Where Oceans Meet & Realms
Earlier this year I released The Core’s first spatial art piece and alongside it, the realm concept. Realms are to be thought of as worlds within worlds, a layer deeper than the main CORE experience.
A limitation I found when designing in the main CORE world was the ability to alternate themes and colourways, keeping visual direction consistent whilst building the interoperability of different zones. With the world being a bright white unsaturated dreamscape, it was hard for example to then develop an area within it as an open, green vibrant saturated forest. While The Core does have some blending between colour and value, I never wanted to drift to far from the main thematics of the experience. Thus, it was hard to create pieces of art that go against this creative direction and then be integrated into the main experience in the form of an installation or environmental zone.
This is where realms come in. They are portals to alternate worlds within the main experience. The observer is able to teleport or ‘transfer’ to another level inside the world. Which often tend to be quite different from the visuals of the main experience.
Where Oceans Meet was the perfect art piece to launch this concept, due to the variations in visual style. I feel both The Core and Where Oceans Meet’s visual direction align but having the blues of the sky and the water integrated in CORE as an environmental piece would have been hard to do.
WHERE OCEANS MEET
Released back in April of 2023. Around 7 Months ago as of writing this. This piece of art is one of my more important pieces released to date. I feel like it personally solidifies a visual direction I was working towards with CORE, but with elements of improved expression through colour and luminance work.
This piece of work was built during the Palazzo Cipolla exhibition ‘Ipotesi Metaverso’ and exhibition goers were able to experience this piece firsthand during its development, it was released a month or so later onto the streamable version for the public to see and experience.
It is deeply personal too. During this period I was made aware of an underlying health issue.
Generally and luckily, I have been mostly healthy throughout my life and have not had any major issues making me doctor/hospital bound or that required any medication. This has been the first time since I’ve had that bubble burst of being young and healthy forever and it has called into question my mortality.
Where Oceans Meet is a part of a lyric from one of my favorite musicians of all time - Architects. A song called Momento Mori. It features a quoted section of Alan Watts’s lectures on the present and change.
It follows long-time inspirations from Alan Watts and philosophical concepts around life, death, time, and the universe. The influence is quite stoic visually but through various meanings more Eastern which I think is similiar with most of my work.
Moving forward, standalone artforms that can exist as separate miniature experiences will be implemented as realms and can be accessed via portals inside the world, so when you are next walking around in there make sure to enter if you see something that looks traversable.