HOMEWORK!!!!

If you haven't done the previous homework do it for fraction of the credit.
- Keep doing the tutorials.
-Just get ready for your mid term projects and cries which is March 6th.
- By the crit time you want to have Finished at least a total of 8 buildings (this includes one sculpture) 3 D print size as well as life size that you insert them in the city scape.
- worked on your architectural models, streets, etc... with additional models, Pepakura, different materials, paint the streets onto the wood, etc..... You have to make it presentable.
-You will definitely have to spend more time in the lab and the workspace to get this done by midterms. I expect to see you around.

No more readings, lectures, etc... for awhile. There may be some small blog assignments. Just lab... so please utilize lab time wisely.

Paper

Tom Hagen

Jeffrey Ray

ART381

22 February, 2017

Gamer Theory Essay

            In his short but informative work Gamer Theory McKenzie Wark denotes the connections between various stimuli and the game most representative of this. In one particular case, he compares the allegorical implications of the widely popular simulation game known as “The Sims” and how various aspects of its features can be compared to how the player is as a human being. We ourselves are very much like the Sims that we create, often using them as a link to try and attempt various means and various scenarios on our lives. When someone first plays the Sims, they attempt to make the closest replica of themselves and their friends, as they are able to within the confines of the game’s abilities. Then we exercise various possible scenarios, be it flirting with your childhood friend, exercising vigorously every day, or perhaps becoming more and more creative. Through this we can attempt to witness what would happen if we pursued these avenues in real life, and whether or not they would be beneficial or hopelessly pointless.

            In a way, you could compare the allegorical undertones to how we construct our cities. Someone with a very orderly thought process will choose a city design that is very straightforward, organized, and in most cases as symmetrical as you can manage. Take for example, my city Lagan, which is very organized, orderly, and could be considered a dystopian utopia. On the surface, this city is more than ideal, with clean streets, low crime rates, and most everyone is well off in terms of financial and social wealth. However, beneath the surface there are lots of shady and overall frightening methods used to achieve these goals. Any and all criminals are tried in a kangaroo court, and upon being found guilty they are sentenced to forced labor until death. Every night, these former criminals are dragged out and required to sweep the streets clean, pick up every piece of trash they find, and then haul all of this waste away to be recycled. I could compare this city to the infamous phrase from George Orwell’s Animal Farm: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Essentially, in this society everyone starts off equal, but upon being found to be a criminal you are demoted to effectively scum on earth. Overall, San Francisco, Gothic Architecture, Timber framing, Mont Saint-Michel and just a dash of medieval German architecture inspired the design of this city and its buildings. I wanted to make a city that was both old and somewhat new at the same time. There is a fairly good chance that I will incorporate the overall hilly layout of San Francisco and the infamous Cable Car system as a primary method for ascending and descending the hill.

            I find the idea of creating a part modern and part futuristic city to be quite revolting, as when most places choose to make a new structure it involves the violation of another structure that could be 500 years old. Above that, I don’t believe this city of mine takes too kindly to public art displays, so it is in the best interests of the people to not have these displays in any way shape or form, lest they suffer consequences. On top of that, I find public art displays to be rather idiotic, as you open your displays up to the wills of man, especially in today’s age when everyone above the age of 18 has access to spray paint. In this mindset, we find a city that expresses itself not through directly public displays of art, but through the sequential painting of houses and such. On one side of this main street, I plan to have a row of houses that are color coordinated and color-softened to make a ROY-G-BIV stance, possibly reflecting homosexuality or perhaps just an aesthetic choice so that each house more or less stands out.

            To sum it all up, the city I intend to create will have a layout more or less based on Mont Saint-Michel, with the cathedral at the top so that no man rests higher than the House of God, and the houses lining a cable-car laden street that leads up to said cathedral. It is my hope that you begin your journey at the cathedral, slowly make your way down the street on a cable-car, and at the bottom is the house you are able to explore, before you depart this little island set aloft in a great river to a small cabin over a bridge that may or may not resemble the Brooklyn Bridge, where you meet your endgame. In terms of a holdout house, I think the house that you visit in the endgame will be under the bridge, fulfilling both the cabin set away from the city and a holdout house at the same time. They had to build over the cabin because the original owner refused to relocate, so they effectively cut off his source of light.

Works Cited:

Wark, McKenzie. "GAMER THEORY 2.0." GAMER THEORY 20 RSS. Future of the Book, n.d. Web. 17 Feb. 2017.

