Update of the LUNA project. Oct 2023. This is a cut down version of the design document.

2023 Notable / Recent Changes

The map has been inverted, placing government at the bottom/start of the map. This comes from an insight that the player should start in a controlled environment and travel into the wild – following a basic story arc that should be more in line with a symbolic journey. I don’t quite know why I had Government at the top except that’s schematic, where it should be dynamic. Thank you to a half asleep brain.

I am currently living in exile as my home is in renovation. So most of the dreaming is happening with paper and pencils. This is a good thing. The main issue at the moment is to develop the light side of the expo space – the science/progress areas.

Overview

I propose to create a virtual architectural space that refers to early 20th century World Expositions, primarily the 1939 NYC World Fair. It’s not intended as an accurate historical reproduction, but used as a poetic reference – as was A Coney Island of the Mind for Ferlinghetti.

This space is built using a game engine. It is not a game, which requires winning or losing. The entertainment here is in discovering, experiencing and navigating a story which illustrates a principle in human psychology.

It incorporates recognisable historical elements, but remains an impression of a world fair, distorted to display a particular aspect of their design – the relationship between the progressive/controlled exhibition and the sensual/wild amusement area that challenged that intent. Using 20th century terms, I call these extremes the WHITE CITY and the PIKE.

The WHITE CITY was mostly just that – a set of buildings painted pure white, in the most modern style, implying a clean, bright future provided by the leadership of government and industry. The City spoke of Science, Order, Progress and so on. But the planners of these expositions found that while the audience respected the city, they expected the opposite to be in the balance.
Next to the WHITE CITY, usually partitioned off by a symbolic gateway, the PIKE offered up freak shows, animals, roller coasters and – more than anything else – porn. Disorder, sensuality and archaic/mythical depths.

I argue that this balance is essential to our psychology. It has been portrayed in many symbols and fables. There is the Yin/Yang – hot and cold in balance. There is Dionysus, god of divine wisdom, but also drunkenness (not about drinking oneself to a stupor, but enough to liberate one’s thoughts). There is Dr Jekyll, who wanted to alternate his responsible and selfish tendencies, but instead created Mr Hyde, an entire self-serving creature.

All of these stories hold the same lesson – you cannot have the WHITE CITY without the PIKE. Even if you are Walt Disney, who hated the licentiousness of the Pike and so built a park that refused it. Yet it crept into Disneyland while he lived, and flooded the park on his death.

A Coney Island of the Mind

Although best known as a book of poetry by Ferlinghetti, the phrase comes from an earlier text by Henry Miller, Into the Night Life. Ferlinghetti says ‘it was used out of context but expresses the way I felt about these poems when I wrote them… a kind of circus of the soul.’Into the Night Life is a rare, hand made ‘art book’ with paintings by Bezalel Scahtz. Of the few hundred made, a small number were sold. It inspires this project partly in that poetry has been expressed over multiple mediums, and a computer game/story can be poetic. Although a ‘circus of the soul’ is not exactly what I want to show, I wish to display the extremes of light and dark in a mind.

For Miller, ‘coney island’ meant the impermanent, crumbling ‘sawdust and chicken wire’ used to build the carnival buildings. ‘A coney island of the mind’ is a false, shallow fakery of reality.

GENERAL LAYOUT

My virtual space is a fable of this balance between light and dark, controlled and uncontrolled. It portrays an expo site divided into in left and right hemispheres. Each of these then divides vertically into governed and ungoverned areas. The player navigates through these areas to experience the fable first hand.

LEFT/DARK/HYDE	ORDER	RIGHT/LIGHT/JEKYLL
Top left: The Gardens featuring a river around a hedge garden island ending in a replica of a 1550’s stone monster park.	Small organic ‘Luna’ towers that mutate into NYC skyscrapers to the right hand side.	Top right: The White City, being a maze of impressive towers of deco / streamline / international style.
THE MIDWAY pathway	THE HUB	THE AVENUE pathway
Bottom left: The Pike, with Midway and increasingly disordered exhibits to the left.	Government: the trickster that balances between the two hemispheres.	Bottom right: The Exposition, being exhibits of machines, aircraft, medicine and science.

