Back when I was a kid in Colombia, during the nineties video games were starting to blow up.
The reason? Goodbye 2D games, hello 3D game engines!
It was a sight to behold…. A polygonal land, that was completely immersive with the actions that you chose through a controller… like being the puppeteer of your own world’s creation…
I was around seven when the game console called the “Nintendo 64” came out. It was also getting to be Christmas time, when it reached our coasts. So it was only logical to try to request it as a present… And it did end up happening, but for my older brother….
He was now the proud new owner of an ‘N64 which also came with a game called “Super Mario 64”. He didn’t let me play it….
But from the devastation of not getting to play, was I able to find something. Which would only have been noticed by my seven year old brain, through watching instead of playing… What was it you ask?
A simple truth: that anything that you can think of, CAN be made!
Whether it was a tangible object, or a fabrication of the mind; we had the technology to follow through with it.
Now both my parents were artists, so they appreciated my comments on this subject. But when I would compare it to art, they would think it to be a bit too childish to relate. This was also something that I would find out later to be a shared opinion by the majority of adults…
To me, video games and art were like peanut butter and jelly:
Here was a screen that was showing you an active image; capable of alternate perspectives of your own choosing, but made through the interpretation of its original designer.
That to me was art: I’d end up analyzing games in the same sort of fashion that I did with the works at museums (of which I was able to see thanks to my parent’s visits to museums all over). Which is why I didn’t understand the reason others weren’t able to see, or acknowledge, the same comparisons that I did with this virtually interactive experience.
This urge to show them, and others, how this was indeed a new medium in and of itself was what ultimately led me to pursue the unison of art with technology.
So I end up going to college to study Computer Animation, and Graphic Design:
As I became more familiar with the working softwares for 3d meshes and texturing, I began to notice how there were certain occasions in which there would be something that I wanted to do within the integrated system, but was unable to do so without manipulating its original infrastructure.
This was my first introduction to the world of coding!
Unfortunately, at the time, I was not able to recognize the drastic significance of continuing to learn it.
Looking back at it now, I think it’s funnily ironic that here I was, this college student hellbent on showing the world that this medium was indeed art: through learning to use the softwares that made video games possible, but I never stopped to think just what made those softwares exist in the first place, and how extremely beneficial it would be to LEARN THAT!
I’d like to think I’m wiser now, and that with this new understanding can I finally fit all the pieces together, and make something that I know will be seen by all through the same microscope. Because to me art is the brush, video games are the palette, and PROGRAMMING is the canvas!
But where’s the paint you ask? Well that’s easy, it’s us! We’re the colors that make those pieces work together!
Till next time, happy coding!
- Juan