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Retrospective

Overall

  • part of the visual language of the magic realism: vehicles (and most props) are modelled after mundane historical references & manufacturers, workhorse font Letter Gothic designed by employee at the Lexington IBM plant.

What we’re reading / looking at

  • Southern Gothic / grotesque

  • Beowulf Boritt

  • Phil Morton / Colorful Colorado

  • Tarkovsky / Mirror / Stalker

  • Equus

Textmode

  • Typography & sound cues as a non-intrusive audio/visual bridge between visual point/click scenes and text adventure/interactive fiction

Equus Oils

  • Googie/mid-century modern architectural style as a theme of escapism, evokes an optimistic paleofuture of car culture & industry

  • In contrast the basement is disorderly & dilapidated, shows a different reality, that the player can correlate later on with Joseph’s inbox.

  • Watching the sun setting, a foreboding feeling, tieing into the theme of hard times, entering recession.

  • The horse’s body becomes recognizable as buried (perhaps debt) or maybe swimming (unexpected & unfamiliar terrain/locomotion for a horse)

  • Joseph is sort of a cross between Joseph Weizenbaum & Carl Rogers & Martin Dysart

  • Lighting transitions & framing in this first scene are meant to introduce the use of theatrical lighting and stage design.

  • Moment of dramatic irony: seeing the surface/Joseph is a platform for dramatic irony later in the game (i.e. Shannon & Joseph interacting if you revisit the basement after meeting her)

Marquez Farm

  • Ruins of old house & new hobby farm evokes themes of deterioration and reclamation via changing inhabitants

Elkhorn Mine

  • kycoal.homestead.com was an invaluable pictorial resource for coal mine history in KY

  • Valueable company-owned equipment completely cleared out (drills/tools, etc), but useless tchotchkes bought from the company store left behind & unwanted

  • “No work tomorrow” — touching on the problematic labor practices; culling work hours if demand for coal goes down; workers go into debt against future wages

  • Correlating various visual elements: the tram arm and the electric lines; the tram wheels and rails; the tape deck and the tape loop.

  • The tram became important to the magic realism visual language and ties into Conway’s occupation

  • Moment of dramatic irony: seeing route zero at the dead end; the characters don’t know but the player is left wondering - why did the miners stop digging?

  • The tchotchkes arranged around the turntable are from the company store bought with coal scrip tokens; they’re sort of blank slates for the reader to fill in a story like in the dialog, but my vague starting points are:

    • The bat/feeder & scarecrow: encouraging & discouraging inhabitants

    • The rowboat & horse bones: loosely tied to Equus Oils & the swimming horse motif

    • The hard times whiskey & mandolin: devices for expressing coal miners’ sorrow