The right/light side of the park attempts to expunge the uncivil side of nature. These forces continue to exist over on the left. The left-hand sectors are dark, deranged, but beautiful. The right-hand side sectors are inhumane, without insight, and meaningless. The top sectors are increasingly natural or ungoverned.

In between is the HUB which acts like a corpus callosum between hemispheres. At the base/entrance is GOVERNMENT which claims to balance the two sides but simply draws from both of them by playing to their desires. This is provided to illustrate ideas of governmentality and technologies of the self.

In each quadrant there is a ‘mountain’, like those in Disney Parks – Space Mountain, Splash Mountain etc. – which is the lure and destination for that area. Completion of the story requires accessing all mountains.

• THE HUB – the centre point between all extremes. It is a helter-skelter perched on an elevated dark/light symbol. Either side of the symbol has stairs in the tail leading up to a platform and each spot is a smaller tower.
• At the entrance, the dome of GOVERNMENT which pretends to balance all things. It has a decreasing influence in what goes on in the top half.
• THE ENDLESS HOUSE – the mountain at the end of THE MIDWAY running left from the hub which promises complete abdication from the self, nothingness and disassociation. ‘Ecstatic helplessness in the face of the unfathomable.’
• CAROUSEL of PROGRESS – the mountain at the end of THE AVENUE running right from the hub, which promises the fruits of science and endeavor. It is a false beacon because there is no introspection, humanity or philosophy included.
• THE HELL MOUTH – the mouth is that of the stone ogre in a 1550s ‘sacred garden’. It is an ending point for the game and is difficult to reach.
• MOLOCH or THE FORD MOUTH – an alternate ending point for the game, it is based on the Moloch in Metropolis. It is also difficult to reach.

The architecture of the two sides is based on an actual 1939 dispute between the Surreal and Modern, led by Dali and Breton on the left and Le Corbusier on the right (as described by Rem Koolhaas in Delirious New York). The surrealists were not strong with architecture, tending to simply dislike modern sharp edged forms. I only have two sources – Dali’s Dreams Of Venus pavilion and Friedrick Kiesler’s Endless House. These provide a general rule for the architecture – a tendency to softness and organic forms as we travel to the left. On the right is increasing rigidity and uniformity.

LEFT/DARK/HYDE	ORDER	RIGHT/LIGHT/JEKYLL
Forest and rock hewn into grotesque Mannerist forms. The sublime. The Stone Hell Mouth		Metropolis – the machine city. Humans as cogs. Moloch.
THE MIDWAY pathway: Increasing softness, organic forms, womb like, melting and confused. The Endless House.	THE HUB	THE AVENUE pathway: Increasing rigidity, hard edges, towers, skyscrapers. Buildings that shape people into their pattern. International style. The Carousel of Progress.

It is possible that the sky and lighting will be fully night at the far left and fully day to the right. That way the Endless House will be lit for night. There’s some thought required about the centre, should it be dusk?

WHY THE 1930s?

It is around this time that the surrealists (Breton, Dali) and modernists (Corbusier) argued over architecture. The modernists wanted people to adapt to architecture, the surrealists wanted the architecture to adapt to people. The modernists won this battle by making actual buildings instead of words. Both sides used monstrosity as a measure – to be monstrous is to defy definition. Corbusier thought that the ideal city should reform monstrosity. This battle of thought is the engine of my work.

Streamline becomes the predominant architecture in 1930’s American public works.

Modernism expressed in the architecture, mannerism in the distortions of the carnival.

The 20^th century world fair promoted a future of uniformity, efficiency as if people are just cogs in a white machine. The 1930’s is not the start of the robot worker (RUR was staged in 1921 and Metropolis was in 1927), but it’s the point where Great Depression was demanding a solution, answered by variations on Socialism (including National Socialism). The modern, efficient, technical human is a myth that the expo reveals.

Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times appears in 1936.

1930’s was the Age of Dictators – Stalin and Hitler both exhibited at the 1937 Paris Expo, each with their version of The Worker (Robot).

THE HUB – HELTER SKELTER

Each exposition spread out from a central tower (or a Ferris wheel) from which the whole fairgrounds could be viewed. In the 1939 expo this was the Trylon. A Helter Skelter is a useful (and exciting) starting point for the story. It serves as a fulcrum or spindle, having a black and white features and spiral on black and white divisions.

