Longest Journey Artwork?

Something very strange happened to me while playing The Longest Journey. I couldn't find any artwork to rip off the walls.

A short explanation. I've been playing games for awhile now, and one of the things I do is take souvenirs from titles that I've finished. To do this, I'll keep an eye out for a painting or poster that appears during the game, and then paint it. Simple, right? You can sort of look at it this way: people paint landscapes all the time. It's a common subject that you can find anywhere. Someone will get some tubes of paint, a canvas and easel, and then wander around the countryside looking for something to paint. In this way, they are taking something real, and making a pseudo-real copy of it.

I'm doing the exact same thing, only in reverse. I'm taking something that doesn't exist (a painting in a computer game) and making something real from it (an actual painting)

So where was I... Oh yes! The Longest Journey.

Now this title had pretty much everything that I could ask for. The main character is a painter in school, she finds out that she can use her innate magical abilities to open doorways to another world through her artwork, and some of the game takes place in a gallery. Simple, right? This should be what they call a 'target rich environment'. No matter where I am in the game, there should be lots of opportunities to find something acrylic worthy.

But it didn't turn out that way. Far from it, in fact. The paintings in the gallery are rendered in low-rez which made getting a good view of them very tricky. The one screen which showed a full view of a painting actually focused on one of the most boring paintings in the gallery. You get a two-second glimpse of the main character's masterpiece which she turns into a magical doorway. Other than that, not much.

I do have one rule. A painting has to be on-screen for longer than two seconds for me to consider it as a subject to paint. So in a bizarre turn of events that I'd never have guessed, I finished the game without some ideas to take back home with me. It's an excellent game, don't get me wrong. And I'm actually overloaded with more ideas than time right now, so it might be all for the best that I don't have a souvenir of my personal Longest Journey.

Ah well. There's always The Longest Journey II : Dreamfall. Wish me luck!

Palm Springs Art Museum

One quick note on the Palm Springs Art Museum.

It's a museum dedicated to modern art, but has some wealthy benefactors on the board so you get a good range of exhibits and artists on display. They are located in Palm Springs and have a theater that was showing movies for the Palm Springs Film Festival, which is where the museum and I first crossed paths. I checked some of the works out when going there for "Mediterranean Food", the movie about the culinary threesome, a wanted to make a return visit when I had more time.

PSAM has a range of art from Picasso to Dali to Warhol, but the real gems are from foreign artists working with unusual materials or political subjects. It's not often that I see something in a gallery that turns me completely off, but PSAM has it. The top floor of the gallery is dedicated to promised works, and a few of these were bad. Bad. Bad as in "give me a break do you take me for a fool" bad.

What makes the Museum well worth the trip is that the clunkers are shown alongside works of breathless beauty, so you get the chance to appreciate both. There are some glass works that are stunning and left me in awe which isn't easy. I'd have thought that living in Tacoma near the Glass Museum would have dulled my appreciation for glassworks, but that's not the case. There were international glass pieces which I want to see again soon. The drawback of glass is that photographs don't do them justice at all. So you can visit the galleries website and see the works, but it's nowhere near the experience of actually seeing them live.

A return visit is called for.

Ripping Art Off

The walls. Almost literally.
There is something great about making a painting about something that I've encountered in a video game. It's especially gratifying when it's a game that I've played all the way through. Beaten. Because most games don't have scores of course. It used to be that you'd get a high score and that would not only be your reward, but a testimony to your ability to beat the game. Not a bad deal, because video games by their nature don't provide anything tangible in the form of a reward for overcoming all the obstacles the game threw at you.
Now there was a game (whose name I can't remember for the life of me) that had a screen pop up at then end asking the player to take a photo of their monitor and send it to the company for a reward. After a week or so, the player would get the coolest thing in the mail from the company. A medal! How awesome is that! I've never seen the medal in real life, but even if it was the cheapest Chinese knock off, it would have been so cool to have a token of accomplishment from the designers of the game.
But no one does that. I'm sure there's good reason for that. For one thing, games are made to be won now. Early games could theoretically be won, but it wasn't an expectation when being played. For the most part, you played as much as you could and got as far as you could and hoped for the best.
But that's OK. Things change, and beating a game feels pretty good.
Except you don't get a medal.
So I like painting something from the game. Not only does it bring back some fond memories, but it's a great token that I was there and had a heck of a good time solving all the puzzles and overcoming all enemies. Think about it as a vacation photograph.

