Advanced Play Design - Week 9 - Play and Abstraction - Samridhi Handa

APD WEEK 9

ANNOTATIONS

RATIONALE

What have I done this week?

This week with the theme of play and abstraction, I have worked with the idea of dreams. I did some research and readings on dreams. After the research, I found out that many times, dreams are an interpretation of what we feel in our daily lives. This week, I decided to work with the idea of what we experience actually during the day and how that feels when we dream of it. I also researched and read that many times dreams are really abstract. They do not directly represent what we experienced during the day. The experience is rather abstract. Many times the things we watch and experience during the day occur in dreams in an abstract form. In order to portray my concept, I constructed a real world and a dream world in Maya and further took it to Unity. While the real world had realistic style buildings, street lamps and sounds, the dreams world had everything abstract. In order to portray the abstract nature of the world, I worked with abstract sounds and also put sound triggers near the poles which give out abstract sounds. These sounds portray how in our dreams, we are pulled in various directions through various sounds.

Why I have done it this week?

I have worked on the idea of dreams this week’s topic was play and abstraction and  as I was really interested in exploring the topic of dreaming. I personally felt, and also read that dreams are very abstract and do not portray reality most of the times. They are many times an interpretation of our experiences and combination of different incidents.

CONTEXT

During my research, I have been inspired by the work of various artists and painters related to dreams. Similar work has been done by Francisco de Goya in his painting, “The sleep of reason produces monsters” in the year 1799, where the main character is sleeping and his sleep is disrupted with monster-looking creatures and the painting portrays a nightmare.

Another painting, by Hieronymus Bosh, “The Vision of Tundale” which represents a nightmare like dream. The painting is a depiction of hell. This painting mainly focuses on the nightmare.

RESPONSE/OUTCOME

In response to the weekly theme, I have created a Unity walkthrough of a real world and a dream world. Through this week’s response, I have tried to portray the contrast between the real world and the dream world.

METHODS

In order to convey my topic and idea about dreams, I constructed 2 worlds in Maya. Both are simple street scenes. One is the real world that we experience in our day to day lives and the other one is abstract which represents dreams. I took both the worlds to Unity in order to work on it further. The real world has all real buildings, road, street light and sound. The dreams world has abstract lighting, particles simulation of unity, overall abstract sound and also sound triggers near the poles to give the effect of an abstract world.