In the game design I will reveal some but not all of the map at that vantage point. Having climbed the tower you could then plan your destination, not needing to wander aimlessly. You will not see the endings or the journeys leading to them.

THE PIKE (Bottom left)

The left sector is a collection of rides and exhibits which are based on those you would expect to find in a mid 20^th century funfair but modified to represent the themes of this artwork. The modifications are detailed in the description of each. They are arranged such that as you travel towards the left/night their contents become more surreal. The overall impression should be that you are diving deeper into the unfathomable. So there is some play with the idea of water and oceans. Submechaniphobia is another descriptor.

TERRORS OF THE DEEP

The River Caves with flat and sculptured monsters from the water – sharks, whales, octopus etc. – all of them drawn up like an old school UV paint carnival. Similar in design to the Old Mill from Kennywood (pre/post Garfield).

It links with Dali’s aquatic obsessions. It presages what’s coming – diving and drowning.

This was the centre of this whole environment early in design – with the shores as portals to the rest of it. Is that still true? I still like the idea of transgression DO NOT GET OUT OF THE BOAT. Using UV paint and lighting is still a great design idea. The monsters come from around the world so you can have a bit of the Journey Around the World theming.

Dragon’s Gorge was a very early Scenic Railway at Luna Park NYC rebuilt numerous times across the USA. The oldest roller coaster is the Scenic Railway at Luna Park Melbourne but that has no scenes! The idea is to include decorations similar to those in a River Caves. Keeping with the aquatic theme this is a SeaDragon’s Gorge.

STREETS of … (HUMAN ZOO?)

The Surrealist exhibition of 1937 included a corridor of mannequins decorated by the artists called Streets of Paris – obviously referring to street walkers. Dali exhibited the Rainy Day Taxi. My ‘surreal’ area must be aware of this event.

A frequent exhibit in World Fairs was Streets of Cairo – a fantasy oriental neighborhood overtly about a culture owned by the colonial host (e.g. ‘Algeria’ for the French) allegedly about anthropology – but always featuring exotic dancers.

Both are really about tits and arse, which is a bit dull given the range of emotions possible to cover here. The surrealists were complicated misogynists. I would rather evoke wonder and unease. I also must address, while avoiding causing upset, Freak Shows and the ‘HUMAN ZOO’ – the exhibition of ‘primitive cultures’ as ‘closer to animals’.

There is no benefit for me to go anywhere near the historical reality. The ‘humans’ in this section could be based on the bizarre characters found in toys. Their toy-like appearance should disarm concerns about being portraits of living beings (as the did the mannequins). There needs to be some balance between toys and horror. It could simply be their large scale.

I currently want to lay out my exhibit space based on Borobudur. Mostly because this creates an interesting landscape to navigate and creates size balance for exhibits on the DAY side of the map. While there is some risk that this will trivialise the original site it has long been a Buddhist tourist site in Muslim control. It has been faded from fervour.

LAFF IN THE DARK / GHOST TRAIN

The actual EXPO39 had a Laff In The Dark in the amusement section. There is no detail. I’ve decided to include the lost Ghost Train from Sydney Luna Park which was running at the same time. I have the floor plan to work from and have been able to piece together the frontage from five incomplete and badly angled photographs. Both would have been ‘pretzels’.

The real ride throws you at the gags so it’s more about physics than content. Therefore it is not a scenic railroad like Haunted Mansion.

It’s important to get the apparent motion right. I currently have not settled on the material in this ride, despite several attempts at it.

Speculative: FERRIS WHEEL

One possible scenario for this would be people in the cars going around and around unaware of the constant cycle. They are trapped and going nowhere. You see them presented a car at a time through the glass. You do not travel on the carousel (that would require building scenery) or perhaps it takes you to a different scenario (which requires scenery and this is maybe an extension for later).

Speculative: MOVING IMAGES or a CYCLORAMA

It would be nice to include the Labyrinth from Expo 67. A 1930’s version? There were motion pictures!

Speculative: MIRROR MAZE / FOOLISH HOUSE

Mirror Maze – who shows up in the mirror? Just a maze? A maze with other people in it? The problem with mirrors is that the player sees themselves as an avatar, which destroys the first person story telling. So you’d either need to be third person (with a whole explanation why) or leave that figure up to the imagination. They can’t be mirrors as we’d normally know them.

