October 22, 2012 - Comments Off on Mantle Mount

Mantle Mount

I guarantee you saw one of these today. In fact, I bet you used one too. Unless you've locked yourself away and refuse to go out (as I spent my Friday night) you touched a door today. If you haven't, go get outside! The fall weather's lovely. We use these portals every day. They are a key part of how we structure our lives. A door can represent so much. Even it's position, open or closed, says something intimate. So open the door of your mind and let in the inspiration.

I illustrated the protagonist from one of my favorite games, Psychonauts. Raz used psychic doors to enter into people's subconscious.

Cities are the mecca of doors. Every block, every wall and even many sidewalks contain doors. Large rolling behemoths hide swinging glass panes. Beaten slabs of metal hang upon rusted hinges next to revolving works of modern electronics. One of my most striking memories from my visit to Barçelona is the striking change the old downtown area exhibits every night. With the setting of the sun, the numerous shops nestled in the city's winding alleys hide their myriad window displays. The lowered steel shutters that replace them turn the pavement into a open air gallery of beautiful street art. Beware though, the sudden change can easily get you lost. The Doors Project overlays such a transformation wherever it wishes. These projected doors of light shimmer upon whichever surface artist Hwee Chong chooses. There is something magical in the idea, like when Wiley Coyote painted a tunnel on a cliff only to have it come to life.

Many describe the internet as a set of tubes. This layman's description is not only false but also overlooks the way most people actually relate to the internet. Each webpage is like a room, each link a door. Some rooms, like Google, serve as vast hallways while others may be quaint little dead ends that hold something of splendid beauty. When we click through the space of the web, we are in fact traversing a vast digital house. Now, new technologies make each traversal an informative process that slowly changes the floor plan as we go. This website for Alzheimer Day may not have many doors but the portal effect on scroll is magnificent. As you go down the page you descend through a series of widening circles in a novel fashion.

Finally, enjoy this animation. It is simply fantastic. The quality and style are superbly unique. The number of portals within is overwhelming as it verges on recursion. One of the most palpable associations with doors is the mysteries they may hide. So really, what I want to know is what's outside this character's front door?

The Sketching Mechanism is a series of weekly posts, published on Mondays, containing the artistic musings of Mobile Designer/Developer Ben Chirlin from our Monday morning meeting at the NY Creative Bunker as well as his inspiring artistic finds of the week.

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