The publishers of Dead Island: Riptide produced this remarkable promotional item, a mangled female torso, to maximize its appeal to gaming's all-important squirrel-skinning minsogynst demographic. John Teti hopes that it ends up in a museum, not the memory hole.
The exhibit would start, of course, with the sculpture itself, because the longer you look at Double-D Decomposition, the more it has to offer. In this “grotesque take on an iconic Roman marble torso sculpture”—an actual thing said by an actual human being who works for Deep Silver—the limbs aren’t just gone. No, their gory absence suggests a struggle. This anonymous woman’s limbs and head were ripped from her, presumably amid spurts of blood and a few prerecorded voiceover-booth moans rendered in sparkling 7.1-channel surround sound. Flesh Husk (In Swimsuit) is all about the details. Note the spinal column that juts out of the neck. The way your eye is drawn to an insouciant bit of bone on the arm. These are important cues in the visual vocabulary of Modern Game Studio artworks. They symbolize worship of the deities Dark and Gritty.