Other features of the fun house – Human Roulette, Barrels, Slides, Turkey Trot etc. Most of this is physical and will not translate well into a computer experience. What way can the experience be translated into vision and sound? In what way does this tell the story – it originally brought people into close (sexual) contact. What kind of transgression can this house provide?

THE BIRDS

Speculative: OTHER POSSIBLE RIDES UP TO 1939

THE ENDLESS HOUSE

So far this is designed as an antagonist to the Carousel of Progress on the other side of the map. It is the maximum of the leftward space and represents the very worst aspects of the dichotomy on that side. Reading all that’s been said about the early amusement gardens, and what little surrealist architecture has been developed I have rough sketch.

Tristan Tzara – “intrauterine appeal, soft tactile depths, experienced inside circular, spherical, and irregular houses”

Frederick Kiesler – The Endless House, based on eggshell, materials to envelop the inhabitant in tactile protective layers. “is rather sensuous, more like the female body in contrast to sharp-angled male architecture”, has no boundary but is able to shelter, “an ergonomically designed illusionary cinematic spatial experience that can expand and contract to engage one’s every motion and desire”

I am not as interested in the erotic as the Surrealists. I wish to evoke the monstrous (uncatagorisable) and the sublime, as in that which cannot be encompassed by the faculties. The Endless House should wrap and entrap one in swaddling, in a womb, dissolve the boundaries leaving you without measurement or direction. It should kill you with kindness. Endless means the absence of boundaries. All is open and nowhere. In opposition to the Carousel of Progress, which is about direction, parameters, steps.

It is not possible to reach the Hell Mouth unless you pass through the Endless House.

THE GARDEN (Top Left)

The Garden is the upper half of the left/night side. It is further away from Government and less under control than any other part of the park. The Endless House is on the border, but the Garden has its own ‘mountain’ which is a replica of the stone mouth in the Sacred Wood.

Sacred Wood 1550: Inscriptions “And all other marvels prized before by the world yield to the Sacred Wood that resembles only itself and nothing else.”

sol per sfogare il Core (“just to set the heart free”)

LUNA TOWERS

Top centre of the map are towers of the sort that were at Luna Park in the 1920’s. They are mockeries of the White City skyscrapers over on the section to right. This is a comment on the imitation of each described in Delirious New York. As you travel left the towers get smaller, more organic, bendy, Dali-esque and finally floppy as you get near to the river. The skyscrapers can only be entered through the Carousel of Progress.

RIVER STYX

The Styx refers to the river that surrounds hell. It is a reference to the Rivers of America at Disneyland. There will need to be a dock on the land side, a boat and a dock on the other side. The river is filled with shipwrecks.

I have not considered these yet, or any other boats, but I really love the destroyed ships seen in What Dreams May Come and that seems like a damn fine idea. Interesting fact – the film was shot on the site of the SFO World’s Fair.

HEDGE ANIMALS

In the place of Tom Sayer Island at Disney I would like to have a lawn and a hedge garden. Those that are hedge animals should move around like the ones described in The Shining. Actually, more than that – they should chase the shit out of you. Another good reference is the film Annihilation in which plants have started to grow to look like people. Hedge animals with not enough branches and leaves look damaged and in pain.

There is room for a Maize maze here. See the layout of the real Tom Sawyer island.

FOREST

On the other side of the island there is a forest. The idea is actually that have buildings that are tree like or vice versa – there should be a strong sense of disorder such that when we get through the forest to the Sacro Bosco, we feel like we are safe and about to be rescued. Something like the end of High Rise.

STONE MONSTER PARK

At the extreme limit of this Sacro Bosco area we find the Hell Mouth inscribed ‘All Thoughts Fly’. This is the final exit, as it is the personification of the forces represented by the Endless House.

THE EXPOSITION (Bottom Right)

The exposition is the bottom right-side section of the park. It holds displays of transportation, science, medicine etc. It is under control of government and is comparatively organised and safe. In design it looks like a vision of the future – if that future was centrally planned. The main failing of this area is the uniformity of the vision – there is no room for individuals, let alone freaks, who must be expunged from the pristine landscape.

