Making East London: An Interview with Lawrence Lek 

One of the things that interests me about games is that they can place people in roles they wouldn’t normally occupy or allow them access to spaces that are usually inaccessible. For my V&A East Storehouse commission, the game is set within a virtual version of one of the conservation studios. These are highly controlled environments that visitors cannot ordinarily enter, but a game offers another way of experiencing them. Players take on the role of a robot conservation worker and explore the space from that perspective. 

It’s not simply about access, though. I‘m interested in blurring the boundaries between worker and player, labour and play. Games and simulations allow us to question these distinctions and think differently about our relationship to institutions, labour and participation. 

Within the game, players are tasked with locating missing fragments of an object from the museum’s collection.  functions as a game mechanic, but it is also a form of work. 

My approach developed quite intuitively. From a young age, I was interested in drawing, science fiction and making things. 

As a London-based artist, it is often easier to work at a kitchen table than to access a workshop. I began creating virtual worlds partly out of necessity. I had simply run out of space in my first studio. Moving into digital space became a way of expanding my practice as much as it was an artistic decision. The situation is similar to how musicians can now record and produce music from a laptop rather than relying on a professional studio. The accessibility of digital tools creates new possibilities for experimentation and artistic freedom. 

When I studied architecture, I was fascinated by land art, monumental sculpture and site-specific installation. These works are inseparable from a particular location. For this commission, I was interested in exploring what site-specificity means within a virtual environment. 

Digital works complicate that relationship because they are not fixed to one place. Even so, I’m always interested in creating a dialogue between a real site and a virtual world. When people enter one of these environments, they experience a sense of being somewhere else. This has often been criticised as a form of escapism, but I see it differently. It is no more escapist than reading a novel. Virtual spaces can offer forms of access and experience that many people might not otherwise have. 

The game and video installation is called Guanyin 2: The Caretaker. The player-character is named Guanyin after the Buddhist bodhisattva associated with compassion. It’s the second chapter in an ongoing project centred on a character I describe as a “Care Bot” – a robot whose purpose is to look after things. Discussions around AI and robotics tend to focus on efficiency, automation and human obsolescence. What interests me instead is the possibility of care, and empathy. 

In this commission, Guanyin works as a conservation technician at V&A East Storehouse. At the beginning of the game, players discover that the previous Care Bot mysteriously disappeared while carrying out an important task. As the new caretaker, you must explore the Storehouse and locate missing fragments of an object from the collection. 

Along the way, players uncover more about the object itself: a scale model of the ArcelorMittal Orbit, the landmark sculpture created for the London 2012 Olympic Games. What interests me about the Orbit is how quickly cultural memory can shift. During the Olympics, it was one of the most recognisable landmarks in London. Today, there are people living in East London who have little memory of that moment or its significance. The work became a way of thinking about how objects carry histories and how those histories can gradually fade from public consciousness. 

Because video games allow different objects, stories and spaces to coexist within the same environment, they offer an interesting way to explore these changing relationships between memory, place and heritage. 

One aspect of the collection that interested me was the way architecture is represented and preserved. Architecture can be collected in many forms, whether through fragments of buildings, drawings, plans or scale models. 

This became particularly important when I began thinking about the ArcelorMittal Orbit and its role within the game. The player is tasked with locating missing fragments of a scale model of the structure, gradually reconstructing it through exploration. 

What interests me about scale models is that they are simultaneously playful and powerful. They allow us to compress large, complex structures into something we can hold, study and control. In many ways, they reflect broader questions about how institutions collect, interpret and preserve the built environment. 

The Orbit itself is also an interesting object because it represents a relatively recent moment in London’s history. It raises questions about how museums can help preserve the stories attached to particular places and events. 

One significant development has been the opportunity to continue working with the character of Guanyin across multiple projects. 

My work is often shaped by particular sites and environments rather than recurring characters. With Guanyin, however, I began to think about how a character can evolve across different works and contexts. This commission represents the next stage in that process. 

The project has also reconnected me with questions of site-specificity. It required me to carefully map and respond to a particular location, translating aspects of the Storehouse into a virtual environment. 

Finally, the commission allowed me to develop more complex forms of movement and exploration within the game itself. Because the robot character is only around twenty centimetres tall, everyday elements of the conservation studios become vast landscapes. Players climb shelves, move beneath tables and navigate spaces that appear monumental from the character’s perspective. 

This emphasis on movement and exploration became an important part of the experience and opened up new possibilities for future projects. 

Definitely. Even large commercial game studios tend to specialise in particular types of games because developing new systems from scratch is incredibly time consuming. Studios often build upon mechanics and technologies they have already developed. 

Exploration has become a recurring element in my work because it offers a relatively simple yet powerful way for people to engage with an environment and its stories. 

What changes from project to project is the degree to which the work is “gamified”. Some projects may include more structured objectives and challenges, while others prioritise atmosphere, movement and discovery. The format always depends on the ideas I am trying to explore. 

For me, the most important thing is creating a meaningful relationship between the player and the world they are inhabiting. 

One of the biggest challenges was deciding where the boundaries of the game should be. 

Game design offers almost limitless possibilities. You can continue adding new mechanics, new environments and new objectives indefinitely. The challenge is deciding what is essential and refining the experience into something focused and meaningful. 

That challenge was particularly important within an exhibition context. Visitors engage with artworks differently from players encountering a game at home. Questions such as how people enter the work, how long they spend with it and how easily they understand its objectives become critical considerations. 

The process was therefore about finding a balance: creating an experience that felt rich and exploratory while remaining accessible within the context of a museum visit. 

Ultimately, the goal was to create something that could function both as an artwork and as a game, allowing visitors to engage with ideas about care, labour, memory and technology through direct experience rather than explanation. 

The game operates as a kind of mirror of everyday life. It presents a familiar environment, but from an unfamiliar perspective. 

My hope is that after spending time in this miniature world, visitors will think differently about the buildings around them.  

More broadly, the work returns to the idea of Guanyin and the question of care. As artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies become increasingly present in our lives, I think it is important to consider what forms of empathy, responsibility and care we might extend towards new forms of intelligence.