Paper and Public Art

Christine Almendras

ART 381: Critical Play

Professor Jeff Ray

22 February 2017

Ideal Life in Simulation Games

            Often times, videogames are made for the mere purpose of escaping reality. Humans engage and create interactive games in order to distract themselves from the real world, and allow them to interact with a world that they are able to manipulate and change to their desire. In McKenzie Wark’s book, Gamer Theory, Wark discusses and argues that computer games are becoming a “utopian version of the world itself.” Within the book, Wark touches upon subjects and different games such as The Cave, The Sims, Vice City, Civilization III, etc. However, the purpose of this essay will be to analyze the fact that people often create what they deem “a perfect life” in utopian, simulation games such as The Sims.

            To begin, the purpose of any game made under The Sims is to give the player the power to create a virtual reality, and play as “themselves” through a character called a “sim.” These “sims” are allowed to engage in daily human activities such as getting a job, getting married, cleaning the house, eating, and even going to the bathroom. Wark mentions that The Sims is a game “that could be a parody of everyday life in ‘consumer society’” (Wark, 28). In other words, Wark is arguing that the player often lives vicariously through their “sim” character, while engaging in the consumerism society and buying items which they wouldn’t be able to do otherwise in the real world. Therefore, I often believe that people tend to play The Sims in order to become successful in life within their heads. A majority of people all dream of owning a yacht, having a successful marriage, owning a mansion, and having steady income. So, with this claim, players often believe you have completed the game of The Sims when you have successfully achieved everything in your life, and at the point, it would be pointless to live in that virtual reality because there is no more goal to achieve.

The Sims is a game that starts the player from the bottom. From personal experience, the player makes their sim and is given about 10,000 dollars to either build or refurnish a home. From there, the player has ultimate control of what happens to their Sim. Most of the time, people play the game in order to advance to the top. The feeling of accomplishment, and going from nothing to everything and success at once is a feeling most people are proud of. As said in Gamer Theory, is it mentioned that “the game rewards the player every time [they] buy new stuff … it is a parody of consumerism and at some point your stuff takes over your life” (Wark, 28). Because society is surrounded by the idea of capitalism and consumerism, we are often discouraged when we cannot afford the finest things in the real world. However, we find comfort and engage in a world of fantasy when we are able to do that through our sim characters. Therefore, I believe that The Sims allow people to live a life that they fantasize about, and wish to achieve “the American Dream” at some point in their lives.

It should be noted that The Sims is a game in which the player has full control of their destiny and their character. In Game Theory, it is mentioned that “as the player proceeds through the game, [they] gradually discover the rules that operate in the universe constructed by the game.” FIX LATER

In relation to my city that I wish to build in this class, I definitely have this type of mindset and I was able to make a connection with the types of people who play The Sims. As someone who was an avid player of the Sims, I was the type who was determined to live a successful life and to live vicariously through my sim. I wanted my sim to have a nice, modern home, have a significant other and children, and have a job that made a lot of money. In various ways, I can connect this with how I want my city since I want my city to be a modern utopia. I have accepted the fact that I want perfection in my city, and I want everything to look nice, simple and modern because this is how I want my future life to be. Therefore, I think that I have been living vicariously through my city as other people live a successful, ideal life through their Sims. To further explain what my city entails, I want all of my buildings to have some type of modernistic feel to it. In particular, I would want my housing and apartment buildings to have a modernistic influence, while my commercial and government buildings to have a futuristic and unique look.

Overall, I believe that videogames often given us a reason to distract us from the real world.  Whether it is to distract us from personal problems or gives us pleasure, it allows us to live in a virtual reality that is so different from our own lives. Videogames serve the very purpose of allowing humans to unleash their inner imagination.

Public Art

I like the idea of having interactive public art in my city. Maybe the player can interact with this art, and this type could be find in commercial areas or parks. 

I want some of the public art in my city to have to do with water, since water is a motif throughout the whole environment.

I would also want my public art to be modern, unique and stand out. Again, maybe it could even be interactive with the environment around it.

Notes about Lecture Week 4

Commenting on the content of Lecture 4, I liked that the game Minecraft was included within the lecture. If anything, I think it is a game where I have the most experience building a city, and I have had some inspiration for my current city in past Minecraft worlds I have created. Within the lecture, I also found Vito Acconci's "Muir Island Walkway" a beautiful piece of art. It even gave me some ideas I had about my city, since I wanted to incorporated bridges over still water in my city. I think the architecture on his work is very modernistic, and gives other people an idea of how I want my city to look like. 

Paper

Utopian Juxtaposition 

                    In “Gamer Theory”, by McKenzie Wark, the analogy of the cave is brought up in depth. The idea that, even though we view videogames as an escape from the trial of everyday life, we fail to realize that life itself is a game; it is a space of player versus player, or winner versus loser, a space of rules, a space that is far more algorithmic than spontaneous. Wark does later bring up, however, that it is not a perfect parallel. That our obsession with games leads to a disconnect that effects our lives: that there is no restart, extra lives, or escape from our game outside of the cave. With this in mind I would like to refer to climate change.       

