Building of Fringelab

• Meta-Meta-Meta

  Somehow, over the course of the past year or so, playing, writing and publishing music seems to have turned into a real thing in my world. It is now my ‘main gig’. Which means that my programming, graphics and other related activities usually have to wait until I’m done practicing. Working on my computer skills is now a hobby of sorts.

  To that end I felt drawn back to a project I had started over 20 years ago. For a few years in the early 2000’s I put a lot of time and effort into it but then drifted away. Came back, dropped it, revisited it, dropped it again…. Every time adding ideas, usually in the form of private philosophical discoveries. Over time the thing had turned into an art piece with my original project at the center – like an unfinished symphony in multi-media. At this point I am accepting that this will most likely never be finished, but I also commit myself to document this strange process – like another aspect of the art project.

  The earliest traces are found in this comic book I started to draw in 1980 – as a hobby. It was called Gefährliche Fracht nach Andromeda. Fittingly it didn’t get finished and stops on page 40 in the middle of the story where it still hangs after more than 40 years.

  

  This approximate ship design was reused in the 2005 video ‘Architects of Deep Reality’, which was supposed to be the first episode of a series. After I found out how labor-intensive video production is, I started to write it as a graphic novel, then a SF novel – but I really never had the full story, just that first episode.

  https://youtu.be/8F6Dzfc3CfI?si=SZwqSuJpyb5QEtHP&t=255

  Around 2010 or so I picked up the idea again. This time slightly retitled ‘Engineers of Deep Reality’. The production values were higher as was the time investment. But it was a good investment because doing this stuff you learn so much about the software, programming and a lot more (such as the philosophy element that started to creep in, in the form of ‘Deep Reality’).

  https://youtu.be/x2w0CfPetW0?si=XWQeb0GjXtXurKH1

  At the time the second video was made I did have a fairly good backstory and a very rough overall story arc, but just not the time to constantly keep working on it. Occasionally I would go through my materials folder to read backstory, look at images and get inspired to add a bit or two.

  A few weeks ago (November 2024), while walking my dog around Griffy Lake, a totally insane ‘framing’ story popped into my head and hasn’t gone away since. One reason is probably that I occasionally work on some stuff for an aging Oculus Rift VR headset. For fun I had built a full-size ‘Pilgrim’ spaceship and put it in a VR scene – this thing is almost a kilometer long and standing next to it was shocking. This would make a great game backdrop. And this is how this new phase started.

  Will the game ever be finished (I rarely play computer games)? Will there ever be a cohesive story? I suspect VR will be at Star Trek holodeck level before I get anything out. But it’s fun. I learn a lot about the tools, the story, and myself. A great hobby!

  And I’ll try to keep a log about my progress (maybe).