As alluded to in my last post, this new site will focus on both technology and design, and perhaps less on interpersonal / emotional aspects of my life (at least in comparison to Incubator and Territories I).
I’m excited about this next online chapter and look forward to the challenges ahead.
“[…] How I would like to take command of my situation, to entertain myself with enlightened thought, to heroically forget pain and fear, to keep control. Perhaps that kind of heroism exists only in novels. If there is any enlightenment that I have been awakened to, it is that men’s minds are dominated by their little aches and pains. We want to think that we are more than that, that we control our lives with our intellect. But now, without civilization clouding the issue, I wonder to what extent intellect is controlled by instinct and culture is the result of raw gut reactions to life. I was brought up with the idea that I could do anything, be anything, survive anything. I want to believe it, try to believe it.”
In my final year of undergraduate studies, I and a few of my friends developed a computer game called “Meltdown 2018.” The concept was based around a return to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant more than three decades after it’s unfortunate demise.
My work on the computer graphics portion of the game triggered a lengthy pursuit that would consume my life for the next ten years. My goal was not necessarily to develop computer games, but rather to become immersed in computer graphics at its core; I wanted to understand graphics and mathematical concepts well enough to develop software applications based upon these ideas.
Fortunately, I was able to achieve several successes during this period:
For numerous reasons, I eventually abandoned this technical pursuit and focused my energies on the creative-side (e.g. Maya, Gnomon Workshop, ZBrush). While I have some regrets, I’ve gained an incredible amount of knowledge and experience since that time. However, for someone who loves playing in both areas, it’s hard not to return to this original path – at least for a short while!
Mental struggles aside, I thought it fitting to include a video of a software developer (Eric Soulvie) who continued the journey and developed a powerful physics plug-in for Modo (based upon the open source Bullet Physics engine). It’s called Recoil.
It’s something that I am excited to play around with as I can already envision finding uses for such a tool in a design context.
[youtube]QmUWxDRuqII[/youtube]
