions of beauty, "nature," "natural,"
and “perfection” that we cling to?

“Techno Apple Superstar” is a narrative-driven video game that explores the apple industry in my hometown Trentino-Alto Adige (Italy)–a region celebrated as the apple paradise but characterised by the dominance of apple monoculture. As a player, you venture on a dystopian journey inside a digestive system, where rich descriptions, music videos, interviews and horror imageries bring to life the commodity chain of a seemingly mundane product. This immersive exploration aims to uncover the absurdities and horrors concealed within the relentless pursuit of the perfect crop, driven by Western agribusiness systems. Through kaleidoscopic storytelling the game underscores the profound impact of global imagery on consumer desires. It reveals that the global apple trade isn’t just about material production and distribution but is intricately linked to the flow of images and ideals shaped by, and shaping, consumer desires.

Guarding Bees

Guarding Bees

Chewing and swallowing

Bees of the land, you devoted your life to a god whose voice you have never heard.
Fear of scarcity is the poison anesthetizing your will, your only goal, a land to fill.
Spit it out spit it in and out and shake it all about. Living in the broken open,
phosphorus and phytopharmaceuticals are your daily lotion.
Be quick and break some ground, You plow and you sow, you spray and you pray,
days pass and you'll see the earth shake.
The violent tools you are doomed to use, shall change you to a beast that kills.
Fertilizers you do conjure, to stimulate the plants towards an optimized exploit.
Machinic eyes gaze down upon you from the sea below, leaving nothing in the
dark. Your corpses, ecological resources, nothing but a currency.
Welcome to the desolated land.

Prosperity Preachers

Progressing and contracting

Hey preachers, centralized and in control;
You bury the land in files and patrols!
Achievement you want and demand.
Make now all your commands!
Everything a matter of milligrams
Of calculations and investments.
Success you will surely see,
Underneath a mountain of fees.
Mighty contracts and legal fictions
Know no limits in administration.
The imperatives of your expanding empire
Turn differences into the same.
Homogenized and mass-produced,
The fruits of your work will soon gain their use.
Money flows and overflows,
In abundance, three times three;
You Fill your hands with silver and gold,
All you want, your hands can hold.
…You are sorry; critique is not part of your metabolism…

Wizard of the Jingle

Breaking down, dissecting

O wizards,
Your hands turn toxic fruits into delicious gold.
Fixing views and building pictures to long for.
The grass, you paint it green,
You hide your lies behind a tree.
A pinch of wants and a bucket of needs,
Corruption gains new power with such speed.
Remember, your words hold magic power:
Turn a hovel into a shower and trash into treasure.
Remember, your words will be weapons:
So, stretch and twist them
Three times fast, shall you enlarge,
Your desires indeed will find a result.
...Cause fortunes are made, nobody knows precisely how.
Re-structuring minds and integrating emotions,
Welcome to the space of the wizards’ promotion.

Wizard of the Jingle

Transforming and absorbing

On the conveyor of innovation,
The illusionists create endless simulations.
Locked in labs and camouflaged in legal guises,
You breed your signature without compromises.
Fear of contamination you shall not have,
Alien species in cages will stay,
To impose your ideas of control and faith.
Blessed by the divine touch,
You turn life into a miniaturized stage:
Cloned and reproduced,
Endless derivatives are introduced.
In your desire to supersede Time
The magic wand of innovation
Knows nothing but domestication.
For pure intellectual masturbation,
Life can only be manipulated.
Life to life and mind to mind
The spirits now will intertwine.
Welcome to the chemical rape behind this stage,
Welcome to the steroids of this land.

Gluttonous Swamp

Transforming and absorbing

O hungry swamp,
The most hyper of hyper consumer,
Lost in your ardent gluttony,
Mirror to your empty soul.
You reside in magic places and eat magic foods
'Cause they promise longevity and youth!
Unregulated lust strives your hunger,
Unclouded by conscience and remorse,
Moved by mechanisms of self-destruction,
You shall devour all into oblivion.
Your appetites can be fickle,
But certain sweet predilections have been made clear enough
For centuries.
You, creature of infinite needs,
never be satiated.

Your body is elastic,like the prices,
So fantastic!
You carry yourself towards your own ruin cause,
Unaware of artifice,
All you buy is beauty!
Who gives a damn about the land?
Your lust is bigger than it can.

tooth
finger