Through hard struggle

It's very hard to describe for someone who doesn't play, the feeling of flying over such landscapes.

Sure, they're primitive, but in the way that folk motifs on embroidery can be – a simplicity that's in no way mediocre or limiting, but rather approaches purity – indeed, more realistic texture packs, for Minecraft, break the game's charm. It has to have those pure, geometric graphics, with something naïve, almost childlike, which obviously also recalls the video games of my childhood, where I'd play for hours on end, dreaming of a world beyond the landscapes on offer; except that today, that fantasy has come true; dreams of virtual worlds and infinite freedom have been realized.

It's hard to explain just how real all this is – much more real than so many of the places we frequent, so many of the acts and gestures we perform in real life, on a daily basis, in automatic mode, without the slightest attention, without the slightest thought, without the slightest impression of being alive and real ourselves.

That emotion when you fly over a territory that may be virtual, but has a life of its own – its geography, its weather, its animals that live, reproduce and die, its vegetation that grows. When you know that you're only a tiny, vulnerable part of it, but that little by little, as you explore, as you build shelters on the hillsides or on the plains, as you erect tall, lighted columns to help you find your way at night, little by little you make this territory your own, you get to know it, you memorize its topography, you inscribe your presence on it, and from a strange, inhospitable land, you make it your home and your garden.

I fly over the land that has been given to us, so tirelessly, on both sides, I lay torches so that the night no longer belongs entirely to the monsters, I erect columns, shelters, I link the lands by footbridges, and this creation where I have been thrown, I become its co-creator and owner, through hard struggle. Territorial civil servant by day – topographer and civilizer by night.