In our modern day society we are conducting heavy conversation about the effects of climate change. Regardless of what end of the spectrum you are on, it is a topic that coaxes our attention. Aside from the groups that deny the existence of global warming and climate change as a whole, a predominant debate within the communities is whether the protection of climate and earth should take heavy dominance over economic growth and stability. This goes back to Wark’s argument that life is a game, an instance of versus. In this situation it is the idea of competitive importance. However, this also brings up the question of that disconnect. We, as a whole, are aware that life does not have a restart button. We are aware that our earth does not have an immediate re-spawn point, but we still debate its importance. This also applies to the more economic side of the argument. If our economy falls we cannot just restart it. It takes years of changes to bring the economy back from a crashed state. So, thusly, we are in a tangle of competition; weighing the positives and negatives against each other in the heat of debate. We are stuck in a stalemate. Or are we?

            The inspiration for my city in terms of concept is to contradict this idea of black and white, of having to starkly choose one or the other; the idea of utopian juxtaposition in order to achieve both goals. The idea is that both economic growth as well as protection of our planet are equal in importance and plausible. This is to be represented in the composition of the buildings. They are a direct juxtaposition of one another. The basic aesthetic inspirations are drawn from a combination of fairy lore, that surrounds a sense of oneness with nature so much so that it is dwelled in and among without damage being caused to it, and steampunk stories, that heavily rely on the idea of industry and large grand buildings composed of metals and technology. More tangible sources of inspiration range from visual artists, like watercolor artist Stephanie Pui-Mun Law who creates environments of idealistic, peaceful coexistence between the inhabitance of nature and humans using bright vibrant color and compositions that insinuate friendly intention. Other artists that achieve this goal are architects like Frank Lloyd Wright and Andrew T Boyne. Many of Frank Lloyd Wright’s buildings are inlayed into the environment around it, providing flow between the piece and the nature around it. Even when buildings are not inlayed into nature Frank Lloyd Wright draws inspiration for a building’s form heavily from nature, resulting in his coined organic architecture. Andrew T Boyne himself also participates in organic style architecture and is an advocate for the “Box theory”. The “Box theory” is the idea that the composition of windows and the placement of architecture in nature so that it flows with it actually effects the mood of inhabitants of said building. On Boyne’s website he distinctly defines three kinds of “box” in which a box merely defines buildings confined space consisting of a ceiling and floor. He states that the most stereotypical use of light and windows is when the box is perforated (see figures below for reference). These uses of windows and light can be pushed further however, by means of both “breaking the box” and “exploding the box” in which the view of the outside space is idealized and creates a better sense of flow and oneness between these two spaces. However, Boyne also states that within “Box theory” that if you disassemble the box it allows for less of a feeling of confinement that we associate with a traditional floor and ceiling as well as allowing for better manipulation of light that creates the most optimal sense of flow between the internal and external space.

         

Having learned about this “Box theory” I do intended to draw inspiration from it and create a variant of buildings that manipulate the stereotypical box space and light in order to create a flow between the innards of my buildings and the outside. Lastly, I would like to reference H.R. Giger. While he does tend to use darker themes within his organic architecture works it does help highlight the interesting shapes present within the human body and I do intend to dedicate at least one part of the city to this form of organic architecture as well.

            By drawing inspiration from the different art styles and processes of these artists an environment that idealistically intertwines both economical, industrial growth with the safe growth of nature and the safety of climate will hope to come to fruition. This city will not only be a criticism of the split on this issue, but also an example of hope that it can occur in our world as well. After all, the first signs of such architecture have already sprouted with the intentions to build what are known as “Vertical Forests” in China.     

Response to Lecture and Public art pictures

Response to Fourth Week Lecture:

With a combination of examples of public art as well as the photographs of War hammer cities all I could really think about was how cities themselves are giant art pieces. To me the only differences between the city and its public art is the form versus function argument. While a building you use may be slightly limited by its need for a balance between form and function, public art is an installation with the sole purpose of creating form. However, this idea that a building is required to satisfy both form and function makes those buildings with seemingly impossible forms all the more beautiful. This attraction to things we can see ourselves both enjoying aesthetically, as well as gaining a function from may also explain the large popularity of games like Minecraft, Warcraft, and War Hammer. It is a fascinating concept that we, as the player, have the ultimate power of creating aesthetically pleasing buildings that have a significant function, both of which seem impossible to balance, and yet it is achieved by us with a few minor clicks.

Pictures of Public Art"

The "Believe" sculpture in our very own Reno. 

