SHOPPING - A REAL EXPERIENCE?

‘Going shopping’ is not a straightforward event anymore.

Look at these shops. Yes they really are shops! Leave your ‘normal’ life and enter a new world.  In fact it can be a fantasy experience.

This is the interior of Manderina Duck. A shop that specialises in upmarket travel luggage and classes itself as a 'destination shop'.  The first thing that hits you when entering the shop is a giant yellow backside and pair of legs that also has a sound system!!

Do you enter the land of the giants? Are you meant to feel this is your start to plan your escape to your fantasy holiday? The design is actually meant to simulate Gullivers Travels and encourages the mind into a play situation.  Whatever the reason for the design, reality is exaggerated and our minds can be distorted to adapt to a hyperreal situation.

A further example is the O2 shop which takes the hyperreality further with its futuristic space age look.

It is also redisigned throughout the year to simulate the season at that time.  Here it has been designed to make the consumer feel a winter mood with cracks and splits on the center belt to represent an icy surface.
Does this simulation even trick the mind into feeling temperature?
pictures taken from DESIGN FOR SHOPPING by SARA MANUELLI

Ikea as a Hyperreal space

When I begin to think of simulation spaces and elements of hyperreal I think of shops and especially shops with showrooms. Ikea is a brilliant example of this. When you walk around Ikea you become part of an elaborate portrayal of the ideal home that has been designed with great detail and attention (for example in some room sets there are pictures that show "family").

Even though we know and are aware that this is a shop we become oblivious to this marketing ploy. The room "sets" show a way of life and customers think that Ikea are not just selling things but a lifestyle. This abstract space however does feel strangely real although it is a staged representation we begin to use the space as if it was real. And Ikea generally use this to their adavantage, thus none of those "DO NOT SIT ON THE FURNITURE" signs. All this means that we the consumer do not think of this as a falsified environment, we think that it is real so this space becomes the hyperreal.

Thomas Demand

This is a link about a Fine Art Photographer whose work is considered to touch on some of the ideas discussed in yesterday's lecture: Baudrillard's Simulation/Simulacra.  Demand's life-size models construct simulations of real-life spaces derived from popular culture or mass media and, in particular, focus on sensational news media 'sites'.  Think of the media shots of Josef Fritzl's house/bunker, the Oval Office etc. which are somehow ingrained into our memories through saturation broadcasts by the media.  His work 'suggests a tension between the fabricated and the real' and in doing so questions the veracity of the medium of photography itself and the camera, as an instrument historically relied upon to convey the 'truth', is thrown into doubt.

Thomas Demand, Klause/Tavern 2, 2006,

Further information is available at:

http://www.cmoa.org/international/html/art/demand.htm

8 Bit Waterslide in Real Life

I just bumped into a few animators and they recommended this:

Did You Get the Chance to Visit Crapland?

This should get you in the mood for the festive season. Perhaps this is a type of simulation that the British do particularly well:

Amateur Video of 'Santa Claus's Village'

Here's a link to see an amateur video of Santa Claus's Village:

Games as Escapism

Games have probably overtaken more traditional forms of escapism, such as film, plays and music as they seem to encompass all of these into one, as well as adding interaction. I think the main reason for this is games tell a story that you can actively participate in, they transport you to another reality and tell you a story, making some more engaging than reading a book or watching a movie.
When looking at games as a form of escapism, there are two branches, the more traditional form of telling a story and playing it out, and simulation games. I see simulation games as the ultimate form of escapism, especially massively multiplayer online games (MMO’s) such as World of Warcraft, Second Life and Diablo. These introduce a complete level playing field where players can interact with each other from all around the world. When playing an online game, stigmas that affect everyone in real life, looks, wealth, beliefs, all become meaningless.
I think people play games and see them as an escape because they see these alternate realities as “fair” something that real life ultimately isn’t. The essence of randomness is pretty much removed from games giving them an air of fairness, the events are programmed to happen, where as in real life you could go to the shops and be hit by a bus, which is hardly fair. People play a games to achieve a goal, goals are much more realistic in games, given enough time you will achieve what you set out to do. Life is the opposite. You could work and try your entire life to reach a goal that you may never achieve, due to the lack of ‘fairness’ and the randomness involved in reality.
Another reason why I think games are the ultimate form of escape is the way they draw you in. Completing an event in a game that is followed by some dramatic score as a recognition of your achievement is lacking from every day life, people want to experience epics event in their lives, but may not have the capacity to do so, making games the perfect way to live out fantasy's.
Despite all the positives of escapism to games, they can also lead to making real life seem much less real. When looking at games such as Call of Duty the issue of terrorism and war is simplified. But that also brings about probably the best part of playing games, you chose what you want to play and what you want to experience, if you don't like it, you play something else more suited to what your looking for.

