I haven't painted anything in a while, but I've been working on art for a flight simulator I use called X-Plane.

Art for a flight simulator? Well, yeah.

See, everything in the simulator has an art resource attached to it. It may be an aerial photo placed on the ground, or the facade of a building...even the 3D object that makes up the building is creatively designed by someone and "built" in a 3D program, and a texture is applied to it.

Consider what I created recently: a cell phone tower.

A cell phone tower? That's pretty boring.

Well, sure. It is boring. It's an everyday object. It's not flashy. In fact, cell phone towers are kind of ugly. But they are a part of the landscape, whether we like it or not. And in a flight simulator, a lot of energy goes into creating scenery that replicates the real world as closely as possible.

It's one thing to have the Sears Tower as a landmark. Or the Transamerica Pyramid. Or the Space Needle. Or Fenway Park. Or the St. Louis Arch. Or...okay, you get the drift.

But in order to make something look real, lived in and authentic, when you look out the airplane windows you want to see the ordinary. The mundane. And reality is ordinary and mundane (if it wasn't, then things like the Statue of Liberty wouldn't be special).

So I created something that adds to the ordinary-ness, the mundane-ness, of the simulator...with the end result that it now looks more alive. Without little details, it just looks like a barren wasteland of a landscape (in fact, the usual complaint from new users is that there are no buildings at airports). We, as users, want to see something. Something like this:


Which, by the way, is Seattle.

Okay...but is it art?

Well...of course it is. What else could it be when someone applies their creative skills to solving a problem, whether visual or aural, abstract or representative? Consider this: in an age where the word "art" has become more commercialized and pretentious than ever, is it possible that we have lost our grasp on what the word really means? Is it even a useful term anymore?

I humbly propose the following: That art is the creative application of any idea by any individual, in any medium, for any purpose - rather than an intellectual exercise for the privileged, "talented," the "art educated" and the pretentious.

Art happens every day, everywhere, by everybody. It is in the fantastic and the mundane. The special and the ordinary. The Chrysler Building...and yes, the cell phone tower.

This is my challenge: find art wherever you are. Appreciate the world. Notice things you wouldn't ordinarily notice. See the artistic in everyday life. I dare you. And let's take back art once and for all.

End of rant part one.

Labels: 3D, Art, Flight Simulator, Ordinary, Rant, X-Plane