Delving deeper into the potential of photography within the virtual.
A JOURNEY INTO THE VIRTUAL WORLD #2
If you haven’t yet read my previous post on my photographic adventures within the virtual world, feel free to pop back after you’ve caught up - we may resume afterwards.
Welcome back. So, I’d completed my first project within the virtual world, and having excavated the memories I had associated with SWG, I felt compelled to delve deeper into the potential of photography in the virtual. After several discussions with my tutors however, I decided to further experiment with others forms before settling on what would become ‘my thing’. These projects, in contrast to my previous years of editorial fashion work, were focused more on the documentary image. I may go into detail about these in another post in the future, but suffice to say, one was researching and photographing scenes of historical murders in my home town of Brighton, and the second was a fictional documentary series detailing crime scenes, presented in the form of law enforcement evidence dossiers. Both of these were fun, and I learnt a lot, but neither quite captured my imagination as much as my virtual landscapes project.
It wasn’t until the first semester of my second year that I resumed my [VR]Ography journey, however the previous projects weren’t so casually cast aside. I built on what I had learnt, and my next project was documentary in nature. I wanted to further explore the relations between the physical world and the virtual, to focus on the impact and interpretation of the viewer on works created from a virtual reality, but presented in a context that would indicate to the viewer that they were real - as opposed to my previous project, which presented the images as they were - scenes captured within a digital world. My mind was already in a game space, and as such I decided to create scenes of modern combat, captured within a video game engine, and like before, I decided to re-photograph them, transforming the images into physical photography by the use of film and print. The initial concept of this project was loosely based on the theater of modern media and the over dramatised coverage of conflict, which is often morally unscrupulous with its exaggeration, propaganda, and bias. This can make a viewer feel disconnected to the events on show, and it was this dissonance, twinned with the dissonance of the virtual world which I used as a base for the inception of this project. Before getting into the nitty gritty of actually creating a new body of work, I, as instructed by my tutors had to do the studenty thing of researching artists. My initial inspiration was the aesthetics of the snapshot image, specifically that of war photography. I wanted to draw from that when creating my own collection, to create images that felt as though they might have been taken in the moment, rather then premeditated. The war documentary photography of World War 2 by artists such as Dickery Chapelle and Robert Capa helped me contextualise my ideas. I also looked at the work of Herbert Mason and his archive images from the US Navy. The style of photography that was prevalent during the second world war and conflicts surrounding it fitted perfectly with what I was aiming to achieve, however I wanted to get a more contemporary viewpoint on modern combat. I felt this was important, given the time period and context for the work I hoping to create. Horst Faas and Nick Ut’s imagery from the Vietnam war along with Martin Cleaver and Pete Goldgate’s photographs from the Falklands all bore similarities to the direction I wanted my work to go.
So, I had some inspiration, and a vague idea of what wanted to create. Great. My next problem was the how, and as luck would have it, I had wasted a lot of my free time in the past, using a program which just so happened to be the perfect tool for the task at hand. In 2007, the PC population groaned with fearful anticipation. Crysis came out, and it made every PC look like a heap of shit. Famously, the game pushed the boundaries of graphical fidelity, and only those with powerhouses could enjoy it to its fullest potential. This wasn’t me at the time, but I was due an upgrade. Eventually I built myself a new PC, and about a year or so later, I picked up a copy of the game. I recall it being on sale, which was handy as I had cleared out my coffers with the recent upgrading… Getting the game home, I got to work installing it, and despite not being able to crank it to its max, I was able to enjoy and be very impressed by the game. Something about it stuck, and I ended up playing it into the ground. Something about toying with NK soldiers in a tropical beach setting… hours of fun. Later, after exhausting the game, I found included on the disk the Sandbox 2 utility tool. This allowed for the user to create entire levels from scratch, or just tinker about with the pre-existing ones. Many more hours spent on this, and I felt as though I had gotten every drop of entertainment I could from the game. Fast forward about 7 or 8 years and I’m back, reinstalling Crysis and firing up Sandbox 2.
“Reality is broken. Game designers can fix it.” - Jane McGonigal
The program, as I mentioned allows for the user to create their own levels, and after getting to grips with the user interface once more, I began testing - utilising the library of textures and models included. With each experiment with camera placement, topography change, and model placement, I booted up the game and inspected my efforts. Using command line inputs, I removed the user interface and positioned the camera where I required it. I then took a series of screenshots and imported them into Photoshop. From there I experimented further with colour, curves, and levels in an attempt to create the basic aesthetic I was aiming for.
Once I had settled on a look that I was happy with, I put together a small collection of scenes to be re-photographed. I further enhanced the images captured within the game engine to bring out the details within the scenes - this being an issue in my last virtual world project. Plugging in a thumb drive of images into my parents’ telly again, I set up my camera before the screen and began recapturing the images on film. Unlike my first project, I began with FP-100c.
In this first experiment, I created a set of images that I was happy with, but something wasn’t quite right. Not only did it feel too much like a rehashing of my previous project, the feel of the images didn’t quite match with the theme. More experimentation was required, and more research…
Crysis (2022) Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crysis (Accessed: March 16, 2023).
Herbert Mason - Overview (no date) CENTRE FOR BRITISH PHOTOGRAPHY. Available at: https://britishphotography.org/artists/133-herbert-mason/overview/ (Accessed: March 15, 2023).
Horst Faas (2022) Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst_Faas (Accessed: March 15, 2023).
LithTechGuru (2019) Cryengine2 sandbox2 Basic Tutorial - Crysis, Mod DB. Available at: https://www.moddb.com/games/crysis/tutorials/cryengine2-sandbox2-basic-tutorial (Accessed: March 16, 2023).
Nick Ut (2022) Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Ut (Accessed: March 15, 2023).
Robert Capa (2023) International Center of Photography. Available at: https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/robert-capa?all%2Fall%2Fall%2Fall%2F0 (Accessed: March 15, 2023).
Strochlic, N. (2021) Inside the daring life of a female war photographer, Culture. National Geographic. Available at: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/world-photography-day-dickey-chapelle-female-war-photographer-combat-vietnam (Accessed: March 15, 2023).
That’s it for now, these posts are running on a bit and Substack is making a fuss about it being too big for an email… Well, there is quite a lot of detail - apparently I went somewhat overboard with documenting my process at the time. This was partially required by the course, but perhaps more time could have been spent actually creating work. Either way, I’m making use of it all now. I’ll resume the story in the next post, and if you’re enjoying it check out my previous post while you’re here. Ta!
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