Sunday, November 28, 2010

(EN) Some sketching

A bloodelf paladin, nothing major, just a 20minute sketching this morning while waking up. God I need coffee.




Friday, November 26, 2010

(MA) Storyboards extravaganza!

Some very, very quick sketchwork for our project, done in 2x Dexter episodes time.









Tuesday, November 23, 2010

(MA) Something to read

Well, tonight I got some reading to do, I'll share here. It's about Simulacra and Simulation (Simulacres et Simulation in French) a philosophical treatise by Jean Baudrillard seeking to interrogate the relationship among reality, symbols, and society. I thought it would be useful for our project, which deals with the reality and the other side. I'll write what I think about it later as a thought out piece later on.

Let's just read now;

The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.

Simulacra and Simulation is most known for its discussion of images, signs, and how they relate to contemporaneity. Baudrillard claims that our current society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that human experience is of a simulation of reality. Moreover, these simulacra are not merely mediations of reality, nor even deceptive mediations of reality; they are not based in a reality nor do they hide a reality, they simply hide that anything like reality is irrelevant to our current understanding of our lives. The simulacra that Baudrillard refers to are the significations and symbolism of culture and media that construct perceived reality, the acquired understanding by which our lives and shared existence is rendered legible; Baudrillard believed that society has become so saturated with these simulacra and our lives so saturated with the constructs of society that all meaning was being rendered meaningless by being infinitely mutable. Baudrillard called this phenomenon the "precession of simulacra".

"Simulacra and Simulation" breaks the sign-order into 4 stages:

  1. The first stage is a faithful image/copy, where we believe, and it may even be correct that, a sign is a "reflection of a profound reality" (pg 6), this is a good appearance, in what Baudrillard called "the sacramental order".
  2. The second stage is perversion of reality, this is where we believe the sign to be an unfaithful copy, which "masks and denatures" reality as an "evil appearance-it is of the order of maleficence". Here, signs and images do not faithfully show us reality, but can hint at the existence of something real which the sign itself is incapable of encapsulating.
  3. The third stage masks the absence of a profound reality, where the simulacrum pretends to be a faithful copy, but it is a copy with no original. Signs and images claim to represent something real, but no representation is taking place and arbitrary images are merely suggested as things which they have no relationship to. Baudrillard calls this the "order of sorcery".
  4. The fourth stage is pure simulation, in which the simulacrum has no relationship to any reality whatsoever. Here, signs merely reflect other signs and any claim to reality on the part of images or signs is only of the order of other such claims.

Simulacra and Simulation identifies three types of simulacra and identifies each with a historical period:

  1. First order, associated with the premodern period, where the image is clearly an artificial placemarker for the real item. The uniqueness of objects and situations marks them as irreproducibly real and signification obviously gropes towards this reality.
  2. Second order, associated with the modernity of the Industrial Revolution, where distinctions between image and reality break down due to the proliferation of mass-reproducible copies of items, turning them into commodities. The commodity's ability to imitate reality threatens to replace the original version, especially when the individual person is only concerned with consuming for some utility a functional facsimile.
  3. Third order, associated with the postmodernity, where the simulacrum precedes the original and the distinction between reality and representation vanishes. There is only the simulacrum, and originality becomes a totally meaningless concept.[2]

Baudrillard theorizes that the lack of distinctions between reality and simulacra originates in several phenomena:

  1. Contemporary media including television, film, print and the Internet, which are responsible for blurring the line between goods that are needed and goods for which a need is created by commercial images.
  2. Exchange value, in which the value of goods is based on money rather than usefulness.
  3. Multinational capitalism, which separates produced goods from the plants, minerals and other original materials and the processes used to create them.
  4. Urbanization, which separates humans from the natural world.
  5. Language and ideology, in which language is used to obscure rather than reveal reality when used by dominant, politically powerful groups.

A specific analogy that Baudrillard uses is a fable derived from On Exactitude in Science by Jorge Luis Borges. In it, a great Empire created a map that was so detailed it was as large as the Empire itself. The actual map grew and decayed as the Empire itself conquered or lost territory. When the Empire crumbled, all that was left was the map. In Baudrillard's rendition, it is the map that people live in, the simulation of reality, and it is reality that is crumbling away from disuse.

