Today was the day I entered the world of the Tulse Luper Journey.
Tulse Luper is a character from previous Greenway books and films such as The Falls and various short films he made in the 70s. There is also a complex and astoundingly long new film out about him called “The Tulse Luper Suitcases” which I haven’t yet seen.
For a bit of background i first visited Tulse Luper Suitcases site, which is basically a promo for the new film. The premise of the film is that Tulse Luper was a ‘professional prisoner’ who moved around from prison and prison and was present at many key events of the 20th century. Greenaway has always used a lot of archival material for his short films and in this film and game, Tulse Luper is a kind of archivist too, who collects material to do with his own life and stores it in suitcases. In a lot of Greenaway’s art and films, there are often random photos or archival material that he makes into part of his story – I guess he is exploring the idea of context.
Next I moved onto the game site itself. Tulseluperjourney.com, invites you to sign up as a volunteer researcher. The site is something like a library project. There are 92 suitcases around the world and the players have to open the suitcases and find out their contents. As soon as you join the game you are assigned to one of three laboratories and afterwards if you want to travel between them it will cost you points, so my first task is to open some suitcases and get some points.
Each suitcase has a fiendishly complex game attached to it. If you complete the game, you get access to a “fragment” or “layer” which is a bit of disembodied film that you can then trade with other players to construct an entire film sequence for a particular suitcase.
The game is even offering a free round the world trip to a player who could submit the best new media content for the game. As far as i could tell the winner would have to use the trip to further research elements of the game!
The game assumes some familiarity with the film and book world of Greenaway’s previous work. This is a fiendishly complex set of narratives that build on the traditions of visual art such as painting, sculpture and architecture. For someone who thinks narrative is rubbish - “I try to find a way to make a cinema which is non-narrative. Narrative belongs in books. It doesn’t belong to cinema” says Greenaway – and has said so many times, there is an astounding amount of narrative detail in his work.
Each suitcase is either locked or not present. Those not present are presumably in the other laboratories. If a suitcase is locked, you can play a game in order to gain access to it.
I select Suitcase 9 and play a small mini-game based on fireflies. You had to click 9 fireflies as they appeared and disappeared to create a shape and make sure the lines did not cross one another. If you failed, dawn came without you being any the wiser. When i finally achieved success, i was given some information in the form of a reference to The Angel of Moroni. A google search informed me that this is a figure in Mormon mythology who appeared to Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism.
Then I realised that this was only level one and I would have to keep playing – damn!
I wonder how many levels there are in total? The mini-game gives me no way to find out, so I turn to the thriving forum – containing dozens and dozens of sub forums – attached to the game where players swap information. I gather that clues can be “bought” using some kind of credit which I suppose comes from passing tests within the game.
On the forum i search by suitcase to see if anyone has any advice to offer regarding Suitcase 9. I find out that there are at least 5 levels to play, and i can’t get past level 2!
At first I am depressed, but then I become addicted to the slightly creepy little game and play steadily.
The whole thing has a lot of references which i think are to Salt Lake City and Mormonism – the reference to the Angel, images of digging and of a white lake.
Over the course of the afternoon, I progress through the levels, always sliding back to start again but getting further each time. I reveal the following clues:
“He’s coming from another world!”
“It must be your lover, passion”
“I think he wants to see you naked”
I think “This is bizarre!” but I’m hooked.
FINALLY after about 2 hours I complete the game and get the final line of information:
“You have to kiss him. He is our destiny, yours and mine.”
Back in the labaratory, this success entitles me to view a movie fragment inside the suitcase, which seems to be a kind of disembodied angel statue.
One suitcase down, 91 to go…..i think playing this game to any satisfactory conclusion would take me the rest of my life, but it would be a pleasant way to spend that life.
