Video: Peter Gornstein: Virtual Environments (1st Short Essay)

Video: Peter Gornstein: Virtual Environments

In the video, the speaker talks about how their creation of the virtual environments is “exactly the same way that a Renaissance painter would” have created. Well, they might use the same techniques, depth, space, and light, as the Renaissance painters used, but to call both of the processes “exactly” the same, to me, undermines the greatness of the work the Renaissance painters did.

For instance, the Renaissance painters were the inventors of these techniques. They were the ones to evolve painting into a new era. They innovated something new rather than copying someone before them. And to come with such innovative techniques of painting in the first place must have required a lot of intellect, creativity, and skill rather than simple copying someone else and calling it to be “exactly the same way”.

Then, the Renaissance painters didn’t have computer programs to implement their ideas. Nowadays, all the designers have to do is imagine, and a computer program brings their imagination to life, but the Renaissance painters didn’t have this luxury. They not only had to think about the practicality of painting their imaginations but also had to go through a lot of trouble in order to paint something in the exact same way in which they have been imagining it.

Furthermore, the Renaissance painters couldn’t afford to make as many mistakes as they liked. A single mistake in their painting in its final stages of being painted would have caused the painters to paint all over again rather than simply undoing their last stroke of brush with a click of a button. In contrast to this, the designers of today don’t have to worry about any such thing. They can experiment with their designs in any way they like.

So, to say that the designers of today design in “exactly the same way that a Renaissance painter would” have painted undermines the trouble that those painters had to undergo to create a master piece. From the need of being perfect to not having computers on their side, the difficulty that Renaissance painters had in painting such pieces of art is a beauty in its own self.