into the e-scape

It can be so easy to take for granted and become blasé to the virtual worlds in which some of us choose to while away some of our hours.

Of course they aren’t real as such, though they are just as real as anything else just they aren’t the real world in which we wake up at the start of every day and drift to sleep at the end, but they are real.  They are real imaginations brought to life in the same way as words in a book or drawings on a page or paintings on a canvas are, it’s just that these are done using the tools of codes and pixels.  People are so ready to accept a digital photograph taken with their phones and yet can’t see that these other worlds are imaged in pretty much the same way.

There are differences obviously but they do allow for something we can’t do outside our own heads normally, and that’s to interact with still-life, as though with a piece of artwork, in a sort of tangible way.  Not tangible as in tactile but insofar as one can ‘touch’ a world normally closed to us with our minds in a way that takes us one step beyond just imagining and provides a bridge that wasn’t there before; a place to be, to stand, to exist between worlds, a kind of insatiable limbo.

As these worlds have grown more and more sophisticated in their 3D-modelling and the degree with which one can interact it’s been incredible to look back and be surprised at how what we now see as so basic and simplistic has progressed, albeit still with so many limitations and frustrations at what can’t be done. Nevertheless what people, creators, manage to achieve despite such limitations has produced a plethora of the weird and wonderful, wacky and wayward, just as any artists does by letting their imagination master the medium at hand.  For a writer it’s a pen, for a painter it’s a brush, for an inworld avatar it’s a mouse and keyboard. The principals are the same it’s just this latter artisan and related aren’t as yet given their due in the world outside these realms.

You see, not only are these creators creating worlds within worlds they are also sculpting in some cases entire cultures, with their own histories, timelines, mores, traditions, even in some cases languages.  But what I’m talking about mostly here is some of the most inventive and immersive of inworld environments: landscapes, seascapes, skyscapes, alienscapes, fantasyscapes, futurescapes, spacescapes. All of which I could call e-scapes, as in  not just electronic landscapes but also in the sense of ‘escape’, a place far removed from our real, physical world with all it that goes with it, good, bad and downright ugly things.  Inworld there’s no illness, there’s no death, no worries unless you make them for yourself.

I’m not naïve though, I do understand I’m painting quite a rosy picture here of something that is essentially just seen as a game, a toy, a frivolous and hedonistic pursuit, as such an utter waste of time and merely wishing one’s life away. It’s no Utopia, no nirvana, no moksha or heavenly realm (though you could build any of these if you wanted), and some people do have a habit of invariably bringing  their real world prejudices, angsts, fears and narrow-mindedness into these spaces, havens, but that’s their choice and they rarely last long.  These worlds aren’t to blame for people like that, they exist anyway and in the real world we have to put up with them all the time.

I think today I must be feeling particularly giving, so who knows, on another day I might just remember how one of these worlds almost buried me in so much ugly stuff, but again, that was down to people being people.  But I dug my way out and learned how to leave that for the real world and keep this one free of niggles, mostly.

Obviously there are rules and such, but that’s no different from anywhere.  Not only isn’t is a Utopia nor is it Anarchia, for better or worse.  But still I find myself visiting, spending time, discovering yet another amazing creation born of someone’s incredible skill and imaginings and appreciated the sheer amount of time, work, learning, patience and understanding that’s gone into it, sometimes just for the sheer pleasure or artistry, and where I, me, myself and I, simply at the end of a day escape into the e-scape. 

© Emma Calder/ Anan Eebus