Brendan Paul: Background Mapping

Concept:

For this project, I wanted to do the side of a building. Building can potentially have a lot of surfaces to work with and usually have a lot of broad space on those surfaces that could amplify my ideas. For my location I chose the side of my apartment complex. I like the number of rectangular surfaces that the building provides. This gives me a lot to work with in my composition. My main theme was the idea of progress in the technology of perception, from strange visions to advanced computing to completely alien concepts.

Techniques: 

The first thing I did was center out all of the relevant space on my image. There are cars and a lot of open sky in the original image that I did not plan on doing anything with. After I had my proportions set, I began adding different squares to all of the surfaces on the building. Each has its own layer and its own part of the building to project on. 

On each of these squares I would put a material that best suited the theme that I was going for. I also decided to divide up the squares into groups that would each contain squares that would all hold the same material.

Interpretations:

My piece on the advancement of vision has three different segments. 

The first that you see is that of ancient psychedelic vision. There are a lot of colors that take form in strange looping shapes reminiscent of a drug trip. Representing how shamans from across ancient history would see visions of the future or of their culture's "spirit realm".

This then transitions into the modern to near-future idea of advanced computing. People will hook their conscious up to advanced computers to process digital ideas and shapes. These shapes project themselves through the digital webspace into the user’s mind. The strange shapes on the projection represent that. 

The final scene is the far future, where we can see completely alien concepts that are almost incomprehensible to the human mind. These take shape in various forms that are barely recognizable. The projections of warp speed travel and the odd spirals and shapes cloud the viewer with unknown knowledge.