Kid A Mnesia Exhibition is a 2021 exploration game published by Epic Games for macOS, Windows and PlayStation 5. It serves as a digital exhibition of music and artwork created for the Radiohead albums Kid A (2000) and Amnesiac (2001). It was developed by Namethemachine, Arbitrarily Good Productions and Epic Games in collaboration with the Radiohead singer Thom Yorke, Radiohead's producer Nigel Godrich and the Radiohead cover artist Stanley Donwood.

Kid A Mnesia Exhibition
Developer(s)	Namethemachine Arbitrarily Good Productions
Publisher(s)	Epic Games
Producer(s)	Matthew Davis Namethemachine Arbitrarily Good Productions
Programmer(s)	Namethemachine Arbitrarily Good Productions
Artist(s)	Stanley Donwood Thom Yorke
Composer(s)	Radiohead Nigel Godrich
Engine	Unreal Engine
Platform(s)	macOS Windows PlayStation 5
Release	18 November 2021
Genre(s)	Exploration
Mode(s)	Single-player

Kid A Mnesia Exhibition was conceived as a physical installation artwork, but this was canceled by logistical problems and the COVID-19 pandemic. It was announced alongside the compilation album Kid A Mnesia and released 18 November 2021 as a free download. It received positive reviews, with critics praising its intersection of music, art and technology.

Content

Kid A Mnesia Exhibition is an exploration game based on the music and artwork of the Radiohead albums Kid A (2000) and Amnesiac (2001). Players move through a virtual museum, examining artwork and listening to music and sounds from the albums.[1] The New Yorker described the museum as "a brutalist cathedral full of byzantine corridors, majestic rooms, banks of buzzing cathode-ray-tube televisions, and carpets of fluttering sketchbook pages".[2] Players cannot die and there are no enemies, no score system, and no levels to complete.[1][2]

Development

Kid A Mnesia Exhibition was conceived as a physical installation artwork to be constructed from shipping containers and exhibited in cities around the world.[3] The Radiohead singer Thom Yorke and the artist Stanley Donwood, who create the artwork for Radiohead albums, imagined a "a huge red construction" that would look "as if a brutalist spacecraft had crash-landed into the classical architecture ... This astounding steel carapace would be inserted into the urban fabric of London like an ice pick into Trotsky."[3]

The construction was first planned for the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, but would not fit.[3] The plan moved to the Royal Albert Hall, but this was rejected by Westminster City Council.[3] The plan was ultimately cancelled by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the focus shifted towards creating a digital exhibition. In the words of Yorke and Donwood, this meant the exhibition "didn't have to conform to any normal rules of an exhibition. Or reality."[3]

Kid A Mnesia Exhibition was developed over two years by Namethemachine and Arbitrarily Good Productions with Yorke, Donwood and Radiohead's producer Nigel Godrich, who contributed sound design.[4] The staff included the artist and creative director Sean Evans, the theatre set designer Christine Jones and the producer Matthew Davis, the head of Namethemachine.[5] The team had the guiding principle of exhibiting no new work; according to a blog post by Yorke and Donwood, everything in the exhibition came from material made while Radiohead were recording Kid A and Amnesiac.[3]

Release

Kid A Mnesia Exhibition was announced on 9 September, 2021.[6] It was released as a free download for macOS, Windows, and PlayStation 5 on 18 November 2021.[4] Promotional Radiohead items were released for the multiplayer games Rocket League, Fall Guys and Fortnite.[7]

Reception

Jay Peters of The Verge wrote that Kid A Mnesia Exhibition was "full of strikingly beautiful rooms" and "worth checking out as a very literal expression of the idea that video games can be art".[8] NME wrote that it was a "deeply beautiful solo trip through what appears to be an apocalyptic wasteland, before little pockets of beauty show themselves in unexpected places, poking out of the darkness".[1] The New Yorker named Kid A Mnesia Exhibition one of the best games of the year, writing that it "provokes exploration, reflection, and a new way of listening".[2]

References