Research

Research and Prototype

In response to the prompt, I decided to start by looking at the art movements that are a response to Realism. Alike how Bennett Foddy’s games act as a reminder to what many perceived as Realism in games “that what we think of as ‘real’ is all too often nothing more than that which is most familiar,”(QWOP, GRIP and the Construction of Video Game Realism, Jonathan McCalmont, Futuristic) I was inspired to research on how artists were responding to the Realism movement in Fine arts from the past. As a result, I have focused down my research to revolve around Surrealism. Looking into museum collections and research, I’ve also found, within the broader topic of Surrealism, Magic Realism and the Metaphysical Art movement.

Initially, my research of Surrealism has resulted in many interesting findings that could be used as inspiration for the project, including the artworks by Giorgio de Chirico, Wolfgang Lettl, Max Ernst, and Zdzisław Beksiński. The main purpose of Surrealism is to revolutionize the human experience and display the dream and the psychological tension deep within the human’s mind. It seems that, while Realism aims to depict the ‘real’ as the actual thing we can see and no decoration, Surrealism strives beyond that; It aims to release the imagery of the unconscious mind that lies beyond the surface of what we can see. In fact, this might be even more ‘real’ in showing raw emotions and thoughts that Realism is.

The Pilot, 2002. Wolfgang Lettl.

Another finding related to Surrealism is Magic Realism. Like Surrealism, Magic Realism is a response to Realism in which the mundane and realistic environment becomes infested by magical elements. One of the artists of this style is Frida Kahlo, whose paintings, especially the self portraits, depicted a surreal imagery in which the normal and the magical becomes one in order to represent the emotions that couldn’t be conveyed with just a Realism self portrait.

The Metaphysical Art movement was the movement that inspired Surrealism. The MoMA collection has a few artworks of this movement, all by the artist Giorgio de Chirico. The main purpose of this art style, similar to Surrealism, is to represent the vision of the mind beyond physical reality, resulting in dream-like imageries. In particular, Metaphysical Art used the unexpected juxtaposition of similar objects against unfamiliar objects to create the dream-like quality, which are often eerie and uncanny. This could be seen in many of de Chirico's works, where the mundane objects (painted in a realistic style) are juxtaposed in an incomprehensible layout, among the scenery of unnaturally empty buildings, weird perspective, and harsh, long shadows.

Piazza d'Italia, 1888-1978. Giorgio de Chirico.

Overall, all of the artists mentioned above, as well as the art style, falls under the category of Surrealism. While looking more in depth into the different artists of the movement, I have found a quote by de Chirico that is very interesting for this project; the artist said that "to become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken it will enter the regions of childhood vision and dream." This leads me back to my starting point of Foddy’s games which in a way, challenges what the perceived ‘Realism’ of games is, which in that case was the traditional controls and physics. If a work of art must “escape all human limits,” then these limits in games might be the certain controls, the pacing, or the ‘realistic’ visual that many games have formed within that template. As a result, this project will aim to follow de Chirico’s vision of a work of art (in this case, a game) that becomes a kind of dream and a representation of the unconscious mind which is the core of Surrealism.

As for the prototype, I ended up creating 2 smaller prototypes with 2 different mechanics. Initially, I was struggling with how to go about creating the prototype by using the same method with Surrealism; while painting in a Surrealism style, in order to show the unconscious, one might stop trying to think logically while painting, but you cannot do that when creating, and especially when coding a game. As a result, I tried to create a prototype that behaves with a certain amount of randomness, in order to reflect the individualistic and unpredictable characteristic of the imageries of the unconscious in Surrealism. The first prototype is an infinitely looping hallway in which the environment becomes more and more distorted. With the use of variables in the spatial layout, colors, lights, and lens distortion in unity, this prototype is intended to reflect the absence of logic and control, similar to the practice of Automatism used by many surrealist artists. The more the player moves forward in the scene, the more distorted it becomes, until it resembles nothing from the initial hallway at the start of the game. As for the second prototype, it was inspired mainly by the works of Giorgio de Chirico, Wolfgang Lettl, as well as Ian Cheng’s Emissaries. The prototype uses an orthographic camera to try to imitate de Chirico’s weird perspective and harsh shadows of the Metaphysical art. In the scene, cubes can be created infinitely, and when these cubes are clicked on, they grow legs. This is inspired by many of Lettl’s paintings in which human legs seem to grow from unexpected objects. When a certain number of legs are grown, the cubes start moving. In addition, once a certain amount of legs are grown, the cube will destroy itself. The intention for this prototype is to create behaviors in a group of objects which seem to juxtaposed each other in its context, while at the same time the behavior isn’t entirely predictable. This is inspired by Ian Cheng’s Emissaries where the game doesn’t require a player, but rather the character inside the game starts interacting, initiating a chain of unpredictable actions.

Emissaries, 2015-2017. Ian Cheng.