Type 1.5.11.

2021
#VirtualPhotography #InGamePhotography
#Kallitype
30 × 45 cm / 50 × 75 cm / exhibition version

#Type 1 5 11. rises from ashen clouds: the post-nuclear Fallout 76 — once a #MMOStorm — is frozen in the showcase of #GamesAsAService, where #AggressiveMonetization (subscription base, season passes, paid cosmetics) turns the wasteland of #Appalachia into #DigitalRuins. A radioactive wind carries the rustle of #NuclearAftermath; shards of interface whisper #PostCapitalism. A long breath — flash.
Frame — crackle.

The operator records; a #VirtualTripod trembles in the haze of bits. The in-game camera lines up more than 1 500 unique #CAMP shelters for the #ArchitecturalArchive. Eleven final frames are lifted from this cloud; five form a diagram, each print’s length mirroring the share of players who chose that path. #PlayerAgency glints on the emulsion, and the server hums like a Geiger counter. Flash. Roar.

Cataloguing rests on markers. #WarriorsType: turrets, trophies of giant insects, yawning barrels — #TurretIconography as a defensive crest. #TradersType: neon stalls, ammo sales, canned life. #FarmersType: corn thickets, warm earth steam, #Mutafruit on a cliff edge. #ArtisansType: workbenches, heaps of scrap, glowing #WorkbenchLore. #PhilosophersType: bare walls, an echo of wasteland, and #AustereDwelling of wood and hush.

At the junction of pixel and chemistry begins alchemy: #IronSalt meets #SilverNitrate, awakening the long-sleeping #Kallitype patented by William Walker James Nicol in 1889. In the tray the digital flakes away like radioactive dust; the image gains weight, ringing with cold metal, like a spill of bent #BottleCaps stinging fingertips.

Ideas stream overhead. The echo of #Plato and his #Politeia reminds us each type cuts a facet of virtue. Louder speaks #Boltanski: in his #WorldsOfJustification, stage legitimises value and value shapes stage. Thus is born a #SocialTaxonomy: turret = force, shop = exchange, bed = sustainability, sparks = skill, void = thought. The viscous sentence curls. Flash. Silence.

A #MicroSociety unfolds: data settles as #DataDust, code collides with stone — #CodeVsStone. Pixel-patina #PixelPatina rustles in the ear, morphing into a quiet #SensorialEcho and a flickering #VisualDialect.

The series coils into #AlgorithmicMemory, seeps into matter, becoming #LiquidOwnership: a home without coordinates turns into a #TimeCapsule on dark silver. Above the frame quivers a #RustlingSilence, drawing #SpeculativeCartography across the wasteland rim — from game’s edge to the #EdgeOfVoid, into endless #AfterGlow.

From wasteland ⤳ to shelter ⤳ to click.
From byte ⤳ to silver ⤳ to crackle.
From role ⤳ to type ⤳ to diagram.

#MaximZmeyev