This page contains links to articles, interviews, and videos that can be incorporated into course syllabi or used for individual student research. For detailed event information, visit saic.edu/cate.
Jake Elliott, Tamas Kemenczy, and Ben Babbitt: Kentucky Route Zero
Thursday, October 16, 6:00 p.m. CT
Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State Street
Faculty can reserve tickets for their classes here.
Followed by a conversation with the artists and audience Q&A. Presented in partnership with the University of Chicago’s Year of Games initiative.
All CATE events will have real-time captioning (CART). The Gene Siskel Film Center is ADA accessible and its theaters are equipped with hearing loops. For other accessibility requests, please visit saic.edu/access or write cate@saic.edu
Widely regarded as one of the most important video games of the last decade, Kentucky Route Zero is a haunting odyssey of debt, loss, and survival along a secret highway beneath Kentucky. For this special evening, creators Jake Elliott, Tamas Kemenczy, and Ben Babbitt present live performance, unique playthroughs, and rarely seen materials from the game’s extended universe, offering new insights into its narrative spaces, audiovisual design, and Chicago roots.
Jake Elliott (BFA 2011) is a game designer and writer. He is co-founder of the Chicago-based studio Cardboard Computer and co-developer of the game Kentucky Route Zero. Before his work with Cardboard Computer, he collaborated on music and experimental software projects in Chicago, including the internet radio station NUMBERS.FM and the software/video art history project Critical Artware. He has taught courses in game design at DePaul University, Northwestern University, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and IULM University in Milan, Italy. He lives in Elizabethtown, Kentucky.
Tamas Kemenczy (BFA 2007) is a game designer and visual artist based in Chicago. He is one-third of the studio Cardboard Computer, known for the game Kentucky Route Zero. The game’s distinctive visual style has received awards from the Independent Games Festival and IndieCade and was featured in the exhibition Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Prior to his work with Cardboard Computer, he contributed to Critical Artware, a collaborative project on the history of early software and video art. He is currently working on Cardboard Computer’s next game and designing catio-balconies for his feline roommates.
Ben Babbitt (BFA 2013) is a composer and producer based in Los Angeles whose work spans live performance, studio albums, DJ mixes, film and video game scores, and collaborations with artists including Eartheater, Angel Olsen, Colin Self, film directors Martine Syms and Zia Anger, and the new music ensemble Wild Up. He is also one-third of the studio Cardboard Computer, where he composed the original score and sound design for the British Academy of Film and Television Arts–-winning game Kentucky Route Zero. His work has been presented at institutions and festivals including the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, the Museum of Modern Art (New York), 3hd Festival (Berlin), and the Getty Museum (Los Angeles).
Gaming in the Dark: Colossal Cave Adventure, Kentucky Route Zero, and the Racial Imaginary of the Mammoth Cave
Jérémie LeClerc | Configurations (Baltimore, Md.), vol. 32 (#3), p.233-256 | June 2024
*This is a library resource that requires ARTIC login
"Kentucky Route Zero": Best Game of the 2010s Comes to an End"
Todd Martens | Los Angeles Times | January 31, 2020
"The Tragedy and Mystery of the ‘Best Game of the Decade’"
Laura Hudson | Wired | January 29, 2020
"Kentucky Route Zero"– Samuel Beckett Meets David Lynch
Simon Parkin | The Guardian | February 2, 2020
Kentucky Route Zero’s Ben Babbitt Found an Unexpected Home for His Music in Video Games
Josh Chesler | Spin (Online) | May 2020
*This is a library resource that requires ARTIC login
Kentucky Route Zero: Saying Goodbye to Kentucky Route Zero
Victoria Alejandro | Ampersand | February 19, 2020
Kentucky Route Zero review – a modern masterpiece
Russ Frushtick | Polygon | January 27, 2020
Lost Highway
Jeff Reichert | Film Comment, vol. 53 (#4), p.20-21 | July 2017
*This is a library resource that requires ARTIC login
The Dismantled Book of ‘Kentucky Route Zero’
Preston Johnston | Epilogue Gaming | February 5, 2018
Video Killed the Radio Star: On “Un Pueblo de Nada” by Cardboard Computer
Robert Yang | Radiator Design Blog | February 3, 2018
A Melancholy Journey Through the Lost American Dream
Laura Hudson | Slate | August 16, 2016
Kentucky Route Zero: How Ben Babbitt crafted the soundtrack to a Lynchian modern classic
Lewis Gordon | Fact Magazine | August 23, 2016
Kentucky Route Zero’s android musicians are releasing a whole album
Reid Mccarter | Kill Screen | August 3, 2016
Rendering Meaning: On the Intersections of Visual Style, Interactivity and Gameplay
John Sharp | Hey John | February 20, 2016
Wot I Think: Kentucky Route Zero Act IV
Alec Meer | Rock Paper Shotgun | July 22, 2016
Kentucky Route Zero’s Musical Centerpiece and the Power of Choice
Ansh Patel | Paste Magazine | July 14, 2014
Kentucky Route Zero: Act I
Tara Ogaick | This Cage is Worms | March 11, 2013
Where the road takes you: investigating Kentucky Route Zero
Dan Whitehead | Eurogamer | January 28, 2013
"Have You Ever Heard a Worm Sing?": The Spectral Ecology of Kentucky Route Zero, Act V
Jordan Youngblood | in Ecogames: Playful Perspectives on the Climate Crisis, eds. Laura op de Beke, Joost Raessens, Stefan Werning, & Gerald Farca | Amsterdam University Press, pp. 335-352 | 2024
Half-light Histories: Uncovering Videogames' Disorienting Origins in Kentucky Route Zero and Disco Elysium
Andrew Bailey | in Ready Reader One: The Stories We Tell With, About, and Around Videogames, eds Megan Condis & Mike Sell | Louisiana State University Press | 2024
“Kentucky Route Zero's Netherworld of Slowness”
Rieke Jordan | in Work in Progress: Curatorial Labor in Twenty-First-Century American Fiction | Bloomsbury Academic | 2019
Playing with Feelings
by
Critical Compilation: Kentucky Route Zero
Nicholas O'Brien | Critical Distance | September 26, 2019
Conversations at the Edge Lecture Recordings
Conversation at the Edge video recordings (2016–present.) Available with SAIC login credentials.
