Heterotopias

Our reading Foucaults Of Other Spaces really made me reflect on how the absence of understanding really dominates our daily activities and mental reflections. Space, in terms of both the universe outside this word and the one we are in now (internal and external space, as he put it) has an ever-present power to put everything we know into relativity, and nothing will ever amount to it.

The concept of the Heterotopia brings about the question of what we actually consider valid in our minds and in our thought process. These things can exist in already "physical" places but have more existing layers. So what is real? The combination of my own musings related to a physical place is just as real as the memory of a conversation that once was; just because something is lacking a human visual input doesn't mean it doesn't exist. If we rid ourselves of the practice of dismissing something of its "real validity" because it doesn't actually "physically exist," we can begin to understand the world in a different way and use these Heterotopias to escape our daily lives.

That's why I find gaming so fascinating. It is just as real as any place I "physically" exist in; both experiences have input and output with my brain.

I can remember being young and playing Zelda; Ocarina of Time and being completely captivated. I suddenly was transported to a different world, and as far as I was concerned, I was.