Architecture Photography and New New Topographics
This exercise invites participants to critically explore architectural and landscape photography within GTA V. By exploring various locations in Los Santos, participants will capture and analyse the structural intricacies and urban design unique to the simulation. Drawing inspiration from historical and contemporary photographers, they will investigate how digital landscapes can mirror or diverge from real-world topographies. The task includes creating a series of images, each with a title and a reflective artist statement, to document findings and creative interpretations. The goal of this exercise is to blend practical photography skills with theoretical insights, providing a comprehensive understanding of digital architecture and its potential for new artistic expressions.
Exercise 1: The infrastructure is the message
Visit the intersection of Interstate 4 and Interstate 5 to explore the infrastructure regulating the traffic of Los Santos. GTA V features numerous highways and freeways connecting the city to the rest of the county, inspired by Los Angeles’s distinctive civil engineering feats and massive road junctions and bridges. This intersection is directly modelled after the Judge Harry Pregerson Interchange, a 40-metre-tall stack interchange that has become an iconic symbol of the city in movies and television. Using either an analogue or digital camera, capture images of the city architecture displayed on a projection or computer monitor. Take inspiration from Gareth Damian Martin’s work described in this guidebook to approach this task with an architectural photography mindset, investigating the spatial design and structural intricacies within the game.
Exercise 2: Industrial photography
Visit the industrial areas in and around Elysian Island to explore its architecture. This district houses structures belonging to the Los Santos State Gas Company and Bristols Fuel Storage. You will find several storage buildings and tanks, large pipes, and machinery surrounding a commercial harbour where cargo boats are docked. Use your smartphone camera to take pictures of these buildings displayed on your computer screen, drawing inspiration from Mascha Negri’s approach in her project Luftige Enge. Refer to the works of Bernd & Hilla Becher and their typologies of industrial buildings and landscapes. Your goal is to analyse and categorise the industrial architecture within the game, noting the unique characteristics and features of each structure.
Exercise 3: Imagining New New Topographics
Explore the rest of the city and investigate the unique typologies of spaces and landscapes that are exclusive to the game world, as well as scenarios that could not exist in the physical world. Consider which game objects could be part of these virtual topographies. Reflect on the work of the New Topographics photographers, who studied how landscapes were shaped by human activity in the industrial societies of the twentieth century, and explore the game world as a twenty-first century landscape. Take inspiration from Luke Caspar Pearson’s Cars on Hills project within his Little Books of Los Santos series. Think about his re-enactment and extension of Ed Ruscha’s work, and imagine what a New New Topographics might look like in this context.
