It was good to see a few positive responses to my last art posting, so here's another. A long while ago I blogged about artist Emily Allchurch who creates dark urban environments by modifying the works of 18c Italian artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Piranesi was, I think, a talented FPS level designer inconveniently born 200 years too early. His most famous works are the Carceri d'invenzione, or 'Imaginary Prisons', a series of prints depicting vast and hugely complicated gothic jails that closely resemble the sort of labyrinthine, multi-level environments we're used to in games like Quake and Unreal.
Anyway, Allchurch modifies and updates these images, adding graffiti, CCTV cameras and billboards, which I think heightens their resemblance to game worlds. You can see them for yourself at the Sarah Myerscough Fine Art gallery in London, where they form part of an exhibition entitled Transcriptions, which is running throughout August. Here are a couple more examples:
Chiaroscuro number one: London Chiaroscuro number four: Rome
When I contacted the gallery to get hold of some images, they helpfully told me about another exhibition that might be of interest. Games & Theory is on at the South London gallery until September - it's more about sport and other physical activities, rather than games, although some of the interactive exhibitions, including Nils Norman's play architecture installation, resemble life-size videogame levels.
