Experiment 2 – Systems
The joy of playing with an interesting word as ‘escalation’ has given way, somewhat, to a despair at having to create more works on that theme. I’m happy with the concise exploration of it in Experiment 1 because it avoids something else I’ve come to notice all my further ideas and experiments have had: repetition.
The problem with escalation is that it is a word that describes a movement in one direction. Thinking about it as existing upon a spectrum there is the problem where as soon you reach the end of the spectrum you are escalating on then all movement stops. What do you do then? Reset and repeat? As a formal quality it feels so disappointing.
Of course I decide how I frame the information I am giving out with these works. Therefore I could just stop talking about my experiments before I get to that point, but as a post-graduate student heading towards the end of their degree I have a preoccupation with creating interesting work I can actually exhibit. I’m also too dumb to lie, remember my lies, and lie convincingly – although you only have my word for that and maybe I’m lying now.
The search for escalation without end took a lot of different turns, but in searching for it I got caught up with an idea else I was keen to explore in this series of works: escalation as a natural cause of a system. This idea first took root in my mind via the spiritualist and philosopher Alan Watts:
Now what he describes here is conflict as a natural part of a system and that would be fascinating to work on at length, but out of scope in the time provided. Instead what I have time for is to look at escalation and conflict as a symptom of much smaller systems.
With two conceptual goals under arm I took a half formed idea, a model of my head, some tools I have no idea how to use and I started to play.
Experiment progression
v1 – Balloon head
Obviously unhelpful, but you have to start somewhere. Originally this plaster version of my head was used to make a silicone balloon of my head, so I felt like I had to start in balloon land. I will definitely return to this at some point and animate it breathing like it does in the actual physical work I made.
v2 – Hair simulation
The first experiment led to me getting a hang of the simulation settings, enough to make things that looked okay at least, so I decided to break the entire process by turning my entire head into a hair simulation and then to run it backwards.
Now we were getting somewhere. Escalation as an investigation of simulations and systems. If I drew out the time scale of this and worked on the way it looks some more it would probably be okay as a piece on its own, but why stop experimenting there?
v3 – Explosion
A basic explosion. Pieces of the model would continue stretching and cascading forever. Can you believe that took 12 hours to render? Mental. I hate rendering – the process of taking 3D data and turning into images, just in case you don’t know what I’m talking about – so I abandoned that kind of simulation and went for something else.
Final experiment
Just a random frame from the middle of putting this together. So much work in adding textures to broken pieces. If I was smarter it wouldn’t have taken an entire day and more to do.
Once upon a time I had a job making 3D art for computer games. The best thing about the job, then and now, is saying that out loud. The reality was a mind numbing horror. Imagine spending 2+ years to make some idiots dream come true, get middling reviews, seeing your work head straight to the bargain bin, and doing it all again. It’s not for me.
Some skills remain, however, and being able to make things that can simulate and render at 60 frames per second [Film: 24fps, Australian TV: 25fps, USA TV: 30fps] is way more appealing than spending 12 hours producing 17 moderately usable seconds.
All my systems so far had been pretty limited in their escalation, so I went back thinking about systems that escalate without end and I hit on one really big one: the universe.
Emanating from a single point and accelerating outwards for forever, the universe is one of the few examples I could find of escalation without end. So I decided to create one and I decided to put as both at the centre.
Exterior Screen
This screen is to be mounted on the wall showing the distant view of the ongoing simulation.
VR View
And this is an early view of the perspective when looking in VR.
Like all Virtual Reality experiences it is better viewed first hand than watched in a 16:9 aspect ration in 2D. This video is meant to be somewhat illustrative, but not a substitute for actually putting on a VR helmet and looking.