Perceptibility - Home City
Vanessa Blacow-Berggren
ARTIST STATEMENT
Perceptibility - Home City is a digital painting that was created from the descriptions given in one of the Dungeon & Dragons games that Vanessa Blacow-Berggren plays in. Dungeons & Dragons, whether in person or online, heavily utilizes theater of the mind. When playing in the physical world, when maps do get brought out, one is able to use mini figures and other model pieces to make detailed 3D maps and give some nice visual representation to the experience. When playing online however, utility is key since a screen itself is something 2D, so most maps are terrain maps with a top down perspective that acts like a floorplan to show players where they can move and where obstacles lay in their path. Sometimes a DM will find some imagery online for important locations, but creating a campaign is hard work and theater of the mind is the main staple of the game. The Dungeon Master in the game Vanessa plays in has given detailed descriptions of various locations within the world that inspired Vanessa to give a more detailed visual representation to those locations. She also wanted to create something physically tangible from these online games. Everything about these games, including the friends she plays with, are online and have had no physical presence in her life. So even if it is something as simple as printing out the digital paintings she created from the descriptions of the game, she wanted to bring something that has been solely experienced in the digital realm into the real world
ARTIST BIO
Vanessa Blacow-Berggren is an artist who works in the field of digital media art, mostly involving programs such as Photoshop and Clip Studio in order to create her digital art pieces. Currently she is in her final semester at San Jose State University, but she hopes to get into the videogame industry after graduating. She enjoys being a concept artist; taking what was once only thought or written description and creating the visual representation for the idea and hopes to illustrate concepts for games in the future. Games were a big influence on her life and she holds a passion for the medium and hopes to be part of the conception of new games in the future. It would be a dream come true to have a game she helped bring to life influence somebody's future in the same way the games she played as a child influenced her. A solid concept and coherent world building can make a game so vibrant that even if there is not much content people will love and remember the work, and she wants to be part of the process that creates these well loved worlds.