References include socialist science fiction such as Space Patrol, Star Trek etc. even though these are much later than 1939.

POWER

This exhibit firstly offers a popular concept of power, as in engines and electricity. It quickly divides into HARD and SOFT power aspects of political power. HARD power then divides into murals of LEGITIMATE (structures such as an army), REFERENT (nationalism and honour), EXPERT (science and trust), REWARD (personal gain), and COERCIVE (punishment). There are displays of DOMINANCE and SUBMISSION, AUTHORITY etc. SOFT power then covers culture as power – influencers, instututions such as Voice of America, Confucius Institute etc.

TIME

This area will be dominated by a clock tower with one large digital display and four smaller clock faces. It is based loosely on the master clock in JG Ballard’s Chronopolis short story. His clock is Big Ben with 12 smaller clocks – this will need to be simpler. The intention is to tell the story with activity – that is, to only allow travel or engagement for one colour code at a time. The player should led to understand the frustration of time allocated freedom. However – there needs to be some way to communicate the class structure of the time allocation – MANUALS, WORKERS, EXECUTIVES and GOVERNMENT in this cut down scheme. Murals?

Time should be seen as a form of power but also with a technophilic aspect.

HEALTH

The 1939 exhibit (roughly) included: Development of the Human Embryo, Transparent Woman, working models of Heart Lungs etc., Vaccination, Formation of Good Habits, Survival in a Modern Environment and lots of Sexual Hygiene. Mostly the latter. Much of it was based on the collection at German Museum of Hygiene.

CULTURE

AIRPORT

Much of Exposition looks like an airport, but the Airport area specifically has flying machines and their auxiliary devices on display. There is a reciprocal area with birds over in the amusement area. Fetish for airports is the key. Most 1939 viewers had never been in an airplane.

In 1939 this would all have been propeller planes. There’s probably some room for exaggeration of their features, but it’s wise to avoid looking backwards from our own advanced jet aircraft. Also need to be careful about Space Age elements which have a very different mystique. Refer to section on WHY 1930’s.

THE CAROUSEL OF PROGRESS

The original Carousel was at New York 1964 as part of “Progress land”. There are some aspects of the original (Sky Dome Spectacular) which are interesting. Generally, I’m not interested in General Electric or the history of electricity. I am interested in carousels that spin and make people lust for commodities.

It is a parade of white goods, but the emphasis is on how those white goods define us. The jeopardy is not yet clear – but it is something around the human adapting to the machine.

It is only possible to reach Moloch through the carousel.

THE WHITE CITY (Top Right)

THE CITY is a maze of buildings. Mazes are almost always tedious in games. That should not refute the idea, it just should give a warning that there needs to a very good reason to be in the maze, and for it to be exciting in some way. Sightseeing is one idea, as is things to read in a library, people to meet…

MOLOCH – The Ford Mouth

The goal here is the Moloch machine mouth which is the yin/yang of the stone mouth. If the stone mouth is the heart of the sublime, then the machine mouth is perhaps the technology of the self. That is, wiped empty of one’s soul by the demands of society. The story of the maze is depersonalisation.

Winning and Losing

Although this not a game it must have journey with purpose. There needs to be an end, and as the story is divided into light and dark, there should be two ends with roughly equivalent peril.

The dark ending is in the Stone Mouth. If the Endless House is dissolution, then the Stone Mouth should involve some kind of positive post-dissolution acceptance. It should follow some of the religious ideas of being washed clean (emptied) and filled with some other purpose. (Check ancient mythologies and synthesise).

The light ending is in Moloch. The Carousel of Progress is again dissolution, but into the uniformity of the modern citizen – the number-person. This involves some of the 20th century myths of scientism.

Both of these endings require a special transit between the top and bottom halves. The top half is a shorter section. (Is it allowed to bail out of this? I guess, so long as you have to go through the wash again.)

Non Player Characters

I’ve not included other people in previous games and this has been criticised as causing the player to feel needlessly lonely. An expo would includes thousands of people – interaction is not feasible. If there are to be crowds, then I’d prefer to show them as faded, ghostly (inaccessible) – they are other people traveling the map on their own journeys and not for collaboration.

I may need to pick out particular characters and provide them at points where they can improve the game. I do not want to attempt ‘side quests’ or require dialogue to progress the game.