There’s no story, only shifting facets of light and darkness and sex. The pieces, in this case, are crude-looking black-and-white drawings of plug people, wall sockets, fingers and hands, and lightswitches, all being flicked, prodded, inserted, retracted and extended over the course of a six-minute short film that Frei and Rickenbach transformed into a 10-minute mobile game. I mean, of course that happens, but that’s something that happens when you put pieces together.” “It’s like fitting the pieces together in the right way, and it’s not so much about expressing myself. His background lies partially in architecture. “I approach ‘making’ a little bit more like a designer than an artist sometimes maybe,” Frei said. To them, the light switches, plugs-and-sockets and finger-dicks are utilitarian, although no less fascinating for it. To him and the game’s co-developer, Mario von Rickenbach, it’s more about the work’s visuals-its contrasts and binaries-and its physical, mechanical aspects. The first spark of Plug & Play, drawn in 2011 “It’s really up to the viewer,” he said, and he wasn’t just being coy. When I asked Swiss artist Michael Frei about the seemingly overt sexuality of his 2012 short film/2015 iOS game Plug & Play-it’s full of tiny people with electrical plugs and sockets for heads and elongated, erect fingers-he replied that he doesn’t like to answer questions about the meanings of his work. This week, we spoke with Michael Frei and Mario von Rickenbach about Plug & Play, a short game based on a shorter film. ANIMAL’s feature Game Plan asks game developers to share a bit about their process and some working images from the creation of a recent game.

Plug and play game play