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CW: fucking disturbing drawing
this is an illustration from a macworld game roundup circa january 1994
WHY WOULD YOU DRAW THIS?
WHY WOULD AN EDITOR PUT IT IN A MAGAZINE?
WHAT DOES IT >>>>> MEAN? <<<<<
WHAT WERE THE NINETIES?
this is an illustration from a macworld game roundup circa january 1994
WHY WOULD YOU DRAW THIS?
WHY WOULD AN EDITOR PUT IT IN A MAGAZINE?
WHAT DOES IT >>>>> MEAN? <<<<<
WHAT WERE THE NINETIES?
i think constantly about this 90s aesthetic - deeply unsettling still lifes with unexplained emphasis on objects you don't understand the purpose of. memphis design played a role. shivers ii was full of this.
can you explain what's going on in the picture in my first post? what does it represent? why are the shadows so severe? why does the... creature... stand at such an uncomfortable angle? why are there red stormclouds in its eye?
this is a picture of a scene from an impossible world. something like hellraiser. a nightmare place, but it's less that suffering is universal, and more that logic does not exist and reality is an unending series of scenarios a human mind could not comprehend
rooms exist, but nobody made them, they just are. you can't ask "why is the wallpaper covered in gyroscopes" because that means "why would someone design this" and this isn't designed. it's a nightmare, everything is just a reflections of objective reality
somewhat like silent hill, everything is the worst interpretation of the deepest, animal-brain emotions. the computer monitor creature is made of parts i would call mechanical if they were anything at all, but they aren't quite anything
i feel like if you met this thing, and tried to lean in closer to examine its construction, reality would just slide and dissolve from under you and you'd find yourself in a different slice of limbo mixed with hell
i am saying all of this because, to an extent, i have had somewhat related imagery in my head my entire life. It's usually not like this - i actually have this persistent image in some kind of fullbright room with French Revolution-esque architecture.
something put this picture in my head of a room with very very tall ceilings and extremely bright lighting where I have the sensation that unsettling, inexplicable things happen but I don't see them, can't describe them
the 90s had this obsession with dark surrealism, deliberately dingy environments with heavy shadows and dirt and lights that don't spread as much as they should. the neverhood, the dark eye, bad mojo (don't google that one if you're squeamish, i strenuously warn you)
"Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh" is another example i just came across of this overall aesthetic. look at how many lights are in these images, and how little effect they have. It gives this feeling of a dead, soul-sucking world. it's an office, but everything feels grimy.
here's another pixel-perfect example of this entire aesthetic. why does the office look like this?
the aesthetic is a mix of art deco, googie? I didn't go to school so i have no idea if what I just said is true but i feel like I can see the elements.
the parallel grill lines on the answering machine. file cabinet is dyed wood with multi-tiered trim on every surface, rounded corners. the notebook has that starburst I'd expect to see on the door of a bowling alley with rough stone walls
was just pointed to Synapsis, a flash game with exactly the same kind of thing going on
basically the defining quality i'm getting at is: "could anything you do make sense of this environment? if you found yourself here, could life be normal ever again?"
basically the defining quality i'm getting at is: "could anything you do make sense of this environment? if you found yourself here, could life be normal ever again?"
it's lynchian, I realized. he does exactly the same shit - look at these pictures. all the elements are there. art deco / memphisesque shapes, stark shadows in unexpected places, lights that don't seem to do anything.
i'm not much of a lynch scholar, i've only seen one or two of his films, but i just know this is his Thing, so I don't really know how far it went. Worth mentioning that the second image there is from 1992, which predates basically all of the games I'm talking about.
was he tapping into a shared aesthetic of the early 90s, or was he ground zero for it? I know he's Significant in culture but I don't know to what degree.
when i mention Memphis, by the way, I should be clear - I'm talking about
- geometric primitives
- design elements that seem to serve no purpose / are "out of place"
- jarring asymmetry
- highly saturated colors
- geometric primitives
- design elements that seem to serve no purpose / are "out of place"
- jarring asymmetry
- highly saturated colors
were there other design trends these apply to? idk, probably? but i think the cylinders, and the weird "lamp"? above the couch, and the torchiere with a perfect half-moon dogleg in the middle that serves no function, are the closest analogue of things in Shivers 1/2 for instance
has pointed out that these *do* all have a "carnivalesque" tinge to them, that sense of surreality that I think is why carnivals became associated with horror the same way clowns did (what directly caused both of these cultural events btw?)
and indeed, there are plenty of carnival-themed games with this eerie spotlight aesthetic. Panic in the Park (1995)
