Type 1.5.11.
2021
Virtual Photography
Kallitype process
30x45 cm, 50x75 cm, exhibition version sizes
Architecture
Type 1.5.11. represents a conceptual photo series created by Maxim Zmeyev in the post-apocalyptic MMO Action RPG Fallout 76. In video games over the past decade, there has been a noticeable shift toward a "games as a service" model, a system facing much criticism today. This model allows players to customize content through permanent DLC (downloadable content) additions. These additions enable detailed planning of architecture and design of buildings, impacting role-playing experiences in RPGs. Fallout 76, which has earned a dubious reputation among gamers, serves as a metaphor for the negative influence of capitalist competition on the gaming industry. Raw, overloaded, buggy, and unfinished, it condemned players to wandering aimlessly through an empty post-apocalyptic world. This context made Fallout 76 an intriguing object of social research in the project.
Drawing inspiration from the nostalgic cataloging of modernist functional buildings in the style of Bernd and Hilla Becher, the in-game camera was used to capture the facades of various players' shelters and bases. Throughout the project, more than a thousand personal player-built camps (C.A.M.P.s) were photographed. Based on the visual and functional elements of the architecture, several types of player interaction with both the virtual world and each other were identified.
Applying the philosophical method of classifying social divisions, from Plato’s ancient State to modern sociological frameworks, including the work of Luc Boltanski, patterns in the virtual world that mirror real-world social structures were discovered. Boltanski's sociology, particularly his exploration of critique and justification in social dynamics, serves as a valuable tool for understanding how individuals navigate and create meaning in complex environments. In Fallout 76, players not only build structures but also construct roles and hierarchies that reflect these sociological concepts. Boltanski’s theory of the “worlds of justification,” where different orders of worth and moral legitimacy are negotiated, is evident in how players define their roles—whether as guards, traders, artisans, or philosophers. These virtual spaces act as a microcosm of real-world social systems, where interaction, conflict, and cooperation are governed by principles of functionality, status, and moral order. By mapping player-built architectures and their associated social behaviors, parallels to Boltanski’s work are drawn, revealing how digital environments reflect broader societal patterns of justification and distinction. The distinctions and patterns that reflect functionality, along with the architectural and visual features of player-constructed buildings, were classified into five types:
Guards (warriors) – military
Traders – business
Farmers – eco
Artisans – craft
Philosophers – ascetic
The result of this visual study, Type 1.5.11., consists of eleven photographs, five of which are arranged in a research diagram. The lengths of the photographs correspond to the percentage of each type relative to the total number of players. To produce the final works, the historical Kallitype photographic process was used, patented in 1889 by chemist Dr. William Walker James Nicol. In Nicol’s original patent, the print was developed in a silver nitrate bath, but subsequent revisions in the early 1890s led to the current method, where silver nitrate is used in the sensitizer rather than the developer. This process, which involves a mixture of iron salts, oxalic acid, and silver nitrate, is still the technique used by most contemporary Kallitype printers today.
When examining a digital dwelling - a house, a camp, a building, - it is impossible to determine with certainty the appearance, gender, age, or race of the players. However, what can be observed is their style of play and the logic behind their in-game social interactions. Type 1.5.11. invites reflection on the evolution of the relationship between individuals and their habitats, the search for personal space, and the sense of ownership. From the Roman concept of "property," understood as an ancestral place in the world, a home of secrets, birth, and death, through the eras of social order, to the modern perception of home in a virtual realm. This project by Maxim Zmeyev explores these timeless questions in the context of digital and virtual worlds.
