Familiar Strangers in the Shrouded Forest: Stigma, Representation and Alzheimer’s Disease in Always

Abstract

While literature and popular culture have sought to understand Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) in terms framed by the loss of social relationships and the strain caregivers face, this arrangement articulates AD as “being lost”, a fragmentation of temporal experience, or as irrationality punctuated by moments of self-awareness (which often operate to dehumanize those with AD). This analysis seeks, as Stefan Merrill Block puts it, to “stop looking for the lost person” in our encounter with AD. As a contemporary case study, the interactive experience Always functions as a critical intervention by not prizing moments of clarity as narrative catharsis (which literature and popular culture tend to do in the form of what is known as the “love miracle”). Instead, it serves as an important gesture toward destabilizing these practices and bridging the gap between the representation of AD and its realities. Rather than acting as a simulator of AD, Always is an abstract piece that, through design and game mechanics, opens a space for users to consider the implications of having their senses destabilized. As a result, this analysis considers how design addresses issues of social stigma, representation, storytelling and navigability.