The transition from signs which dissimulate something to signs which dissimulate that there is nothing, marks the decisive turning point. The first implies a theology of truth and secrecy (to which the notion of ideology still belongs). The second inaugurates an age of simulacra and simulation, in which there is no longer any God to recognize his own, nor any last judgment to separate truth from false, the real from its artificial resurrection, since everything is already dead and risen in advance.[3]

It is important to note that when Baudrillard refers to the "precession of simulacra" in Simulacra and Simulation, he is referring to the way simulacra have come to precede the real in the sense mentioned above, rather than to any succession of historical phases of the image. Referring to "On Exactitude in Science", he argued that just as for contemporary society the simulated copy had superseded the original object, so, too, the map had come to precede the geographic territory (c.f. Map–territory relation), e.g. the first Gulf War (see below): the image of war preceded real war.

Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory - precession of simulacra - it is the map that engenders the territory and if we were to revive the fable today, it would be the territory whose shreds are slowly rotting across the map.[4]

Friday, November 19, 2010

(EN) Some more alchemy done!

just a small 45 minute sketching session today.
















Thursday, November 18, 2010

(MA) Alchemy !

Hey, its late, but I got something worthy to put here.

It's called alchemy, an open drawing program.

http://al.chemy.org/


It's just...brilliant to put into words. The program is fast, very fast, it has very limited selection, and unfortunately no pressure support for tablets, but I'm sure that will come fast.

The simplicity of the program makes you work like magic, just draw draw draw. It's not for making complete artworks though, just small sketches and concept work to move on later.

This was just 3-4 minutes on the program, only using 1 brush. Te-hee!

(MA) Not much this week

Like the title says, nothing much this week. I've been feeling a bit down and ill for some reason, even though I have no physical symptoms, apart from a horrible headache which comes and goes.

We discussed a bit on what to do next, I'll be doing couple of quick storyboard drawing for our project to explain it a bit better, atleast visually.

Apart from that, I took a course on Puredata (or PD), a programming language for visual/audio software, however I really didn't like it's language that much. The idea of memorising objects to write a visual language with drag&drop boxes didn't appeal to me, and the program looks like it's meant for a more audio-related crowd.

Anyways, I'll update more once I got some stuff going on. Oh and, mini note, I got on facebook. hurray :(

Friday, November 12, 2010

(MA) The Edinburgh trip, and the seeds of the project

Ok (phew) where to begin;

It all started on 4th of november. I mean, I was planning on going to Edinburgh at some point, but not then. I finished my job interview at 2pm, and called Serkan, with whom we'll be doing this project this year, and he just said, "hop on a train and come to Edinburgh now, you'll never be able to do that if you get the job."

Oh well...

I went home, packed and got on the 5pm train. By the way, small detail, never-ever-ever go on peak hour trains, they're bloody expensive. Took me 5 miserable no-internet hours to get there, and by the time I arrived, I set my foot on this empty city. Even the train station, which is supposed to be full of people was deserted.


For future reference, this is Serkan.

Serkan picked me up, and after some lengthly chats, we went to sleep. The next day was quite amazing for me. As an artist, many things effect me quite dramatically. Aesthetics, culture and many other small details fill me with emotions. I was not ready for this city though.


Spires, spires and more gothic buildings! oh my!





As if saved in a time bubble from 18th century, Edinburgh looks like one of those cities you see in movies about duellists, mages, dark sorcery and witches. From every corner I expected people with rapiers and flintlock pistols running about. The walls and the architecture simply mirrored this old era. Apart from couple of buildings that stood out like 1980's architecture nightmares with the "modern" title (especially bank buildings) The city throughout is able to give you this feeling. I sincerely suggest anyone who has the ability to go there see it for yourselves.


Even random buildings have arrow-slits!


And the city has a castle built on a cliff in the middle of it.

Anyways, focusing on the project. It was the start of this year when Serkan came up with the idea of using my skills not for just computer related imagery, but for mobile phones as well. To be completely honest with you, I still use my old sony w810 cellphone, an ancient history from 2005. I've played around with smartphones before when I had the chance, but the idea of connecting to internet wherever just scares me, as I can quickly get addicted and instead of doing my normal chores while travelling, which is reading many many books, I would just chat online with friends. The idea was quite ungrown at that time though. We just had the idea of making a narrative story aided with imagery, which would be on a mobile.

