enter the backrooms 
  _________________________________________________________________________
 /  \                                                                      \
|  __|                _/_/  _    _                                          |
 \_)_|                / / )(-   /_) _  _ /_   _                             |
     |                      ¯  /__)(_\(_/ \  /_) _  _     _                 |
     |                                      / \ (_)(_)/))_)                 |
     |                                                                      |
     |    what are the backrooms?                                           |
     |                                                                      |
     |    the backrooms are a fictional, liminal space born of internet     |
     |    horror "creepypasta" threads circa 2019. the post depicted an     |
     |    infinite, surreal, & randomized alternate dimension of empty,     |
     |    nondescript rooms accessed by glitching out of reality:           |
     |                                                                      |
     |        "If you're not careful and you no-clip out of reality         |
     |        in the wrong areas,   you'll end up in the Backrooms,         |
     |        where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet,         |
     |        the madness of mono-yellow,    the endless background         |
     |        noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz,  and         |
     |        approximately  six  hundred  million  square miles of         |
     |        randomly  segmented  empty rooms  to be  trapped  in.         |
     |        God save you  if you hear something  wandering around         |
     |        nearby,  because  it  sure  as  hell  has heard  you"         |
     |                                                 --anon               |
     |                                                                      |
     |      this place is a liminal house of leaves, a shifting maze        |
     |      of labryrinthian code. i hope you enjoy your journey -x0        |
     |  ____________________________________________________________________:_
     | (_\                                                                    \
     \___/____________________________________________________________________/

inspiration

like many others terminally online, i've become enamored with liminal spaces, non-euclidean geometry, and the backrooms. creases have formed on the spine of my "house of leaves" paperback. i set out wanting to make an early 2k style netart exhibit. i'm old enough to remember e8z's skinonskinonskin, and was lucky enough to participate in the hell.com/surface event. i wanted an experience somewhere between a web-based "choose your own adventure" book and a pseudo-randomized nostalgic collage generator. i choose the backrooms as my subject, and animated gif's as the prime medium of the work.

technicals

the entire exhibit is a single php script that randomly generates a unique experience of dynamic html, css, and javascript on each visit. positions, images, and pathways open/close/change on every load, to create the shifting labryrinth of "the backrooms". there are no user sessions or cheats, and no guarantee you get the same experience twice.

tools

scouring the net to find the visuals for a given level, i fell deep into abandoned mall photography. videos were ripped and sliced to size/length in lumafusion. results were either loaded into photoshop or mosh to decimate them. once sufficently corrupted, i optimized the animations and file sizes using ezgif. finally, all the code for this project was artisanally typed in neovim, live on the server.

credits

all design, production, and code by xero

but the backrooms is a collective internet urban legend. while i wrote the code, made some original artwork, and glitched, dithered, deep-fried, and gif'ed all the files in this exhibit... much of this work's visual and conceptual contents are derived from many artists in or adjacent to the backrooms community. i tired my best to save a link to every image, video, or story used as inspiration. but sadly, i can't credit everyone, since many were posted anonymously or reposted to the point that finding the original is nearly impossible. so an extra special shout out / thank you to all the artists who contribute to the open-souce liminal spaces, glitch core, and backrooms aesthetics.

sauces