Where Juniper's Edges and Mine Become Blurred

My brain and body experience a fairly negative reaction to the way our world is structured today around media.  It's too easy for me to spend hours in front of a laptop, television, or both at the same time.  It's much easier to choose to do this rather than to spend the hours socializing in real life, listening to music while cooking good food, reading, or engaging in creative pursuits.  The fact that new kitty Ygritte wants to sit on my lap and/or cuddle with me 24/7 doesn't make this any easier, nor does the cold weather that finally hit Austin this week.  As a result of constant television, Facebook, Twitter, other social media, reading blogs, email, playing games online...my brain isn't quiet.  It's always jumping from one thought to another, one idea to another, without spending any time contemplating, meditating, or enjoying.

I don't know how I stumbled upon Wallace Steven's poem "The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm," but it made me …

My experiences in gaming and my love for theater and design are inextricably related.  While I can remember when I first worked as an electrician on a show and first learned that lighting design as a field existed, I think that my interest in it began earlier than that, when I played Riven in my dorm room in college.  Back then I was a marine biology major.  Myst was the game that really got transitioned me away from the various Nintendo games played throughout high school (Super Mario Bros, Zelda, and most especially Star Tropics, which could actually be considered my first experience with intermedia storytelling...) to more story-based games played on my desktop computer (a Hewlett-Packard, if I remember correctly, which lasted me from 1996-2001).  But Riven really sparked something designer-y in me, I think.  There are so many beautiful places to explore and the lighting is key to the feel of all of them.



I've actually brought images from Riven and from Myst to the table as res…