Soderbergh Ep. 32: Mosaic (2017) with Comrade Yui

Look, either you know what this is or you won't believe us. In 2017, Steven Soderbergh and writer Ed Solomon made a murder mystery show that was an app on your phone. You used your phone to decide which scenes to watch next to find out who killed Sharon Stone. This is real. Then they re-edited it as a miniseries for HBO, and now you can't watch the app version literally anywhere. The whole thing is nuts, and thank G-d we have our friend Comrade Yui to help us navigate through it (app joke). Join us for a typically wide-ranging conversation about interactivity, the artist as fascist (complimentary?), video game theory, and biodigital jazz, man. Hey more like Steven Flappybird! Because he deleted the app! Well, someone did.

Further Reading:

Extra Lives by Tom Bissell

Cain's Jawbone by Torquemada

"Interactive Cinema: The Ambiguous Ethics of Media Participation" by Marina Hassapoulou - https://filmquarterly.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Hassapopoulou_Interactive_Introduction-1.pdf

"Mosaic: A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Review of Steven Soderbergh's Mystery" by Matt Brennan - https://www.pastemagazine.com/tv/mosaic/mosaic-hbo-steven-soderbergh-review

Further Viewing/Playing:

MOSAIC trailer/app demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km_u51OE3VA

KINOAUTOMAT (Činčera, 1967)

OUT 1 (Rivette, 1971)

ZORK (Anderson, Blank, Daniels, and Lebling, 1977)

DRAGON'S LAIR (Bluth, 1983)

CLUE (Lynn, 1985)

MASS EFFECT 2 (Hudson, 2010)

BLACK MIRROR: BANDERSNATCH (Slade, 2018) 

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