CURIOUS AFFINITIES I:
Islands: The figure Ground Game’s main figural elements are organized into three ensembles. These compositions were each imagined as independent worlds, existing in their own micro-universes and at their own scales relative to the surrounding space. Each exists on its own floating platform; an island substructure that is in dialogue with the figure(s) above. These groupings are conceived of as separate yet connected to the others by the affinity of their aesthetic systems. One of the groupings is formed out of the debris of its surface ornamentation.
Garden: The Ryoan-Ji rock garden in Kyoto is perhaps one of the most famous gardens in the world. Ryoan-Ji (the Temple of the Dragon at Peace) and the SCI-Arc gallery share a similar proportion and size. The gallery’s adjacent mezzanine level (one of its many platform walkways) provides a viewing station that oddly echoes the raised platforms of the temple compound though at a much higher vantage point.
Alignment: The composition of the Figure Ground Game islands was organized as an allusion to the famous 15 rock elements floating in Ryoan-ji’s sea of sand. The rocks are variously understood as tiger cubs crossing the water, or mountains, islands or even continents existing in a scalable landscape.
Sandbox: An open-ended game environment in which a player is not guided by a prescribed course of action or narrative sequence. A game genre conceptually opposed to the linear nature of side-scroll action games.
Bonseki: An ancient Japanese art form that utilizes black and white sand in a shallow ovular or square lacquer tray to construct temporary miniature landscape images. The art form is still popular today though it reached its peak of popularity in the Shogunate Court of the Edo period. Bonseki or a related form is discussed by the Zen Monk Kokan Shiren in his Rhymeprose on a Miniature Landscape Garden.
FIGURE GROUND GAME 