Time/Place.

When I was a small girl I was lucky enough to be brought up on a farm in Somerset, open fields were my own personal time and place. I used to go field walking with my Jack Russel Kandy, and we walk for what seemed miles looking for bits and pieces on the ground you could find all sorts of things for example, once I found a rusty pair of round victorian glasses with the glass still in, and this would send me off into another world because I would wonder what kind of person wore these. The open field can be like a time capsule in itself, and for me would be a valuable learning tool through my findings as an educational experience.

The Car Incident

Recently I did a project on situations, regarding a minor car incident I had recently. The meaning of `situation` refers to one's place and direction, relative to one's surrounding bearing location, orientation, position, the place where the thing is located, site, geography and the location of the phenomena such as other towns etc, the objective and set of conditions to which a person reacts.

I researched various types of Google maps that include ariel views showing the exact spot where the accident occurred. Then researched into a general form of geographical map that shows towns and villages with relation to the site itself.

Topophilia

After Wednesdays lecture I was thinking a lot about Topophilia and how it related to me and in a sense what I do in games design.

I think sports is the perfect way to underline what Topophilia really is. Personally the feeling when walking into a football stadium is powerful, it can be a place of emotion, both good and bad. This can also be seen in the players, the home advantage is well recognised due to the feeling of being at somewhere you can control and somewhere where your supporters can really make themselves heard. This can also work in the opposite way, arriving at a stadium that brings back bad memories, it could be because of previous defeats holding a bad omen or something worse such as the events that happened at Hillsborough in 1989, people who were there or who lost someone close to them there will always remember that location for a negative reason.

I found relating this to games design to be quite difficult, sometimes it’s harder to get emotionally attached to an environment in a game then it is say the woods by your house. However the more I thought about it the more I remembered good feelings arriving at certain locations in game, as you then know you have made it, this is especially apparent in survival horror games. Many of these games feature very little “safe” zones, so when you arrive at one finally away from the marauding zombies or demons can bring a feeling of relief, the Left 4 Dead series is a great example of this. Some games play on the emotion of panic and terror to push the player along, knowing that you will eventually reach a safe spot after all the ups and down is the incentive to keep going.

MAKING SENSE OF MAPS

Maps are used to convey information to the reader.  In spaces we use maps to educate us, give sense of direction and orientation which make us feel more safe and secure.  Without maps and direction we can get confused, even anxious and worried. On a journey it helps make sense of the place we want to get to.

Maps help us visualise, anticipate, plan and read about what to expect. It fulfils and satisfies human emotions. It helps us focus and to see the way forward.

Imagine life without maps. Always wondering where we are and what is beyond the proximity that we are familiar with. It helps to identity the place you are in and the place you want to go.
Maps let us visualise a world around us. There is more in the information in the lines of the map than the words.

Today we take maps for granted. Maps have been used for thousands of years and here we see an old simple map where ‘X’ marks the spot.

Maps were mostly advanced and developed by the Greeks. In the 6th century Hecataeus (check him out) drew the world and depicts it as an island with Greece as its’ centre.  Hecataeus was a great geographer and philosopher and was highly thought of in his time.

Though Hecataeus was well travelled I am curious how his mind worked when composing this map.

