Shutter Stroll, Time, and Quarantine
To be untethered from time, in an uncertain period shared across the globe, is its own kind of trauma.
Timeless
This island is distinct from everything else.
Time does not pass, the weather does not change. The trees cannot be chopped or uprooted. The hills cannot be dug into. The rivers, where they are found, cannot be diverted. It is a small slice of nowhere, frozen in a kind of serene stasis. What came before, and what will come after, has no meaning to this island, nor any influence on it.
There is little more to do in Shutter Stroll than wander hills and valleys, weave among trees, jump atop bushes, splash in ponds, and take pictures.
There is a kind of pensive joy in meandering through the non-existence. Even beyond the trappings of framing and taking photos, the very act of intentionally joining a liminal space is like a superpower. To pause time, even fictionally, for just an exhale, a snap of a shutter, and to take in the gentle noise of wind and rain for a moment is a kind of balm. Even in rainy and windy weather there are no dangers, it’s all aesthetic.
There’s just an ongoing soft breeze, gentle drizzle, and a moment of quiet. Then, you may leave, either to another island, or back to the passage of time.
For those of us self-isolating during the ongoing pandemic, time has become a strangely nebulous force.
There are hours that feel days long, trundling through moments of flinching uncertainty, and there are days that seem to disappear in a blink, getting lost among repeated trips down the same hallways, through the same meals, watching the same shows, and repeated trips down the same hallways. Time has not stopped, but it has seemingly slipped a gear, and it exists in a breakneck eternity, rushing endlessly for a collision seconds away that’s never coming.
Those who grapple with these feelings can sometimes recapture their sense of time. But to do so requires rocking the boat.
Boat
Stepping off of the boat in Shutter Stroll is always a somewhat jarring experience. The islands seem to have no consistent rhyme or reason. Some contain blocky, monochromatic monoliths. Huge, dark-colored rectangular cubes that rip through the ground and jut into the sky. In the distance, some can be seen either escaping, or plunging into, the ocean. The waves pass by without crashing on the geometric corners. The grass, where it can be found, sways in a breeze that can be heard, but not felt.
The boat is one of the few powerful artifacts when traveling the islands. Once on the island, the only way to leave — except through the menu — is via the boat. What side of the island on which the boat is parked isn’t consistent, so island explorers will need to memorize where their boat is in order to return and move on to the next island. Or, perhaps, resign themselves to a circuit around the outer coasts in search of their vessel.
Despite there being no threats on the islands, untouched as they are by risk or concern, there is a sort of vulnerability in feeling unmoored when one forgets where their boat is.
Unmoored
To be untethered from time, in an uncertain period shared across the globe, is its own kind of trauma.
Feeling aware of the severity of each passing moment, without any meaningful way to impact them, is a strange feeling. To do so against a nearly invisible disease, where the systems to best safeguard against it are handled by systems rather than individuals, feels like an inevitable defeat.
Wear a mask, wash your hands, distance as best you can; that’s all you can do.
But to watch the world seemingly unchanged through the window, knowing it all looks the same while actually irrevocably changed, is a difficult thing to really understand. How does a world that looks and feels unchanged be so much more risky?
To repeat the same hallways, the same meals, the same motions, inside the same walls, over concerns that are entirely invisible until they aren’t, feels vague and unsatisfying. To be lost in a deluge of time, removed from familiar society, struggling to make sense of anything, awash in a sea of timeless hurry, feels practically unhinged.
Until you snap
The purpose of these islands is to give the player an opportunity to just capture a perspective. In fact, each island’s “goal,” such as there is one on Shutter Stroll, is to capture at least one photo on an island before returning to the boat.
In that way, the island’s purpose is to be captured. To have a perspective added to the pile. Before that, the island itself is divorced of purpose. It further disconnects an already liminal space from what came before. Without a photo, and the ability to return to the boat, it can be hard to ascertain the point of the island at all. Why even begin the exercise?
The Point
Which is telling in its own way.
Shutter Stroll describes itself as a game without a goal. In a time of isolation and quarantine, it can feel natural to pin a purpose onto every action, to hope to find externalized meaning in everything: even something as simple as a moment, a photograph, or a few steps across a small island. To find something more than watching the waves, listening to the breeze, and climbing the hilltops just to see what’s on the other side.
Despite being thoroughly separated from what came before, these moments have meaning as well.
To be adrift in a world that has no risks, no immediate concerns, and nothing more than the opportunity to indulge in some exploratory photography is still something that is worth doing for its own sake. Walking the same hallways still lead to rooms worth visiting. Eating the same meals still fuels the body and enriches the senses. To be inside familiar walls is to be safe as an active participant in the suppression of a deadly disease.
Purpose doesn’t have to be vast to be purposeful, and it’s easy to forget that when everything else feels so unflinchingly uncertain. The moments of quiet do not lose their meaning when surrounded by more quiet. Choosing to be in a calming, quiet space is a meaningful action. Trying to fill the void with goal-achieving productivity for months on end is just tilting at windmills. Sometimes taking a walk, a camera, and a moment to oneself is what is needed.
It’s going to be okay.
This island is distinct from everything else.
