Spatial design: Gameworld
Created by Leeser Architecture
Simulating Simulation
Leeser Architecture, New York
For this exhibition, which attempts to highlight a conflation of the boundaries between video gaming and games based artwork and the world around us, the space designed for this work is intended to further blur and challenge the boundaries between the real and the simulated.The Gameworld environment begins as a surface with a non-directional grid of 3 dimensional elevated points, not unlike the top surface of a Lego block. At the scale of the exhibition space, one is surrounded by these dots, the tops of which are somewhat higher than the line of sight.But the dots themselves don't remain singular. According to the varying requirements of each installation, they merge with others nearby, they grow or shrink and become the display surfaces and interfaces of projection screens, portrait gallery walls, research tables, and game playing stations.Navigation within this landscape becomes the primary objective of this world. Not only the navigation from module to module, but also deep within each module as the exhibition visitor explores the many worlds of the gaming experiences featured.This un-real landscape is entirely executed in digital blue amplifying the physical tactility while at the same time producing an affect of slightly absurd mono-materiality.Like many videogames, Gameworld is conceived as a series of temporal levels. Blue is the color of this world's first level. As the exhibit advances to level 2, level 3, or beyond, the blue modules are replaced by those with new games and installations and subsequently made of a different color. The modules become pink in level 2, until eventually the entire environment has been reclaimed and re-colored.Projected on giant screens at the head of the exhibition environment, a virtual model of this blue landscape is imported into a game engine allowing players to navigate the Simulated Simulation of Gameworld, while inhabiting the actual exhibition environment. Thus this real virtual world seamlessly transitions into a gaming environment, from virtual reality to real virtuality and vice versa.The entry corridor to this world is comprised of a digital carpet of scrambled imagery from video arcade game startup screens. Entering Gameworld for the first time is as easy as logging in. No password required.
This un-real landscape is entirely executed in digital blue amplifying the physical tactility while at the same time producing an affect of slightly absurd mono-materiality.
Like many videogames, Gameworld is conceived as a series of temporal levels. Blue is the color of this world's first level. As the exhibit advances to level 2, level 3, or beyond, the blue modules are replaced by those with new games and installations and subsequently made of a different color. The modules become pink in level 2, until eventually the entire environment has been reclaimed and re-colored.
