Why?

v1 – Friday, 25 August 2023

• This is a continuation of the v r series, which is to say it’s fundamentally about looking at Unity (as a stand-in for 3D game production in general) and the technologies it provides.
• I really enjoy the essay/book In Praise of Shadows, particularly the first part, and most memorably the evocative language around the gleam of lacquer on a cup in an alcove in a dim room - the idea of light and shadow being highly evocative.
• I want a project I can chip away at.
• Looking at shadows is a way of looking at light.
• Like many parts of the videogame visual assemblage, shadows don’t necessarily get looked at for their own sake very much - either as painterly substance or as technical achievement - so drawing attention to them is worthwhile.
• Shadows have a strong but also dissociated relationship with the light and object that casts them, they’re sort of “this, but not” in a way that’s intriguing to look at.

v2 – Thursday, 5 October 2023

• Much of the “why” here is the same as it was for v r 3, v r ² and v r $4.99: game engines and assets represent a tremendous amount of labour and craft and is worth contemplating the details individually so that we’re not swept past them by the necessities of gameplay, narrative, and good old fun.
• The why of shadows specifically stems from In Praise of Shadows which felt like an inspiring “call to attention” to the dynamics and value and aesthetics of shadow specifically (the evocative gold leaf in an alcove). (This also has led me at times down slightly tricky paths of wanting everything to be beautiful, which is not necessarily ideal.)
• The why also relates to the shared journey (split across time) through the technical nature and parameterization of shadows in a specific engine and environment (Unity in this case). A reason to do this is specifically to surface for contemplation (and play) the ways in which an artifical world (and its inner engine) presents shadow.
  • I get to experience this through the process of making, running into problems, discovering potential parameters and combinations to explore.
  • I similarly then experience it through curating and presenting these ideas in the form of an “exhibition” (world) and thus deal with those questions too: how does one show shadows and their possibilities?
  • The user gets to experience this through my curation and their own exploration and understanding and perception of the shadows themselves
• Shadows specifically in a game engine are a really good way to experience and think about how light functions in a game engine. They’re a kind of subset, they’re easier to see because they’re literally cast onto the environment and are in some ways almost “not of the world” or belong to a separate idea of it, almost like they can be separated from the world in our minds (but also tell us about the world and its form). And thus they’re a way to think about the lighting that happens in games and particularly the degrees to which it revolves around physical simulation and modelling in particular

v3 – Tuesday, 30 January 2024

• The underlying fact that game environments are simulated and procedural and technical is more or less invisible. And that’s generally the objective: we shouldn’t notice the shadows except perhaps in the mode of gameplay (I can hide from the guard in these shadows) or aesthetics (this is a dark and moody space).
• Shadows are a nice way to think about one of the key technical elements of a game engine: its lighting system. In many ways the shadows are how you see the light in any kind of interesting way. Without shadows the light is (mostly) about just seeing stuff at all. Shadows are the visual interest that the light adds to the scene.
• Shadows are really pretty technical even in the simple realtime lighting setup in Unity: there are a number of parameters involved, their movement matters, their type matters.
• Looking at shadows as a parameterized, dynamic part of a game engine is a way to look at the game engine itself (and its lighting system specifically) and to think about the world as artificial, as didn’t-have-to-be-this-way, as malleable, as interestingly technical, as accessible, as designed-with.
• Shadows are also beautiful and interesting parts of our vision of the world in general, as exemplified in In Praise of Shadows where it is shadows rather than light that are the priority and the beauty. The gleam of gold in an alcove in a darkened room is beautiful, soft, restful, tempting. Are other kinds of shadows and light able to give us other kinds of emotional/experiential reads?
• Art Islands are a place to separate yourself from the usual workings of the world and to focus on the direct experience of what is in front of you (or in your eyes or nose or other senses). It’s a chance to contemplate without (at least some of) the distractions of living in the world and having responsibilities, notifications.
• In a game environment an art island is a chance to contemplate the direct world without the distractions of goals, points, HUDs, requirements, fights, tactics, etc.
• It’s important to formally “break down” the possibilities of shadows and separate them out so that they can be seen as distinct and unique. That’s why it’s good to see them in different rooms, in different places. It’s a statement that they deserve that room and that space and that time.

v4 – Thursday, 21 March 2024

I made this place to

1/ Give myself a vehicle to explore how shadows work in Unity and to learn (through bitter and joyful experience) how they don’t work as well; to see how they look and can look; to think about what makes one shadow distinct from another; to practice my curation.

2/ Give a visitor the chance to be a co-investigator (after the fact) and to develop opinions and critical thought about how shadows function in a popular and well-known game engine by laying out the possibilities (most of them).

The fact this place exists gives space for shadows to be examined and considered alone, without the pressures of gameplay or the distractions of a world that exists beyond or in spite of them.

What do the shadows themselves think about this? Only the shadows know.