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# A sculptural camera turns a game engine into cinema
- URL: https://www.killscreen.com/kevin-peter-he-passage/
- Published: 2026-08-17T18:21:22.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-17T18:21:22.000Z
- Description: Kevin Peter He and Dan Gorelick staged PASSAGE at an off-SIGGRAPH night in LA—visuals and score as two instruments answering each other live.
- Author: Kill Screen Staff
- Tags: Kevin Peter He, Dan Gorelick, Performance, music, los angeles, ecology, simulation, SIGGRAPH, New York, United States

The last time I had coffee with Kevn Peter He, he walked me through his elaborate setup and it dawned on me: The instrument is a camera. At [LIVE SYSTEMS](https://luma.com/s2tfs8c0?ref=killscreen.com), an off-SIGGRAPH performance night at Spectra Studio in Los Angeles in late July, Kevin Peter He performed *PASSAGE*—piloting an unbroken take through a simulated forest, live in a game engine, with a sculptural camera controller built for the purpose. Dan Gorelick scored the run on cello and a custom-designed electronic instrument, and the framing in [the announcement](https://www.instagram.com/p/DbT4VjgmCQs/?ref=killscreen.com) is key. Kevin Peter He called watching the visual and musical instruments interact in real time "a meaningful step for the work," and that word—instruments, plural—is doing the heavy lifting.

*PASSAGE* imagines an ecosystem as a living circuit board: metallic roots braided into living flora, with fans, lightning and fire cycling through growth, collapse and renewal. On [the project page](https://www.kevinpeterhe.com/passage?ref=killscreen.com), the work sprawls across more forms than most game projects allow themselves—a live cinema performance, an installation where AI-governed deer diagnose faults in the forest's root systems, a prosthetic limb for an over-pruned ficus in a Financial District lobby, even a room fragrance that opens as forest and dries down to cold metal. And there is *Passage.exe*, an objective-less exploration game in which the player cannot alter the ecosystem at all—only navigate, frame, and observe it. Gameplay as an act of documentation.

![A synthetic forest rendered in a game engine, metallic roots glowing among trees](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/08/passage-engine-still.jpg)

The simulated forest of **PASSAGE*. Image: kevinpeterhe.com

This is territory I keep returning to. Indira Ardolic's live-coding sets [turn game engines into instruments](https://www.killscreen.com/indira-ardolics-live-coding-performances-turn-game-engines-into-instruments/), and Jakob Kudsk Steensen talked with us about [art, ecology and the game engine](https://www.killscreen.com/podcast/online-talk-4-28-the-living-archive-jakob-kudsk-steensen-on-art-ecology-and-the-game-engine/) as a site for slow attention. What Kevin Peter He adds is the camera itself as the played object: virtual production's hidden labor of framing, calibration, and control, pushed onstage and given a score. The film does not exist until the hour is over—you watch it get made.

![Gallery installation with screens showing a synthetic forest around a metallic tree sculpture](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/08/passage-fallinglight.jpg)

**Passage.FallingLight*, installed at Arizona State University's MIX Center. Image: kevinpeterhe.com

![Performer silhouetted before a large projection of a simulated forest](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/08/passage-performance-2.jpg)

**Passage.Unfolding* in performance. Image: kevinpeterhe.com