So with "Beyond Good and Evil", I won the game. Not that difficult to do, but a great ride while it lasted. Of course, once the game is done there's not much to do except wait for a possible sequel. In the meantime, there were plenty of little touches in the game which were artistic in their own right and deserved to be painted.
What I've noticed is that many games have digital paintings or posters throughout the levels to add atmosphere. Some of these are extremely well done and I like the idea of a designer making a piece to be shown in the game. It's a great opportunity to capture the mood of the game in another medium. So if you were making a gloomy horror game, you'd get a chance to make a painting that wouldn't be out of place being hung in an abandoned mansion.
You get the idea.
Some of these digital artwork touches are very cool, and I think I'll paint more as I go along.
I wish I'd thought of this earlier, because "Dead Space" is a horror game taking place on a huge, empty space ship and some of the higher levels have posters for movies that are futuristic- but gaudy. Odd little touches that I wouldn't mind painting. However, after I beat the game I erased the thing from my hard drive. So if I want to paint them now, I'd have to reinstall the thing and then play it most of the way through again.
Still. It's a heck of a good game... And I do want those posters..

Art Tour

I hadn't expected to get an ego boost from attending the Highway 62 Art Tour in Yucca Valley, but that's what happened. In brief, the city puts on a huge art show which allows visitors to hit dozens of local galleries and speak with artists by aid of a handy map. The show is pretty broad, so you get to see pottery, ceremics, metal sculptures, painters, craftsmen and women and everything in between.
Of course, if you actually DO art you also get a rough idea of where you rank in the community. From my informal estimate, I'm above the half way mark. Sure there were some folks who's work I really didn't like, but there were some artistic geniuses as well. So placing mid range is pretty good. Very good actually.
I didn't buy any artwork, but I was tempted.

The one artist who sticks in my mind is a woman who paints in acrylics and decorates the canvas with beadwork. I really didn't like her stuff, but there were two that caught my eye. Both of them were bright colored geometric patterns which were impressive. At first I thought that someone else had done them, they were so different from her other works. The more I looked, the more I was tempted to buy them from her. Since she was in the studio at the time I asked her about them and found that they're based on Native American glyphs. Typical glyphs. She'd taken the standard bear and kokopelli figures and created repeating patterns from them.
I'm sorry that I asked. Once she'd pointed it out, I couldn't help but see them and the magic was gone. Ah well.

Artwork on Display

My piece created for the Integratron is now on display as part of the HWY 62 Art Tour! I stopped by the Integratron for a quick sound bath and to see what works were on display for the event. Happily, mine was proudly hanging inside under the sound chamber.
I missed out on it this year, but the Integratron does something very interesting that I'd like to try out in the future. They have artists duel in a 2 hour paint off. If this sounds strange, picture the scene in your head to truly appreciate how weird it can be. Artists line up behind their easels and have two hours to paint as much as possible about pretty much anything under the sun. The winner (or top three-four) winners are rounded up and displayed in a special area inside the Integratron.
There's not much more to it than that. Just a general art competition combined with the subtlety of a cage match.
I'll join it the next time it comes around, but this year I had pressing engagements demanding my time. I swear.

Corsarius

Gotta love nose art, especially from a spaceship!
This is my interpretation of the banner Christopher Sim flew from the prow of the Corsarius. It features a harridan, the ferocious raptor native to Dellaconda over a silver crescent.
I love this piece.
Isn't it interesting that machines people use are infused with parts of their essence? Warbirds were constantly decorated with art from the pilots or ground crew to give them character and personality, but in a way it probably wouldn't have been necessary. Think about this for a second. The Batmobile is cool, no question. But it's cool because it's Batman's car! If it were just a batmobile sans batman, then it would be another concept car. Pretty to look at and a dream to own, but ending there. Batman could drive a Buick and it would still have that essence adhere to it. You'd be driving the Buick around town, not thinking "this is a Buick" but "I'm sitting in the same car that Batman used to chase down escaped Arkham inmates!"
Well, I would at least.
In any case, logic tells us that a car is a car and a plane is a plane. When you're flying to Reno (although God only knows why you'd do something like that) it makes no difference if you're in a standard airline or one that was flown by Sully Sullenberger. As long as you land safely and on time there is no measurable difference.
And yet, there kinda is.

