Blamblog - Brett Lamb's Blog



	About happycreature[at]gmail[dot[com] [ BLAMBLOG ] Ed Locke's Grandpa Happy Creature Ms. Johnson PIX www.flickr.com This is a Flickr badge showing public photos from blamb. Make your own badge here. [ PILOTS! ] Bill Doskoch 72hrchik BlogTO Dead Robot estrojenn Finn's Space John Gushue Rick Mercer Rocketboom Simple Splendor Squiddity Confessions of a Monkey [ A-TEAM ] AllThingsChristie & BWE Circadian Shift Daily Dose Davezilla Dooce Jett Superior Kitty Bukkake Sugarmama Tony Pierce [ TORONTO ROCKS ] Accordian Guy Alan Hunt Andrew Spicer Angie McKaig armchair garbageman Bacon and Eh's Bored Astronaut Cellar Dweller Chip Tijuana Chromewaves Clara* Consolation Champs Biker Chick Dave Howard Day in the Life Digifox Easternblog freckle stof Help! Ice Queen indigoblog JBWarehouse Liz Vang Luminescent Lunerose Maria Marmalade moot point Nug Photojunkie Pony Pshaw Radio Weisblogg Raymi Riri's Braindump RobotJohnny Rusty Robot Sally McKay Sarah Pengelly Secret Storm ShanghaiM Ultrablog United Bingdom wainbows Warren Kinsella Zoilus [ ALL IN THE FAMILY ] Merv! Dad! Gillian Kevin! [ ORGANIZIZED ] GTA Bloggers TorontoComic Jam [ BEACHCOMBERS ] Good, Matthew Good, Jennifer Ian King Jeff Merritt [ GOTHAM CITY ] Explanada Lindsayism My Blog is Poop Yoon! [ ST. ELSEWHERE ] Blogebrity blogumentary Brett Lamb: Oz Bunny McIntosh Dust My Broom elanamatic Go Fug Yourself Grrrl Meets World James Bow Little Lioness SKSmith Shelly Skillzy Tom Tomorrow [ 6 O'CLOCK NEWS ] boing boing Cursor Drawn! Fark Garlicster Metafilter Plastic The Register SciFi Daily Sexblogs Slashdot Space.com The Smoking Gun Zeropaid [ CARTOONS ] Corrigan Children of the Atom Fiona Smyth Maakies MacKay MNFTIU.cc Secret Lair Smell of Steve [ VARIETY HOUR ] B3TA Hoogerbrugge Milk & Cookies Mumbleboy Onion Rathergood XE [ RERUNS ] [ 2005 ] JANUARY FEBRUARY MARCH APRIL MAY JUNE JULY AUGUST [ 2004 ] MAY JUNE JULY AUGUST SEPTEMBER OCTOBER NOVEMBER DECEMBER [ 2002 ] [ 2003 ]	Monday, November 15, 2004 We Built This City 2 Inspiration Okay, Plastonia didn't just spring into existence overnight. There were other projects that led to its creation (and I was playing a lot of SimCity 2 at the time). I Believe I Can Flllllllyyyyyiiieeeeee! Here's one of the first projects I worked on as the "arts specialist". We built a huge landscape on the wall (it's actually tilted 90 degrees in this pic), hung stretched out cotton as clouds and took a video camera and recorded "flight" videos over it. It was our low-tech flight simulator. Sludge Tank This project inspired the mining activity. We had bags and bags of plaster at our disposal, so building an underwater landscape seemed like a good idea. The kids & I built this huge basin out of coloured plaster with windows built in the sides so we could fill it with water and look in. When it was done, we discovered that 1) the plaster made the water murky and we couldn't see anything, and 2) it had lots of cracks and holes, so water leaked out everywhere and made a huge mess. But that's the creative process, right? Clumsy, messy, a bit nuts ... I feel a rant coming on ... That's one of the things that pisses me off about the Macintosh Computer Cult. One of the tenents of that bizarre religion is that creativity is linked to cleanliness, simplicity and minimalism. Which is a complete load o' the crap -- that sort of thinking implicitly raises design above art and is a bias based on a twisted sales model, not reality. The reality of the creative process is the Sludge Tank. A sloppy half-disaster. It has to be that way because that's how the happy accidents happen, when different elements accidentally get mixed together to make something new. Apply these complaints to condo design culture, Saturn car marketing and Indigo books. In the mainstream, clean, dull design has been elevated to the status of being one "the finer things in life" and art, well, it's been sent to the back of the bus. Um, the following year we broke down the basin and used chunks of it to add mass to the kids' mines. Lumbertown Logs, logs, logs! At the sounds of the falling tree ... This city was just a simple sculpture project. We took a sheet of plywood (about 1.5m x 1.5m) and built a city on it with painted wood blocks. It was just for fun, there was no simulation or game. In fact, we did it in the summer, outdoors in the park sitting under a tree. We might have been listening to Journey. At least that's how I choose to remember it. Coming up: Tales from Plastonia 9:30 PM , # , \|