My scenes are meant to work in conjunction with each other. They are meant to ask the question of “When our civilization ceases to exist, how will we be remembered? Will it be the physical objects we leave behind? Or will it be the digital artifacts we’ve created?”
I was only able to get two scenes rendered due to the amount of time it took to render each one.
I knew I wanted to crate a rather dystopian scene to touch on this point. I collected different models from the BuckeyeBox colletion, TurboSquid, Free3D, and Archive3D. I then assembled them into a scene from a dilapidated bedroom. I wanted the place to look abandoned, so I populated the room with fallen chairs, shoes, socks, clothing items, cans, cracked glass, peeling wood, dirt smudges, crooked paintings– whatever I could find really. I imagined the person that lived there would be pretty particular about the way their desk was arranged– rather than the cracked glass/shards and dirt on the keyboard/cup, I kept the arrangement of the desk pretty neat. I wanted it to look like whoever lived in the space was suddenly removed while in the middle of something.
My initial intention was to have the second scene be on the computer monitor in the first scene. However, it did not render the way it was shown in the preview. I am currently rendering a new version that does not have the cracked glass texture on top in hopes of the image showing through. In the updated version I have also changed the wall texture to a plain plaster wall with a few smudges of dirt as I thought the peeling wood was distracting.
The second scene, though a stark departure from the first, is meant to echo a similar sentiment. In this scene, I really wanted to channel the vaporwave aesthetic. Reaching the peak of its popularity in the early-mid 2010’s, vaporwave was highly influenced by rampant globalization, consumerism, and manufactured nostalgia. I see vaporwave as a coping mechanism of sorts. It’s like a form of escapism. I wanted my scene to channel exactly that. I wanted it to be a somewhat familiar yet surreal. We will never see a perfectly geometric pastel landscape with disproportionate digital and physical artifacts floating around, but the scene incorporates elements we see day to day, grounding it in some familiarity. I wanted to include a mix of digital artifacts (the mouse cursor, the 3D modeled head, the plush I’ve chosen to show as a character rather than a physical object) depicted alongside both historic artifacts (the column) and physical objects from more recent years (the flash drive, disk, game controller, tv, etc). Though the scene uses imagery and objects often seen in vaporwave, they are arranged in disarray, rather than in a specified order. I imagined that the individual from the first scene would have used the aesthetic as his escape from the reality he lived in.
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LINKS TO OBJECTS USED: computer, CPU, and desk, earbuds, office chair, disk + game controller, lamp, Starbucks cup, boots, sock, anime poster 1, retro TV, pastel paint background, cursor, usb cable, head, pocket radio, flash drive, Corinthian pillar, tree 1, tree 2, broken glass, wood, metal, dirt textures
avee oabel // art 3101 