Kid A Mnesia Exhibition
Digital exhibition of Radiohead's Kid A and Amnesiac artwork and music.
Kid A Mnesia Exhibition is a walking simulator that came out in 2021, put out by Epic Games for macOS, Windows, and PlayStation 5. It's a digital museum built around the music and visuals from Radiohead's albums *Kid A* (2000) and *Amnesiac* (2001). The game was made by Namethemachine, Arbitrarily Good Productions, and Epic Games, working with Radiohead singer Thom Yorke, producer Nigel Godrich, and cover artist Stanley Donwood. The idea started as a real-world installation, but that fell through because of logistics and the COVID-19 pandemic. It was announced alongside the compilation *Kid A Mnesia* and came out for free on November 18, 2021. Critics liked it, praising how it mixed music, art, and technology.
- type
- Video game
- release_year
- 2021
- platforms
- macOS, Windows, PlayStation 5
- publisher
- Epic Games
- developers
- Namethemachine, Arbitrarily Good Productions, Epic Games
- collaborators
- Thom Yorke, Nigel Godrich, Stanley Donwood
- genre
- Walking simulator
Lore & Background
Kid A Mnesia Exhibition was conceived as a physical installation artwork to be constructed from shipping containers and exhibited in cities around the world. Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood imagined 'a huge red construction' that would look 'as if a brutalist spacecraft had crash-landed into the classical architecture'. The construction was first planned for the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, but would not fit; the plan moved to the Royal Albert Hall, but was rejected by Westminster City Council. The physical installation was ultimately canceled by the COVID-19 pandemic, shifting focus to a digital exhibition that 'didn't have to conform to any normal rules of an exhibition. Or reality.'
Reader's Guide
Kid A Mnesia Exhibition is significant as a digital adaptation of a canceled physical art installation, blending music, visual art and interactive technology. Developed over two years, the team followed a guiding principle of exhibiting no new work, using only material from the Kid A and Amnesiac recording sessions. Players move through an abstract virtual museum with no enemies, score system or levels, exploring rooms such as the central pyramid featuring songs like 'How to Disappear Completely' and 'Pyramid Song', the Paper Chamber with sketchbook pages, and the Televisions room. The New Yorker described the museum as 'a brutalist cathedral full of byzantine corridors, majestic rooms, banks of buzzing cathode-ray-tube televisions, and carpets of fluttering sketchbook pages'. Critics praised it as a literal expression of video games as art, and it was named one of the best games of the year by The New Yorker. A physical installation, Motion Picture House: Kid A Mnesia, eventually opened at the 2026 Coachella festival in California and is set to tour the US.
Did You Know?
- Kid A Mnesia Exhibition was originally planned as a physical installation made from shipping containers, but was canceled due to logistical problems and the COVID-19 pandemic.
- The exhibition was developed over two years using Maya and Unreal Engine, with a team including theatre set designer Christine Jones.
- Players cannot die, and there are no enemies, no score system, and no levels to complete.
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