How was he thinking when he perceived the oceans surrounded the land?  Was the ocean to him as space is to us today?  Was the ocean seen as infinity to the reader at that time bearing in mind that they did not know what was beyond this?

What made him think the continents were merged in this way?

It leads me to the question that maybe his map was fanciful and although he had a great knowledge from his travels he was only imagining or perceiving what the rest of the world looked like.

Mapping and Photography

I probably made my first connection between mapping and photography around the age of five. In this case, the mapping was not for my benefit but for my distraught parents. Faced with a rising five year old who could not be kept in the house, or indeed the neighbourhood, my father, a professional photographer, showed me how to use a simple camera and instructed me to take photographs during my travels. I realise now that this was his way of mapping my illicit journeys. All went well until he developed images of me several miles from home, happily making my way through the North Tyne canal with the local narrow boat community.

I've never looked back, almost literally, and have been walking the landscape ever since; I'm sixty-three now. I loathe being indoors and, contrary to what was said this morning, do all my daydreaming, reflection and contemplation in fields, moors and woodland, where I am most at home. I relate very little to other people, but often feel an instinctive, almost supernatural, connection with place and landscape. It's interesting to me that this morning's lecture brought up the idea of 'soul'; I think that this is what I try to find in my landscape images.

Given the restrictions of lens coverage, landscape photographers must always choose which part of a 360 degree vista to photograph. I do this by internalizing a mental map of the whole view and it is to this map that I turn for my choosing. My images are thus as much part of an internal landscape as an external one.

I am hoping that my Final Major Project later this year will be a book about 'Real Back Gardens' and will concern how people value and use the external spaces around their property. The back garden, rather than the front, is of interest to me because it has no public persona ; a bit like seeing someone before they put their makeup on.

It occurs to me that interesting research for this book might include mapping the ways in which people in a small neighbourhood use this space - drying washing, parking, refuse bins, wildlife, planting etc. It's a line of thought I'll be pursuing as a result of this morning's lecture amd seminar.  Liz Rowett.

Janet Cardiff - The Missing Voice (1999)

Janet Cardiff uses maps of London to create her own tours which are a narrative through time and space. Maps are not used just for getting to a final destination but we use maps to navigate through spaces we are not familiar with. What happens in our mind while we are navigating through that space?

Janet Cardiff tries to relate to the listener a stream of consciousness scenarios that she invents in her mind while she walks through the streets. Starting at Whitechapel Library, visitors were given a Discman. You would leave the building and find yourself transported in time. What was that sound? Who is speaking to you? Where does reality end, and what’s imagined begin…?

ALSO CHECK OUT:

Richard Wentworth An area of outstanding unnatural beauty (2002)

AND:

Scanner (aka Robin Rimbauld) Surface noise (1998) - He lay the sheet music to 'London Bridge is falling down' over a map of the city. At the points where notes from the music fell across the map, Scanner took photos with a digital camera and recorded the sound that was happening at that point too, creating a 'soundtrack to a living city'.

Time-Space compression

As a follow on from the lecture today which included some talk about Berlin I wanted to highlight this, which I personally thought was a tad bit freaky. This is truly wiping out history.

This relatively innocent looking childs sandpit is where Hitler's dead body was found and subsequently burnt.

something interesting

something even more interesting here

look this is interesting

QI - The world was never flat.

Going to try the html and hope that it works, but if that fails;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDXrpNk3fy4
Check out the link.

Because Stephen Fry is Always Right.

Spatial mapping using Axial maps

Axial maps sometimes referred to as Space Syntax is a system of mapping accessibility. It allows human behaviour, communication and interaction to be mapped in relation to Spatial layouts. It helps us understand how existing spaces are working and the potential effects of new interventions. The following images show some axial maps of Trafalgar Square when Norman Foster was asked to redesign it. They mapped different options and the best proposal was a central staircase leading from a newly pedestrianised area between the square and the National Gallery.




(images from http://www.lydiaheard.com/)

The following image from Google Earth shows how successful the space has been. As you can see its full of people.



