ARCADE @ Summerhall

ARCADE is a thrilling sensory experience that leaves participants simultaneously unsettled and contemplative. It requires participants’ meticulous attention and rapid reaction times to manufacture a narrative by answering the yes-or-no questions through which the plot progresses. Designed as a narrow arcade room from the 1980s, the piece occurs in a small shipping container in complete darkness.

There is one button, a coin slot, and a return tray which participants must familiarise themselves with in the darkness as they assume the role of the protagonist, Milk, whose voice – and others’ – plays through the provided headphones.

The experience showcases audible and physical tools, properly epitomising the phrase 'immersive experience' and instilling panic and fear through innovative sound techniques. When the participant’s sight is taken away, they attempt to hold even more strongly onto their identity; I reassured myself of the things about which I care most during this violent, unpredictable thirty-minute test of free will.

Narratives may range across participants depending on their responses to the plot’s questions. “Does Milk always get shot at the end?” I ask staff. “There are about 30 different results and 35 ways to reach them," they say. Participants are mere bodies within a system with multiple possible fates, decided within a forcefully binary framework, one’s only apparent form of control being in their yes-or-no responses.

A political and philosophical examination of systems of control, the experience begs questions such as who controls history, even when one is – to an extent – making conscious and independent decisions. ARCADE unexpectedly teaches us the guilt and privilege of our ability to compartmentalise and detach. It is a microscopic taste of the horror and injustice experienced by those in true danger when stripped of control.

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ARCADE, Summerhall (The Terrace), until 26 Aug, various times, £13