There was a lot of brainstorming as we walked around Edinburgh like proper tourists, and to be honest, it was my first time visiting somewhere with a camera, I just always hated the idea, but damn it was fun!






Anyways, what we have in mind right now is a game where people will walk about in a city, unlocking clues and mysteries, just like a detective movie, or the DaVinci code(urgh). It's going to be a "Location Based Narrative Advanture Game which plays with your sense of Reality" if we need long and unusable titles for the future!

We came up with seperate ideas. I wanted to use the telephone screen like a HUD (heads up display) you have in games and fighter jets, where you would be informed about your surroundings, using the device as a "Looking Glass" to the real world. I wanted people to twirl, look through and just walk around using their cellphones like a mirror in a dark room when they couldn't see the vampire that was hunting them. I want people to look at their smartphones not as a smartphone, but something arcane and magic which has a special value.

Serkan wants to make the narrative into layers. The idea is, while the player is playing the game, he will gradually unlock layers into the unreal, seperating our world from what we want to show.
The final layer will be something completely different, something maybe mad to see, a mirroring of our reality in some wicked dimension.

Other ideas flew around in the next couple of days. We watched the 5th of november firework show on top of a hill while discussing the subject. I wanted to include the idea of a "Fog of War" in the game. I think it would be fun for the player to unlock this other "map" on top of our real-world map like the googlemaps on gps. As he walks around, he would unravel the city slowly, and maybe seperate quests would show up, and he could go investigate them. I am not sure if this is even possible, but it would be quite fun.

Serkan, always the realist, is more concerned about the technological aspects.



Next, while walking about museums, and speaking about the addictive parts of games, came the idea of making it a bit thrilling for the players at some points. I want the players to do what they wouldn't normally do in real world, ofcourse without getting them into much trouble. My example would be a person in a library, where the game asks him to shout at a specific decibel for unlocking the next secret, perhaps the echo from his vantage point would reveal some clue about the storyline. Normally a person wouldn't shout or scream in a library, and it would be pretty fun to do it once, while not putting the gamer in danger and probably helping some adrenaline run through his body, which is the whole point.


Museums filled with rapiers and flintlock pistols!

My other example was counting the amount of windows of the castle from a specific point in the middle of the street, standing on a zebra crossing. Again the same principle of not putting the player in danger, but excitement of doing something not right while trying to count the windows would be quite fun while people are honking and yelling at the player.

We spoke about which OS(operating system) to use for this project. Although I don't have any experience in coding, especially for smartphones, thankfully Serkan has some ideas, and selected Android system to use for this project much to my delight, I just really really hate Apple.

I'll write this much for now, I'll include some photos I've taken over the course of this 4 day trip, and write more later.

(MA) The week of travels!

Oh my...where to begin!

I will probably do seperate entries for each idea I have in mind after this mad week I've gone through. I went to Edinburgh and Nottingham, met with A LOT of people in my area and other expertises, and finally the seeds for our project are thrown in the soil.



Hum hum hum, so much to write about!

I am planning to write my ideas and what we've done under

1- Edinburgh
2- London
3- Nottingham

seperate entries, what we've spoken about with Serkan (Who's the guy I'm doing the project with, but we'll come to that later) and how the project is forming. I will also provide some pictures, because Edinburgh may well be the most exciting city I've ever seen.

Anyways, more will come today, let me wake up first and eat something, too many coach and train rides are taking their toll from my body!

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

(MA) Reflective Studies / Research




Today we had a lecture about reflective thinking, studying and keeping a blog.

I have mixed feelings about this.

On one hand, I just hate the idea of sharing what I think and what I do with the people. I also think that blogs are hard to find, and a very small community compared to various forums all over the internet. For random people to find my blog and look at it daily seems highly unlikely, which kinda saps my will about this.

On the other hand, I can understand that there's somehow a science behind this. As Jonathan said today in the lecture, our brain is just like our muscles. You have to train specific parts to teach it how to do things. I think that by using such methods we can train our brain to keep specific information, learn from its mistakes and organize the research into something manageable. Blogs, however simplified, can be a starting tool for this. Which is why I decided to try it.

I will however, try to keep my audiance limited to few people I trust outside the MA. Lets start simple.