This is what I like the call "The Blue Demon Horse". It is a large statue at the entrance of the Denver International Airport. An airport riddled with conspiracy theories.

This is the Peeing Dog Statue just outside of the Museum of Art in Orange County. 

Public Sculptures and Lecture Responses

Lecture Responses

I want to compare Minecraft and Sims, because in some ways, they are very similar, since they both let people construct the utopian version of the world, as Wark argues in Gamer Theory. First of all, Minecraft's game spirit is that, what I want to do, go to the game and do it. The process of building the game world is an open exploration. And in Sims, mimicking what is red demand, then go fix it. It is a simulation of real life, which contains a variety of possibilities. From the perspective of the world view, Minecraft's world is made of a box, you can arbitrarily assemble a variety of boxes, materials, the formation of new boxes, tools. Sims is a real simulation of your home, social.

Essay

Izzy DeGuero

Art 381

Feb. 22 2017

Gaming in the Real World

Games have many different possibilities and outcomes. Whether it be board games like monopoly where we can pretend to have all the money or end up losing it all, similar to real life; or video games where we can build our own cities and have it all. Games are a type of escape. Board Games allowed people to be someone that they couldn’t be in real life, however now we can go beyond that with video games. We can have anything, any job we want, or all the money we want. We can create any structure, make all rules and even bend the laws of physics controlling time and space; there are no limits with video games. This result leads people to be sucked into a world that is better than the reality that we actually live.

In the book Gamer Theory by McKenzie Wark, Wark describes how gaming is a way to disengage from the real world to be taken to a world where there is no sense of concern or trouble.  It explains how video games can be a bad thing for some and a distraction from people living their actual life in the real world. How in games you can always start over, like if you die or lose the level. But we lose sense of ourselves and forget that we can’t just hit restart in our actual reality. Video games have become a world of their own that encompassed the lives of people shaping the way they live in their reality. However, if we were to look at the big picture our reality it is not just video games but phones, T.V’s, computers that are distracting us now.

As I am writing this on February 21, 2017 Katy Perry released a music video directed by Matthew Cullen, to her new song Chained to the Rhythm. Where she perfectly demonstrated in creating a world that she feels we all live in, how we are living in a bubble. I found this video interesting because it showed how we are oblivious to what is happening around us. It starts off with Perry in a futuristic world and highlights the chaos of the world with crazy roller coasters. She also emphasizes the 50’s era by showcasing the ideal family unit and how that symbolized the American Dream. She shows the fact that we stare at our phones and screens all the time and don’t interact with actual reality of the world in front us. The world is not some perfect cookie cutter life, and she tries to grab our attention to look up and notice. However, just because the world may not be perfect does not mean that there can’t be amazing beauty in the world we live in and the worlds that we create.

Since we have the ability to create these worlds we also have the ability to create some inventive and beautiful artwork. We used to just draw, paint, sculpt, then we moved to computers and created this gaming world of art, and now we even have virtual reality where we can paint in 3d. Art used to be restricted but now there are endless possibilities, nothing is off limits. That’s why for the city that I am creating I want to create the impossible. Somewhat like in Katy Perry’s music video I also intend to include the past and future visual aspects into my own city. I want my city to have an unknown feeling of not knowing what time the character is in. Buildings will be from the past, present, and future.

The inspiration for my city came from the T.V. show Outlander. Outlander is about a woman who is from 1945 visiting Scotland and is transported to 18^th century Scotland. When watching the show I fell in love with the small town and architecture in 1945 as well as the architecture in the 18^th century. Which made me want to combine the years and make it into one, include brand new buildings built from the 18^th century as well as the ruins from the 18^th century. Since the show took place in Scotland there was vast amounts of countryside and nature. I wanted this to be a main feature in my city so I decided to have my city be encompassed in nature. The buildings will have vines growing on the sides, trees growing from roofs and a river running right through the city. This is a city that is a dystopia yet a little utopia as well.

            In Gamer Theory, Wark discuses the use of a dystopia and a utopia and how “all dystopian writing is also utopian”(108). When we create a world that is of dystopian form we are thus insinuating that a utopia is impossible to achieve however Wark explains “ the failure of utopia might point to nothing so much as the inadequate properties of the lines employed to make it operational” (108).  That’s why for my city I feel like it resembles a type of dystopia that has reached utopia. It is a dystopia in the fact that the city looks a little in disarray however there is a peacefulness that the city has, there is calming aspect, to feel one with nature.

That is why games are so addicting because they transport people to another world. Whether that is perceived as bad or good depends on the person playing the game. Yet the art of gaming today has created something so vast that it does leave us wanting more. Which is why the overall outcome that I want for my city is to encompass the feeling of adventure, serenity, and intrigue.