Digital Image Pt.1

Before starting this assignment, we all had to read a Marcus Novak piece about liquid architectures in cyberspace. The thing that stuck out to me the most was Novak's emphasis on physical limitations in the real world. In our world, everything is grounded by gravity, which we accept without second thoughts. What we do not often stop to consider, however, is that even when eliminating the possibility of gravity, architecture is also grounded by plumbing. After all, all pipes drain into the ground. When in cyberspace, however, this most basic of limitations is nonexistent

When I started my piece, I decided to take the assignment literally. I chose to make a cyberspace landscape, originating with the idea of warped buildings, ones that defied gravity. To start, I made a bunch of rectangles and then individually warped each one, so they were both contorted and overlapping. I then grouped these rectangles together, and copied the resulting shape twice to either side. Playing with the opacity on each set provided an interesting layering effect, especially since everything was all the same color blue. Finally, I took the entire image thus far, made a copy, and flipped it horizontally, to make a reflection of sorts. The final image is indistinguishable as a landscape, but as far as I'm concerned, that's part of cyberspace architecture - it does not need to be confined to standard definitions.

One of the most important choices that I made was to leave my image in the bottom third of the canvas. Reflections are normally placed center, but by leaving it off center, I feel it provides a sense of openness and possibility. I also turned the background black, mostly just because I like to work on black instead of white, but also because it added more of a contrast to the faint blue.

Were I to alter part of this project, I would have centered the image rather than having it further to the left. My intent in having it to the left was to imply continuation, but instead it just looked unfinished. Had I centered it and expanded it to extend off of both the left and right, it would have achieved the desired effect and looked like a finished product.