Wednesday 4 November 2015

What If, Metropolis - OGR

4 comments:

  1. OGR 04/11/2015

    Hey Mark,

    A characteristically professional OGR - thank you. You make the experience of encountering your work and engaging with it effortless in this respect and I hope your classmates can take inspiration from what you do and how you do it in terms of presenting yourself and your creative output.

    You've absolutely embedded the motifs and materiality of Lalique into your various building thumbnails, so I'm happy you moved past your initial disappointment with your collaborator; as discussed, when it comes to translating some of your final designs into CGI, one of your big challenges will be replicating the deep, milky lustre of Lalique's glass work etc. I'm excited to see you try.

    I've read and re-read your travelogue a number of times, and while it's absolutely an elaborate feat of imagination (and I love the idea of the tall buildings acting as lighthouses and the great city-sized accretion of tankers), I was left wondering as to the 'reason' why Lalique should be so associated with this city. You make the point that it was fashioned in the style of his work to comfort the new arrivals from Europe, and yet I was still hoping for greater simpatico between the city and its visionary, because right now, you've got a futuristic city in the style of Lalique, as opposed to a city that is somehow 'born' from Lalique. In this sense, I'm left wondering if your city is merely decorative, as opposed to transmitting some intrinsic visual concept.

    An example of what I mean: Lalique associates with Art Nouveau - Art Nouveau associates with the concept of the Fin de siecle:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fin_de_siècle

    Art Nouveau - for all its utter beauty and craft - associates with a kind of decadence, or 'too much-ness' - a sort of luxuriant apathy and the inevitability of ruin and decay; Art Nouveau is rather like a rose at its most open, heady and over-powering, and just on the brink of collapse. As an aesthetic, therefore, Lalique has baggage - and fascinating baggage, and, while I'm always excited by your thumbnails, and by your speedy assimilation of a brief, and don't dislike any of the buildings you're developing, I guess I'm just left wondering about the potency of 'New-Tenero' itself? Is it, ultimately, a made-up city in Lalique fancy dress or a city that is 'about' Lalique? I know which one is the more intriguing of the two...

    Discuss!

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  2. thanks Phil, I realised talking to Jordan on Monday I was chewing at the wrong end of the stick on my travelogue. Im just digesting what Fin de Siecle is and will rethink the connection of my world. Would you have a spare 5mins tomo just to go over this new idea, I won't have the travelogue finished but will have a better understanding where I'm heading, cheers

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    Replies
    1. Hey Mark - yes, we can have a chat, no probs. Friday was hectic for a bunch of reasons, so I'm sorry we didn't get a chance to talk.

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