Inspiration: An Old Friend Revisited
My end of studies colloquium during my time at The Jan van Eyck Akademie in 1998 remains one of the most fun and rewarding things I’ve ever worked on. It’s pretty wild to think this work is almost a quarter century old, but The Realms really does feel like a long-awaited sequel. At the end of the two year study period at The Jan van Eyck Akademie, students were required to publicly present the arc of their efforts to the institution’s board of directors. Before I got to the Jan van Eyck I had never used a Mac, so I spent most of my time learning, absorbing and experimenting with what might be possible. I’d mainly focused on CD-ROM design, user experience experiments, and building small-scale websites, but during the second year I’d spent most of my time working on game design, mechanics, and large-scale environments.
When it came time for the colloquium, I took the game Myst, disassembled it from it’s original Hypercard stack, reassembled it in the object-oriented user model offered by the (much missed) Apple Media Tool, and hid all my work on the island. So when it came time to present, I simply gave the board a tour of the island. Projects were hidden in books in the library, appeared when you pulled a switch on a wall, or were hidden in clock towers, reflecting pools or instrument panels. Due to file size restraints at the time, I ran everything locally for the purposes of the presentation, but ultimately housed the project on a CD-ROM which acted as a centralized application launcher and prompted users to insert each respective disc.
This was one of the projects which contributed to my winning of the 1998 Jan van Eyck Purchases and Collections award, and my work being acquired by the institution for their permanent collection.
