IX. Tying my Work To Postmodernism & Mythology

It’s important that narrative and Campbell’s work about mythology ^[66] becomes part of my work, I really feel that the mass absorption of digital artifacts exposes us to digitized fragments of media at an unprecedented scale. 

Using Apps to allow the user to build a narrative all their own. These avatars, these archetypes allow for a singular and unique experience in the 3D installations, this could be the placement of the user in the space or the symbolism that they understand.

Using artifacts to build contemplations on time and space, a sanctuary from the bombardment of the real world, This is a chapel that is built, like Rothko’s Chapel ^[67] where Modernist art is used as a way to contemplate the sublime ^[68]. These pieces will be contemplations on the boundless architectural limits for a virtual space. These will be massive like Land Art and will speak to our environment similarly as the art that Sue Spaid coined as ‘Ecovention’ [69], art dealing with how individuals affect their space.

X. The Solution in Three distinct pieces of art

A. Prototype 1:

1. 1. 1. Narrative App
      2. 2D Composition

Working with the idea of negative space was really brought me to this piece. Using the stark shots of brutalist architecture in the Brazilian film about the construction of the government buildings in Brazilia. I imagine a space that both contains the positive and negative space, forcing the viewer to move through it as if through a labyrinth, a device used for centuries to signify meditation and the mysteries of the universe not unlike the ancient labyrinth paired with a gothic cathedral-like the one at Chartres Cathedral. ^[70]

1. 1. 1. Art Bible
      2. App of 3D installation level
      3. UI Design for user navigation

B. Prototype 2:

1. 1. 1. 2D Composition

The second composition comes from the geometric elements of generative work that has then been processed with pixel sorting and machine learning reduction and recomposing. It stands to me like the spire of some new modernist terminal, I envisioned immediately a way to transverse to the top, with a mote below. It is a citadel, built to represent ascending. I wanted to surround it by a foreboding and harsh room that is based on the interior hull of a freighter ship. 

1. 1. 1. Art Bible
      2. App of 3D installation level
      3. UI Design for user navigation

The UI design again will use the narrative and user-influenced apps to base itself around the symbolism. The glyphs and the structure hierarchy will mirror the apps so that even though the UI will not be traditional in the way it is laid out and thus will be completely foreign unless the user has gone through the apps first. This will be utilizing the concepts of symbolism in communication. ^[71]

C. Prototype 3:

1. 1. 1. 2D Composition

The third composition is own to be viewed as a monument to the abstraction of beauty, making a temple-like space with the distorted changed paneled image of a manga character. I am struck by anime and manga how the visual shorthand to describe facial features, and motion and movement on a static sequence piece are so abstracted from the real world. I was particularly drawn to the strange shapes that form to represent an eye and the way that this abstraction has come to represent beauty where people are now physically changing themselves to look more like these characters. Like scarification or other ritualistic transformation of the body, this is a monument to the way in which we see each other, as the audience moves through the pillars and columns perhaps they will reflect on this as people would traversing the monumental sculptures of Buddha.

1. 1. 1. Art Bible
      2. App of 3D installation level

This 3D level installation will use generative elements built for Blender. I’ve decided to use Blender because of the community support and the flexibility of the program when it comes to rendering engines and v-ray that is free. This breaks me away from the strict confines of a “play-for-pay” system that is present in Maya. Once certain models are built I will then begin the export and node construction in Unreal per piece, as a traditional modular workflow for level design.

1. 1. 1. UI Design for user navigation