A Perfect Spring Day in the Sleep Valley

Today is one of those rare spring days where things are just perfect. The sun is out, the birds are singing, people are walking around the neighborhood for their own pleasure, the dogs are actually behaving, landscaping is getting done. Today is one of those rare spring days right out of a 1950s family show.

And I had to spend most of it inside toying away with my latest RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 project (which means I have a total of two projects now in that game on hold, possibly indefinitely).

My mom is still trying to help me with my thesis show by pointing out art exhibits advertised in the local paper that may be of interest to me. With the exception of the Murakami retrospective, I haven't been feeling all that artsy. Give me a few more days, and maybe I'll be back to where I was a month ago before all that shit hit the fan as if it was pitched by an irate baboon.

The entire time I was toying around in RCT3, I couldn't help but look at my Custom Avatar I made for my family in the game. It's a feature where you can create avatars that will visit all the parks you create in the game. You can even set their ride preference to what their real life counterparts would be. In my case, I'm the only person in my family of four with a high preference. Everyone else has a low preference, as nobody in my family is much of a fan of roller coasters. You can also dictate who would be the leader of the family, which translates into who holds the camera and who calls all the shots as to where the group should go next on their visit. This leads to some really odd behavior mechanics, but what I find interesting is that whenever my family's avatar hits a photo spot (you know, those plaques that you see all over theme parks sponsored by Kodak or Fuji Film that say "Take a picture here!" because the view is perfect?) is that my avatar is nowhere to be seen. Like I said before, it is because I set my own avatar as the leader of the group and, as such, my avatar gets assigned the camera.

For a while now, I've been tossing the idea of printing some of these pictures the game saves on photo paper a la how most families print their vacation photos now and then put them in a coffee table book via Photobucket or the like. It would make a very interesting art piece in my mind, because they are vacation photos of a trip that did not happen but yet is treated as if it did. With the avatar thesis I'm going with now, I wonder how this idea would work if I used the pictures as a guide for a drawing that would be later scanned, digitally colored, and printed on photo paper. The majority of the pictures would be the Photo Spot pictures from the cyber theme parks with one on-ride featuring no other member of my family but myself on some roller coaster that was in the park. The immediate question that would be asked is who is this person and why is he not found in the other pictures that are clearly from the same theme park?

I could talk about the idea until I'm blue in the face, but the fact of the matter is I won't know the answer to the big question of "Does it work in my thesis?" until I do a mock up. Now I just need to play RCT3 again and hope my family's avatar have some interesting photos. But first, I need to actually have a completed park. After all, who visits a theme park that is only half built? (And don't say the Hong Kong Disney fans.)