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Wednesday Lecture - David Blandy – 27.01.2021

This week’s Lecture was about David Blandy. I had personally never heard of him before. At the start of the lecture he started by playing a game called ‘Babel’ in which he read a story and rolled a dice. There was also a Jenga tower to represent the tower of Babel. The game reminded me of Dungeons and Dragons with the story and dice. The story is also about remembering your name as you forgot it when you wake up in the area described. The journey ended when babel fell. I found this to be a very interesting and intriguing way to start the lecture and as a result it made me feel immediately more engaged with his work. I have always loved board games and card games as it reminds me of times playing with my Nan or playing Dungeons and Dragons campaigns with friends after college. Although this segment of the lecture didn’t connect with my university practice; it definitely relates to my personal life and as a result made me want to see more about Blandy’s work and how he’s incorporated these themes and ideas into his work.

Blandy then went to talk about a recent project he had been working on called “World After” which creates a narrative world in which humans don’t exist on the plant as there aren’t any left. Instead of humans there are instead creatures such as lizard people and to be in place of humans. He also uses this removal of humans to comment on gender norms with an intersex character who changes gender each day. I feel this relates to both my personal life and work as I work with themes of gender and gender norms throughout my own work. I have recently been working on an outfit to show people the effects and events of the Stonewall Riots while also subverting gender norms by being a man in a dress wearing makeup. Blandy then went on to talk about how he has always been interested in role-play since he was young. He has had inspirations such as Akira; anime and manga cultures, Princess Mononoke, Zelda and Dungeons and Dragons. When he started to talk about his inspirations coming from the series of Zelda games, I felt immediately exited. For a long time now, I have adored The Legend of Zelda series; especially the latest one for the Nintendo Switch; Breath of The Wild. I have certainly been inspired by this series of games myself throughout my art, even if it isn’t visually apparent. Blandy goes to explain how all of the games in the series are all telling similar stories through different reality and through different timelines. This had a direct inspiration and impact on his game he is working on in a collaborative effort called “World After”. From his inspiration from the Zelda series and their use of a timeline, he then went on to create his own timeline for his own game in which he called it the “Cataclysm Timeline”. The choice of this wording made me create a link between the acts in Zelda and within Blandy’s game. Within the Zelda timeline the overarching threat is mainly centred on “The Great Calamity” and Gannon// Gannondorf in which the main protagonist ‘Link’ has to overcome. Although the timeline created for the series breaks up into three sections once the events of Ocarina of Time happens. The three timelines split into one where ‘The Hero is Defeated’ where Hyrule and the Hero decline. There is then a ‘Child’ and ‘Adult’ era for the remaining two timelines. In these two timelines, Link is sent back by Zelda to relive his childhood he didn’t get as a result of fighting the Calamity. The adult timeline is then where Link// The Hero of Time disappears where Gannondorf can rule free unopposed.

After the lecture ended, I wanted to connect more with his work and how he creates his concepts. Before the lecture ended he mentioned how he wanted to do a collaborative effort around Liverpool and have a new species or creature in the game based around the area. As a direct result of this I decided to connect more with his process through this idea. When I think of Liverpool I think a lot about industry mixed with areas of overgrowth where areas are knocked down; often sprouting weeds. I decided to start sketching out a concept around my vision of Liverpool, this made me realise the thought that had to go through the process of character creation. Although this isn’t the first time I have worked around making characters. I have created my own characters in the past with their own writing and basic timelines of events. I have yet to develop them more but as a result of creating them it gave me even more respect for those who do this as a profession, whether as writers or concept artists. When thinking and sketching out my concepts for the character based around Liverpool I found myself thinking deeper into the characters visuals and actions the more I developed them into a drawing. As seen in the picture below, I originally only had his concept as a human with a dandelion for a head. I then developed them more to incorporate more colours and lines as a contrast by adding the green leaves of dandelion weeds around the neck as a kind of collar. I then developed their body to incorporate a mix of broken and new buildings around my personal ideas of Liverpool. Overall, even though it was a smaller version of what Blandy does for his project, it felt rewarding and gave me a greater understanding of his process when I replicated it myself through my own ideas.

