A CITY...
is many things. It is a collection of buildings, which in turn are collections of people, each of which have their own collections and connections with other people in other buildings. It is systems and storage centers and data flow, all of it quantifiable, categorizable, and networked to the hilt. But a city is also un-quantifiable and ephemeral-- a collection of memories, events, and accreted history that may exist only in anecdotes and cryptic digitalia.
Alphazett Cities are a container for these forgotten stories, akin to an old photo album or a scrapbook where a new story is written every time it is read.
BLURRED ORIGINS...
Early in this century, I was invited to join a murkily-defined art exhibition featuring architectural designers "in the wild", so to speak-- mostly artists plying their expertise in non-architecture disciplines, such as sculpture, book making, or game design.
I agreed to participate, then promptly forgot all about it until a month before, when an e-mail reminded me to submit my proposal. I had no interest in making a statement or creating a pretty object, and instead created a sort of “dictionary of game architecture.” In the end, it was not a particularly cohesive effort, and I ended up just displaying a wall full of "pretty" drawings anyways, but it did ignite the first spark for the Alphazett project.
The Blurred exhibit marked the first iteration of Alphazett Cities, an ongoing experiment in multiversal narratives.
Blurred: Alphazett City
ALPHAZETT CITY...
is a book in twenty-six chapters, each one a snapshot of a different neighborhood, landmark, or unique feature of a non-existent city . Roughly half of all entries were concept art of fictional locations from various game projects, and the rest were general architecture concepts--scale, modularity, etc.-- illustrated with game art.
THE CITY IS A MAP...
if the map was a collage. Nothing more than a graphic experiment, this was an attempt to literally map the city with story art. As I recall, this was an effort born out of frustration for not having a better idea of where to go from here. The art was a dead end, but the concept has since proved useful.