Integratron Cartography Project

This painting captures a Venusian saucer seen through the main skylight inside of the Integratron. The importance of the surrounding images should be obvious but I'll list them here for a complete record.
In the upper left corner of the painting is a star scape with two Venusian saucers journeying through the midnight void of our universe. The number two signifying the bipolar nature of the universe and our spiritual aspects.
Opposite this image on the right side of the canvas is a nebular cluster of type M stars, showing not only a solar nursery but also stellar seeds of the cosmos.


Across the bottom of the painting starting on the left is a depiction of the 1979 squid migration that was documented between San Francisco and Santa Cruz. At that time a convergence of Ley Lines and solar eddies caused the highest recorded activity in harmonically attuned crustaceans and arthropods in all oceanographic history.


Finally, the lower right part of the painting inscribes the 12 elegant equations on which the universe rests. Included in the equations is the sigel for the Thaumaturgic Cartographers as well as the GPS locations of the related geocaches.

There is a purpose to all of this. Earlier I'd recorded on how I became aware that the coin in my possession should be returned to the spiritual cache as soon as possible. The trick being that it also had to be returned in a manner which would not lead to any spiritual backlash against me. After a bit of research and coffee I decided upon the standard 'maze ruse'.
It's a tactic that's been around awhile and for good purpose. It works.
All you need to do is put the object being worked on inside a pattern, or maze, which will confound all spiritual beings from tracing it back to you. Similar to putting coins on your doorstep to guard against witches (or is it vampires?), the mathematical formulae indicated on this painting will cause the Ley Line activity at the Integratron to lock the coin back into it's cache. Any blow back or psychic eddies that could be directed at me will get ensnared in the maze of logic, sort of like how steam escaping a tea kettle can be captured by an overturned cup.

Trust me on this.

Group Think

The more I watch the news, the more aware I am that there's a disconnect between individuals and a group. I love individuals. I hate the group.
People are wonderful on an individual basis because that is when their full humanity comes through. Yet only the most basic and generic emotions come through in large groups. I'm not sure why this is because it doesn't really follow to reason. If each person is a font of miracles, which I fully believe, than in a group the unique characteristics which make us phenominally rare creatures in a vast universe should multiply exponentially. If each one of us is capable of dreaming beyond our limited senses and experience, then together our vision should increase dramatically beyond anything that a single person can experience alone.
But there's no proof if this. It's much more common to see evidence that when large groups of people come together they only succeed in muting our individual capabilities and voices.
Now normally after making such a statement, someone would point out a few rare exceptions to this. What about the moon landing? Who among us would have been able to succeed in that grand adventure on their own? Or which individual would have been able to build Athens or the Taj Mahal alone?
I'm not convinced.
I think it far more likely that only an individual would have been able to conceive a moon landing, or the Taj. But a group of technicians or archatechts would never have come upon something so grand and so beautiful. Each project could have only been started by one person's idea, and then implemented with the help of others.
Stephen Colbert made the observation that because he's such an advocate of the free market, he believes that the musician that makes the most money is, through definition, the best musician in the world. But merely hearing songs that have been written by committee shows the truthiness of this belief. The greatest songs are ones written by a single person. It's the distillation of one individuals greatness, undiluted by others.
It's interesting to extend this to other works of art as well. Art made by the guidance and direction of one person always are more impressive than art made through the strong influences of others. Again, I'm not sure why this is. It would follow that if you gathered a group of artists together to work on a project the result would be greater than what each person would have been able to create individually. But it isn't.
So regardless of talent, make art. Regardless of ability, make something. Create something. Write something. The second you look to others for assistance in your creative efforts you lose your individual greatness.

