I’d looked at image and now wanted to explore text a bit more. Initially I planned to create a map from the commands used in game, e.g move west etc to work alongside my screen print series. I began doing so on continuous form paper which I cut down to a regular square shape. Continuous form paper was another digital analogue bridge. Old printers used and it has sprocket holes to be continuously printed on using a wheel. It’s an interesting stock, defined by these characteristic holes punched along both edges. It’s also quite thin a newsprint like, I wanted to embrace this, it was quite cheap feeling in a way and sometimes there was marks that continued from the punched holes onto the rest of the page.
I spent ages writing down all the text from a walk through online.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9qrZC7WUio
I thought I had to include every bit of text because I was conscious it was important to the shape and pattern of the map. I realised there would be interesting instances where the text double backed on it self of began to loop. This was again working within a systems approach. I tried to regularly set the typeface using a font that the commodore 64 used to emulate the games text. I just let it dictate the outcome. This however proved initially ineffective due to the size and neatness of joining the bits of continuous form paper.
I refined it and made it smaller this way you can visualise the whole “journey”. After this when thinking about presentation and how to merge it into the screen print series I thought about having it fit to overlay a series of screen prints. I chose 4 screen prints where I added each layers. It became a representation of the kinetic nature of a loading image. The technology at the time meant images were vertically loaded, I liked the idea of how it was like a screen print, moving down and leaving colour behind, it had this physicality to it. Below is a digital recreation of my final outcome, I used tracing paper to create the layers initially.
I presented to May and Joanna and got some great feedback from them and the rest of the group. I was told that I could work with the physicality of the visual more, perhaps having text that extends off the screen print image background. (This is what I quickly experimented with above). This could also have a meaning that relates to some of the more abstract commands. Someone also mentioned the idea of making this a generative design piece where people’s interaction infers the outcome. Different people could play this, by today’s standards overly complicated video game and I could map out different people’s results and see how the paths merge and divert from one another and become overlapped with each other. My outcome came as somewhat as a surprise, I first thought about creating something digital however after talking to people, Gregg and Joel, experts in the digital design field I came out of this system to create this. I’m proud of it, I located what initially stuck out to me about the Hobbit text game as a piece of design – this striking imagery and worked off it.
Cameron Aitken Graphic Design 