'Simulated Environments' (Update 1)

 It was a bit of a crazy week, so progress has been slow but here are my thoughts and updates so far:

I'm currently in the phase where I am deciding what environments to depict and how to depict them. I want to create a little hyperreality bubble – a little moment in each animated scene, – so I have to be careful about how I compose each area and what detail I include (the details and objects are really important, as I've been considering alongside Baudrillard's writing about "artificial resurrection in systems of signs" and iconography). However, rather than just making it mundane, starkly realistic simulation, I want to add certain hints that something is a bit off. This is because I find in all this discussion of simulation, individual perspective/perception plays a huge role (in a simulated room, for example, everyone will probably notice different details and perceive the space differently, so I wanted to address that as its own simulation of sorts). As someone who has been struggling with mental health, I find at school I often derealize a bit (often brought about by depression or anxiety, derealization causes one to feel that something is off: everything is a bit unreal and one feels detatched from their surroundings). For example, my dog at home is very grounding for me to be around, but when I get home on school break, it often takes me a few hours to fully recognize my dog as real, rather than just a vague memory. I generally only get mild derealization, but it's still an odd feeling and to me seems very similar to these ideas of simulation and hyperreal. I guess that's why I chose daily, mundane settings to depict: routines are a constructed normalcy that, in the face of COVID in particular, can seem the most fake. 


Here's my current brainstorming page (I have a lot more thoughts and ideas, but those are in some scattered notes inn various places (sticky notes, notes app, ect.), which somehow seems fitting for the project. Since details are really important for this project, I'm doing more writing than drawing to get my ideas organized. I also included my iPad because I'm looking into what program/app to use for the final artwork:



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