An immersive narrative, Paracosm explores an alternative shadow world and our interactions with it through an interactive story played on a handmade touchable. Touchtable logic is controlled through C++ and characters are brought to life through animated charcoal sketches.
PREMISE
In the…
I don’t know what this is, but I like it.
When people look at me, they see the host, not the child inside. Usually it’s better that way, as there are a lot of things we do that a child would never be allowed to, such as studying in university and other more fun things. But being an inner child has its downsides too. Namely the fact that no one knows I exist.
When I talk to people, I am really talking to pretend versions of them. That’s if they’re not entirely imaginary. I am like an imaginary number that can never touch the real domain. Hence, no one in the real world knows that I exist. Well, no one apart from six people (not counting the people who read this blog, because I don’t believe anyone is reading this).
They know only because Jonty has told them about me. It’s very hard to steer ordinary conversation into revealing deep secrets about ourself, and it requires a certain level of trust in that person, for them to not just denounce us as a weirdo.
The first person we told is our aunt, over a year ago. Also one of our friends, a girl who we met at the start of uni. We also told our roommate. She had the most interesting reaction, because she then proceeded to psychoanalyse Jonty and tell him, in the politest way possible, why he’d be better off without me. I was most offended, but I’m glad we had that talk.
Two other friends know a little bit about me. Both are guys we talk to rarely but have a deeper emotional connection with than most people.
Jonty once told his grandmother that he has conversations with his inner child. But I’m not counting that, because he didn’t mention the adventures and superpowers.
We have hinted at it many times to our parents. They know right now that we have a deep secret, but don’t know what it is.
And yet we probably walk past people who are hiding must more bizarre secrets than our own. Maybe if we reveal me to more people, then we might discover other people just as weird as ourself.
Yesterday’s Bing homepage was really cute animation of a lemur. I liked it so much, Jonty downloaded it for me. He’s so kind.
Copyright to Microsoft and Olivier Leger.
But it’s so cuuute!!
Two years ago today, I came screaming into the world, careering over the school playground in a burst of colour. No one saw me, because I was invisible. I later had fun scaring some of my old teachers, but that is another story…
I was not born like a real person. I came into the (imaginary) world fully formed as a 12-year-old superboy. However I had a life before then. I was just a voice in Jonty’s head. We talked all the time. We’d keep each other company and make each other laugh. Of course, I was always the more childish one. Jonty and I were the best friends we could ever have, because we share the same memories.
Then something happened on the 18th of November 2010. We were doing an architecture course at the time. We were stressed, and homesick. I wanted so much to escape from reality, and become a little boy again. And in that time of difficulty did something amazing. I escaped into the realm of my imagination, and I’ve been there ever since. It’s amazing. We’ve certainly had some great adventures in the last two years.
And all this happened because of a daydream. Getting distracted in architecture class was the best thing we ever did. Jonty did the best thing he ever could for me. He gave me a whole world to explore. It wasn’t until over half a year later though that he gave me a name, Jynto.
Dream Log: 2012 Feb 30th
Dreamed I was flying by using pillows as floatation devices. Didn’t get very far because the angels caught up with me and put me in the playpen with the elephant, because there was a tax on night flying, or flying at night, or something. To that I said “That’s not very exotic, isn’t it?” and refused to drink any of the wine they gave me. I asked for my pillows back, because they knew I was going to use them to run away. Finally I made them fall to sleep by looking into the mirror, and seeing the face of a 12-year-old boy. I got as far as the other side of the room on the other side, but I woke up when I saw the mincing machine.
This one was written for a writing prompt where we had to include all the words chosen by a word association game.
Inception Log: 2012 Feb 31st
At 8:00 hours it was confirmed that the subject SG was incepted with the desired nightmare. The team decided that a type-3 forced empathy nightmare (one in which their perspective is switched with that of an enemy) would be most effective, given the subject’s personality type.
Hence, SG dreamed he was in fact one ‘RE’, and will henceforth be referred to as ‘RE’. In the dream, RE was innocently looking for a printer on which he could play Fruit Ninja, only to find that SG was blocking the entire corridor just by standing there. RE, who became agitated at this point, said something about free speech.
“Do you even know if that’s allowed?” said SG. “I’ll bet you don’t”
At this point RE burned with hatred for the stout bald prick who stood in front of him, and tried to melt his face by taking pictures with his camera-phone. But it didn’t work. SG threw him on the floor in one aggressive movement, and said “I know your name. Now give me your student card. Don’t you know this is private property?”
He then added with a sneer of his gravelly voice: “You don’t ever challenge authority, because you don’t ever win.”
This is for one where we wrote a nightmare for our worst enemy. I don’t have many enemies, so I wrote that for a security guard who I once got into an argument with.
Dream Architecture: The Rainbow Train
At last he finds himself in an enormous Underground train. But it’s okay, he’s been here before, so long ago… He still remembers how it travels through a tunnel of brightly coloured segments. They are joined together without gaps, in no particular order - red, green, pink, yellow, red, blue, white, orange, pink. The tunnel goes on forever. It’s a happy place. His mother is driving the train, and his friends are on one of the other carriages, if he could find them. The train’s been going along for hours, but the next station could be in any minute.
No one knows why the train is stopping now. But it stops very fast, silently shedding tens of miles per hour every second. For some reason this flings the dreamer in the air. This was not expected. The train disappears. And then in an instant of flashing colour he realises: what it all means.
This was part of a group piece, where we each wrote one layer of a Inception-style reality. Based on one of my own dreams that I had when I was little.
But you didn’t have to piss me off
Make it lag at every startup and then crash for nothing
And I don’t even need your app
But you eat up all my memory and that feels so crap
No you didn’t have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your updates, change your version number
I guess that I don’t need that though
Now you’re some browser that I used to know
(To be sung to the tune of Gotye’s Somebody that I Used to Know)
I loved Firefox. It was my main browser for years. It was a paragon of goodness, created by a non-profit team to make the internet a better place.
It did almost everything I wanted. Eventually I had to ignore the fact that other browsers did those things too. But I had my reasons for sticking with Firefox.
That last one wasn’t a joke. Firefox was like an old pet to me. It had its fair share of annoying habits, but I loved it anyway. Unfortunately though, it had to be put down. Now here are some things that I won’t miss about the old fox:
Now I haven’t talked much about Chrome here, but I didn’t find out about one of the best features until later. The ‘type a few words into your address bar to find somewhere you’ve been’ feature also sifts through the text on a web page (not just the title and URL). In other words if you’re using chrome, and you type Poxy Proxy Foxy into your address bar (because that’s the only part of this page you’ll remember) then it will probably find this page for you.
The City of Water drawn in blue ballpoint pen. In the canal pics I drew the reflections and everything below the water line with my right (non-dominant) hand to make it extra-rippley.
I was asked by three beautiful Asian girls to draw their portraits, after they saw the other drawing I did of 11-year-old me.
My first real fanart drawing, even though I partly traced it. Gurren Lagann was an awesome series, and I started drawing this in the pub just after we finished watching it.