Axial maps can show the impact of:
1. The street network on urban movement patterns and flows (Hillier and Iida, 2005),and the evolution of the local centres and sub-centres. (Hillier, 2006, 1999)
2. Spatial design on feelings of security and insecurity (Hillier 2004)
3. Urban Spatial segregation and social disadvantage (Vaughan et al 2005)
4. Spatial layouts on organisational cultures (Penn, 1999)
5. Office redesign on productivity (Bafna, 2005)
6. Museum layout on use and satisfaction (Stavroulaki and Peponis 2002, Hillier and Tzorzti 2007)
(Taken from http://www.udeworld.com/)

Website Maps

Continuing on from yesterday, Web/Graphic designers plot out the website navigation using a simple form of sitemap, please refer to uploaded example. Basically this acts as an aid in the event of a problem with the linking of all the pages within the site. The plan is to have all the pages linking with each other but sometimes this can go wrong and the map is a paper version of the navigation you can refer back to, to help you re-establish those broken. This is not quite so crucial if the site only consists of a few pages, as it is fairly easy to backtrack and solve the problem. But say for instance you were building a site on the scale of Amazon, this map would be a life line in establishing any broken links.

Another form of sitemap is used by Google, Yahoo and other search engine providers. This is a page which is attached to the back end of your website, you provide a list of pages within the site and a link to each of the pages. When the site is submitted to say, Google for optimization ( Google crawls the site with their crawler Googlebot, which is searching for keywords and relevant information relating to your site, the more information it can find the further the site moves up the rankings) sometimes Googlebot doesn’t always crawl all the pages, as there could be missing or broken links. in this case if the sitemap page has been included, Googlebot will crawl this page seeking the information.

Both images are my own

skate park project in association with the life centre

For my external design project I have been researching infomation on the Life Centre that is being built in Central Park Plymouth. The skate park which is in  the area now is going to be demolished and the area rebuilt on. At the moment this is the main park that skaters and bmx riders use the most. In my project I have been commissioned to design, using glass, a way that the concrete from the skate parks bowl can be recycled into 150 small awards and two large that will be given to the people that use the park. Before the park is torn down the bowl will be covered by an illustration by James Jarvis, a Londoner. This will be then carefully dismanteld (hopefully) so that it can then be combined with hot glass to create the awards.

UVW mapping within 3D Studio Max

UVW mapping is a mathematical technique used within 3D Studio Max(a game designing software) to convert a 2D image (a texture) to a 3D object. The easiest way to describe UVW is probably to think of the idea with flat World image drawn on the paper and then wrapped around a globe.

The third dimension allows texture maps to wrap in complex ways onto irregular surfaces. Each point in a UVW map corresponds to a point on the surface of object. UVW mapping is commonly used to texture map non-platonic objects, non-geometric primitives, and other irregularly-shaped objects, such as characters, furniture, buildings etc.

The Use of Maps in Strategy Games

Strategy games are probably the best link between games and maps, as without them the game wouldn't be able to function.

Real-time strategy (RTS) games are a type of wargame where the player controls units across a vast area in real time. These games use maps to display what is going on in the game, usually they also involve a minimap for a more tactical view, the maps can be zoomed in or out of to get a scale of the situation.
These maps change the very way the game is played, many RTS games use resources that are spent on units and buildings in the game, these resources are strategically placed so no side gets any sort of advantage. The map is usually also designed in a strategic fashion, creating choke points and open areas to create strategic situations for the player to overcome or use to their advantage.
However these maps are not only used in a strategic sense, many are beautfiully rendered containing masses of detail for example Relics' Dawn of War 2

Maps also play an integral part in games such as Sied Miers Civilization

This is a game where the player aims to ultimately take over the world by becoming one of historys great leaders, and changing how the world ultimately ends up. The player begins with one city, the civilization then spreads out creating new citys and towns, roads, mines, farms, everything you would expect to find on a real traditional map. In a way the maps evolve, as technology increases your map will change from that of a stone age prehistoric style hut through the times of the renaissance and finally to modern day sprawling technological hubs.