Yoho! Welcome back to The Bathysphere! Today, Chris is looking at knots and puzzling over a quote by T.H. White. Meanwhile, Florence gets entwined in a sci-fi murder mystery that involves, you guessed it, games! Keith is away this week but will be back for more retrospective adventures soon.

The Bathysphere crew
Christian Donlan
Florence Smith Nicholls
Keith Stuart

Contact us at bathyspherecrew@gmail.com

Delightful games

I decided to follow the thread of Chris’ essay on knots and tried out the Gordian Knot Automaton on itch.io. Its a free digital toy that allows you to place cells that will then become linked to create intricate knots. It feels like doing embroidery in cyberspace. FSN

Interesting things

I borrowed The Lonely Planet Armchair Explorer from the library this week. It’s a lovely idea for a book, taking the various parts of the world and exploring their literary, musical and cinematic gems. Inevitably, the only thing that would make it even better is if it looked at their games too. CD

Hopefully you can forgive this blatant case of self-promotion, but next Thursday 11th of September I’ll be at Village Books in Leeds talking with Stefano Gualeni about his experimental sci-fi novel, What We Owe the Dead. The book follows a murder mystery that hinges around the cultural significance of a mysterious board game that was discovered by archaeologists. Naturally, I’m obsessed. FSN

An article on Archaeology as Worldbuilding by Dr Colleen Morgan, argues, among other things, that the field could take inspiration from non-linear video game stories. There’s even discussion of an archaeological reconstruction in the multiplayer virtual world Second Life. FSN

Sorry, I just can’t resist recommending Tim Ingold’s book The Life of Lines this week-it’s too on theme. To quote the book blurb itself “A world of life is woven from knots; not built from blocks as commonly thought.” In games, we spend a lot of time thinking about blocks and bricks, maybe we could try building virtual communities around different, messier materialities. FSN

Essay: The magic of knots

There are things you worry about mentioning because people might start to suspect you’re a bit boring. And then there’s the time I spent a surprisingly great afternoon undoing a knot. The knot was in one of those nylon cords that hangs down from the side of the cheap window blinds we have in our back room. In fact, for any proper knot sickos out there, it was in three of the cords that had become densely tangled together. It took me an hour, all told, to get everything free.