More Something from Nothing

     As I've said, I've always been inspired by the idea of making something from nothing.
     It started with Moby Dick. Early in the book, the protagonist enters an inn and encounters a painting on the wall. At first the painting seems to be a washed out gray emptiness. But when the man looks closer and allows his eyes to adjust to the dim light of the pub, details come into view. What first appear to be three dark parallel lines become the masts of a foundering ship, and a cloudy form hovering over the ship becomes a massive whale churning the deeps into a pasty froth. I loved the image and immediately wanted to see the painting for myself. I knew the work was complete fiction and the described painting didn't exist. So the next thought that occured to me was to create this painting myself. How hard could it be?
     What really appealed to me was the idea of taking something that doesn't exist, and taking a part of it out, essentially recreating it into the real world. Why I like this I can't say. But in a way it provides a bridge into something invisible. Aside from music, there is nothing more invisible and unsubstantive than a story. A story doesn't exist. It's merely words on a page describing something that doesn't exist. Thin stuff.
     But if you come face to face with a piece of that world. Something you can hold in your hands and touch, it links you to the story and makes it more real and powerful.
     As a quick aside, you can see the same idea play out at any Trek convention. People avidly collect props and replicas of Star Trek, even though the world they inhabit doesn't exist. But when you hold a phaser or communicator, or talk to a Ferengi face to face, than your perception of the show changes. Suddenly the world of Star Trek exists. It may not be close in space or time, but it exists out there more fully in some form.
     So I set out to paint this picture that was described in Melville's work. And I did it all wrong.
     First off, I'd never painted anything before. So I went to the local craft store for supplies. Since I was living in an apartment at the time I knew that I wanted to start out small and with paints that could be cleaned up with water. A bit of research indicated that acrylics would be the best bet for my project. So I grabbed some colors, brushes and some small canvas squares and set to work.
     The problems I encountered were self inflicted, but not unreasonable. I wanted to make this painting on the cheap, so I grabbed cheap paint. Instead of painters acrylics, I'd grabbed the equivalent of poster paint. Now there are many corners you can cut in art and painting is no exception. But the one thing you don't want to skimp on is quality paints. I say this because good paints can cover a lack of skill easily, but only focused talent can make poster paints look good on anything other than posters. The painting became a muddy mess, composed of swirls of muddy colors and accents of humility. I set it aside and vowed never to touch it again.
     But I have the wonderful character trait of being a skinflint.
     What was I to do with the supplies I'd already purchased? I decided to work on another project.
     At the time I was playing Relentless: Twinsen's Odyssey. Incredible computer game. After a little thought, I decided I'd like a painting based on one of the scenes. This fit nicely with my idea of making something tangible from something invisible. I did a screen capture on a likely setting and then sketched out the picture on canvas. But again, I was using poster paints and my lack of experience was disheartening. Simple lines became blobby scrawls, and bright colors mutated into ugly browns. It was a mess.
     So like all good efforts that fail, I put the paints aside and vowed never to take them up again.
     And like all worthy things, I took them up later.

Something from Nothing

     I've always liked art based on something else.
     Now I'm not going to get all philosophical here because I don't want to write it and you don't want to read it. It should be one of the most interesting things in the world to read about how an artist became inspired to create something, or what caused them to take up art to begin with. But it isn't. At best it's tedious and dull, at worst it's overblown nonsense. And I think I know why.
     Let's start with overblown nonsense because that's more fun and pretty easy to spot. When you hear an artist talk about the artistic process and the discussion quickly devolves into a spiritual quest for truth or finding meaning in chaos, then it's overblown nonsense. Art can be these things of course, heck, pretty much anything can. But this is likely a sign of an artist feeling like they have to justify what they do, and not being comfortable with the real answer.      You see, art is fun. It's satisfying on a very basic level. When you look at something you've made and you like it, you get the same boost and happiness from any hard task completed and completed well. But that doesn't come off as a satisfying answer when someone asks you why you do art. Coming back with "because it's cool" doesn't elevate you or your art. It makes you look like an art monkey.
     And why is that? Art is fun and enjoyable. And when it reveals something about human nature, the human condition, alternate perception or the human condition what's the problem with that? It's only natural that it does so. Anything enjoyable says something about people and beauty. It doesn't have to come from a tortured soul. Need an example? No problem. Go see 'Monster in Law' or 'Cheaper By the Dozen 2'. Both films are, because of their medium, art. Both films were made by tortured souls. Both films suck.
     The second artistic answer, that of being tedious and dull, is probably due to an honest mistake on the artists part. What they are trying to do is break down the process of creating something into it's individual components, hoping to reveal the part that is blindingly creative. It doesn't work. Any activity broken down this way becomes a laundry list of mundane activities. The real miracle is that something artistic can arise from them.
     Here's another example of this. I worked for a season at a Christmas tree farm. Loved the hell out of it. If you asked me what I did, I'd reply "I'd warm my hands around a fire in an old oil drum and wait for a customer to ask me to cut down a tree they'd selected. Then I'd grab a hack saw from a rack and follow the customer out to the site of thei tree. Once there, I'd climb under the thing, saw it down, carry it back to the parking lot, attach it to their car, collect a tip and then return to the fire." Not inspiring stuff at all. But at the same time I had a wonderful time and enjoyed every second. It was a blast I have a hard time putting into words.
     Art is sort of the same way.