EXP2: Setting the setting

Having played around with CryEngine and creating some beautiful paradisiac scenes I felt it was time to reflect and decide on what sort of environment my monument should sit in. I wanted it to convey the concepts I was trying to explore in my electroliquid haiku:

"Lightness of Concept:

(mass mu) transience

of fragile nothingess"

I found the idea of fragile nothingness particularly poignant. It reminded me of a scene in the movie El Topo, an acid western by Jodorowsky from the 1970s (if you haven't seen it, don't watch it because it is scarring). Nihilistic and melancholic, the perfect atmosphere for my monument.

In the meantime I was googling ancient Japanese paintings for landscape ideas, came across the important idea of oku - the Japanese word for depth and centre. In Japanese cities, painting, theatre and architecture there are two centres - the real/commercial/material centre at the fore, and the mysterious/spirital/unnatainable centre in the distance. The space between these centres is one of my original concepts - mu/ma. So I spent some time sketching out a "Japanese" style drawing of my setting with my Sundial as my first centre, and my obelisk as my oku - spiritual centre. What came out was some sort of mountainous, lifeless space which was still full of movement and energy.

Environment Sketch

I then set about modelling this scene. CryEngine allows you to play with the diurnal which I loved and I wanted to incorporate the idea of "broken symmetry" by cutting the suns circularity by the obelisk. The continuous circle is a representation of infinity. The break in its bottom reminds us the "nothing is infinite." I can design infinity/nothingness in the same way that I understand the concept - through a paradox or series of paradoxes, which I tried to sketch in my original axonometric for Mu and Lightness (of Mass).

We join spokes together in a wheel,

but it is the center hole

that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,

but it is the emptiness inside

that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,

but it is the inner space

that makes it livable.

We work with being

but non-being is what we use.

Tao Te Ching Ch. 11