City and Video Games: Moving Towards Each Other

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of the city new imagery, the steady convergence of real architecture and virtual architecture. Although the connection between these phenomena has been the subject of reflection by specialists from various science branches for the past decades, it has not been sufficiently manifested. Another attempt at manifestation is made in this article, within the fundamental problems of art theory and history. Its novelty consists in activating the classical category “image of the city” in the virtual space centre of video games as the most active link between artistic and empirical images of the city. On the example of real architectural objects in the cities of the last quarter of the 20th — 21st centuries and architectural objects, existing only in the popular video games locations of the last generation, the interaction mechanisms of artistic images and their transition into the empirical images sphere with a gradual blurring of the transition boundaries are studied. The contemporary architecture trend is seen as the purposeful programming of sophisticated associative games through the production of images of the city that make you doubt the reality of the world, the difference between authenticity and imaginary. In turn, cities in video games simulate the same dubiously humane worlds, only in addition they can be managed, tested for viability online. The exacerbation of gaming in architecture is seen as a postmodern provocation to critically, ironic deconstruct reality in the fullness of its contradictions, and the videogame set of cities as an ideal platform to work on the deconstruction experience and, perhaps, to reset personal relationships with the world. It shows how the artistry of video games turns into the everyday background of life, changing the perception of the urban environment and the world as a whole.