This course will explore the use of game engines and gaming environments as a new mode of architectural representation that grants agency to the user, thereby opening new digital horizons for the direct experience of imagined spaces beyond traditional forms of representation.
The notion that nothing comes from nothing is attributed to the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides and will be the starting point for this course. It implies that the seemingly infinite emptiness of digital space is pre-loaded with subjective experience and the process of building virtual environments is one of revealing this subjectivity. This revelatory process will begins with you and will be defined with reference images, sketches, and story boards that will attenuate the production and delivery of your projects this Summer.
Each student will develop a virtual “room” in a collective matrix we will refer to as the Memory Palace. This room will be based on a real or imagined architectural space for a user to experience in a gaming environment and must consider the intimacy of experience with the requisite detail. This will demand careful consideration of orientation, proximity, and scale of both the user and the specific elements included your scene through the understanding of gaming logic and mechanics including game modes such as FPS, Third-person, Top-Down, Side-scroller, or VR.