Brick Breaker Question:
What Happens
to the Ball?
THE GAME: I am sure that most people have played the game called “Brick Breaker”. The player has a ball on a little platform and he/she breaks the bricks trying to catch the ball after it returns on the platform’s line. When the player loses the ball, the game ends and if there are more lives the player can continue his/her game with a new ball. I chose this game because I have it on my new mobile phone
and it made me remember the time I used to play it as a child. Wondering what happens to the ball inspired me to make this project. Also, I thought of other games like “Angry Birds” but I decided to focus on the “Brick Breaker” because of its retro and classic character.
THE BALL: What happens to the ball and where does it go after the gamer loses it? If we give a real life to the ball, how does it feel? And also, is the new
ball a new one, or, it is the previous ball which was dead and now it’s alive again in a new life? The idea of my project, is the creation of different environments which are presented in several posters to see what happens to the ball after the gamer loses.
Kleanthis Michail http://kleanthismichael.gdnm.org/
SURVEY ANSWERS: FACEBOOK Where does the ball go and what happens to it after the gamer loses?
People from different field of study: Stelios - Age:29
“I think the ball kind of dies, like every person or animal or whatever. Its energy goes off in the air and creates a new one for the next round”. (Advertising)
Antonis - Age:26
“The ball falls into a piece of land... A bird flies and catches it with its legs. It puts the ball into its nest and when is full the bird takes a ball back to the game”. (Science)
Savvas - Age:21
“It goes to the neighbour’s garden – (relating to children years)”. (Design, Art)
Antigoni - Age:22
“The ball is resurrected by Christ”. (Graphics)
Chara - Age:20
“I believe that the ball falls into a field which is far away and abandoned. After that, a robot comes and takes it to a secret laboratory. They reshape it and send it back to a row to get into the game again”. (Graphics)
Kleanthis Michail http://kleanthismichael.gdnm.org/
CHILDREN ANSWERS: Raphael - Age:14
“The ball goes to the Pokemon Hospital so it can be healed and gain power (like Poke-Balls)”.
John - Age:3
“The ball? It goes left and right, hits the walls up and down and then I catch it for tennis…” According to the answers that people gave me and to my opinion about what happens to the ball, I find out that all of us have different ways of thinking and understanding things.
RESEARCH VIOLENCE AND INSPIRATION
MILITARY
In the game the ball can gain powers-features which help it to break the bricks. Bomb, lazer, guns –> -> WAR, VIOLENCE
Violent behaviour is the application of great physical force to damage or destroy, which has been with us from the dawn of our history. So long as human beings hate and love, are greedy and jealous, hungry, poor and insane, or seek power, they will strike out to injure one another either physically or emotionally, or even to kill. Violence can be found anywhere, in war, in society, in religion, in laws (Governments regulate the use of violence through laws), in books etc.
Personal Opinion: The ball goes to a world where there is war taking place and there is violence everywhere. There it is being trained to fight and gain powers! When the trainer thinks that the ball is strong enough, he lets it return in the game and start breaking bricks.
Artist on Violence, War: DAVID FOLDVARI: (-upper picture) “Dealing with negative issues in my work helps to keep me balanced in real life”.
Kleanthis Michail http://kleanthismichael.gdnm.org/
JAMES NACHTWEY: (photographer) Alabama, 1994 – Punishment post on the chain gang.
War – Military: War is a state of prolonged violent large-scale conflict involving two or more groups of people, usually under the auspices of goverment. Notes of a soldier military in Cyprus:
about
“During the year which I was a ‘new soldier’, the ‘older’ ones used to mock us and make us get all their nightshifts.” “I constantly felt like I was prevented from doing all the things I would want to be doing, feeling pressured and alienated”.
RELIGION
CHILDHOOD
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems and world-views that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and to moral values. Religions give meaning to life or to explain the origin of life or the universe.
The period span between birth and adolescence. Developmental stages of toddlerhood (learning to walk), early childhood (play age), middle childhood (school age) and adolescence.
ITS INFLUENCE ON PEOPLE
Gordon Allport: Mature religion (the person whose approach to religion is dynamic, openminded, that can maintain links between inconsistencies) and Immature religion (a genuine, hearfelt faith and extrinsic religion”). Also, religious doubts orientation - beliefs should be shaped from personal crises and experiences. Some of the answers I got to my question, made me think that people imagine the ball as a human being and sometimes as themselves.
MEMORIES - IMAGINATION
My brother thought that the ball is a tennis ball. Our sister plays tennis and in the house they speak about it much. He created a vision (imagination) of the ball going left, right, up, down on its own without the necessity of one or two persons’ existence. Memory and imagination have been shown to be affected by one another. “In order to create and imagine future events, a person needs to remember a previous event”. Artist: SALLY MANN “Family Pictures: 1984-1991”
Artist: DALI SALVADOR - “Christ of Saint John of the Cross”.
CULTURE DAILY LIFE
Some of the answers I got, have to do with people’s culture and their daily life. People are being shaped by culture and their routine but also people shape at the culture the same time. Artist: ANDY WARHOL “Campbell’s Soup I” (1968)
Kleanthis Michail http://kleanthismichael.gdnm.org/
PHOTOGRAPHY
SEARCING THE ENVIRONMENTS Here is some of the photography I did about this project. I captured the ball in several and different environments inspired by the answers I got from the people and also from the research I have done based on those answers. In some of them, the ball is in nature, on broken bricks, on same-colour-layers, up in the air, in cemeteries and is put in machine parts. In all of them, the ball is shown to be out of the digital form of the game, but it keeps being in conditions it could be as the character of the game.
Kleanthis Michail http://kleanthismichael.gdnm.org/
The Posters:
ENVIRONMENT FOR A
BRICK-BREAKER Disintegration: the physical.
The ball returned to where it belongs and is merged with the environment.
Rebirth: the religious.
The ball is reborn and returns to the earth.
Winner: the cultural.
The ball is at its peak of success. Kleanthis Michail http://kleanthismichael.gdnm.org/
ENVIRONMENT FOR A
BRICK-BREAKER
Bound in violence and laws. The ball is trapped and it cannot escape.
Repetition in routine and daily life. This is an illustration which was created in photoshop, based on a photograph that shows the ball in the rims of a car that turns continuously. The ball is engaged in a vicious circle, a routine. Kleanthis Michail http://kleanthismichael.gdnm.org/