When talking more in depth about his game “World After” he talked about how it was about creating a narrative and change. Blandy created this game as a collaborative effort with other artists and writers. Throughout the previously mentioned timeline, it shows what happened// will happen over the next 75 years, based on real world science from what will happen to Earth 8000 years in the future. I found this to be an interesting way of showing and educating people on what could happen to our own planet in the future if things don’t change without it being apparently clear. After the main lecture had finished I decided to attend the Q&A to gain a greater insight to Blandy’s work and how he came to the creation of World After.

Q&A

Q: “Is the idea for World After a result of what would happen if we had to adapt to what we ((humans)) have done to the world?”

A: In a way it is, he explained how it’s like a ‘Deep Future’ in which its 8000 years in the future. It’s a way of reimagining the world after sea-rise and us adapting to different societies and whatever situation was in each ‘haven’ that we were hiding in. Its why each haven and society within them are so radically different since each one has been isolated as a large space for such a long amount of time. They all eventually come out of their havens and come to realise not everything is as they thought it was. They discover all of these different societies that they didn’t know where in the world. Blandy then goes on to explain how it’s a good way of making artistic licence for what could be created.

Q: “Were you inspired by Morrowind or Skyrim at all? A lot of it reminds me of that series.”

A: Blandy went on to say how he had never played Skyrim, he’s exploited it through film but has never played through it properly. He said he thinks it’s been inspired by the whole plethora of fantasy, and he wanted it to have that fantasy feeling. He then commented on the kinds of fantasy ideas around games such as Skyrim, Dungeons and Dragons and Wold of Warcraft and how a lot of their base characters are very racially coded. He comments on general Orc characters and how they are perceived as degenerate and thuggish and how it shows a really racist image of blackness. He wanted to create a fantasy space that didn’t have that ‘baggage’ in a sense and to take away from the alignment of people being naturally good and naturally evil. Blandy then went to talk about how he also wanted to use it as a way to connect with his children more and to get them away from their screens a little more. He enjoyed the feeling of everyone being in the same mental space to play a game together; especially with games over Zoom. He founds it’s been a way of him making a lot of friends and connecting with new people.

Q: “What are you intending with your work?”

A: To draw the viewer in through how it looks or sounds and through that you can then insert some idea that changes their view of the world. A wandering person looking for truth feels interesting to him such as with Final Fantasy VII and how in the end where is the self? He got into Philosophy and geopolitics and society throughout his work. What is the self? He didn’t really find an interest in VR when compared to the brain as he said the brain is one of the best renderers.

Q: Were you inspired by any specific Art Movements?

A: In a way it comes from performance and being interactive. It comes from 60’s performance and working with symbols and language and in an interactive way through that. To him it came like a set of instructions to perform which reminded him a lot of Dungeons And Dragons.

Overall, as a result of attending Blandy’s Q&A, I feel like I have connected a lot more with his work and I have gained a greater understanding of why he is creating it. I am personally very excited to see where his work with World After goes as it feels so refreshingly different from any other roleplaying online game I’ve seen before. His development of World After relates to me on a very personal level as I have always found a love of video games through the stories they tell such as with Zelda and Skyrim, so it makes me ecstatic to see where World After goes as it combines all of the story based elements of the games I love and adds in a level of acceptance and diversity. There are no human characters to remove the element of racism and gender issues which I’ve never seen from any games like this before. There is also a society of intersex people who change gender each day which I found to be an amazing edition. This can attract people of all genders and identities to help them feel more included and understood. As a trans man myself I loved this edition of diversity. Another part of his world of World After that intrigued me was his use of the timeline relating to real world events that are predicted to happen 8000 years in the future. As mentioned before, I think it’s a really intriguing and interesting way to indirectly show people of all ages the affects were having on our world such as with climate change.

In conclusion, this lecture and Q&A was by far my favourite of this year, and I thought it was the perfect lecture to start the second semester with. Although it’s taken me a while to get back into working from my mental health, I’m glad this is what I had to start with as it had many elements I loved and that relate to both my personal life and practice. I’d love to see more of Blandy’s work in the future.

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