Video Games and Urban Visions.Virtual Spaces and Simulated Worlds

It has been calculated that in the Renaissance, the inhabitant of a city like Florence or Venice could observe up to 500 images throughout his life. Many of these were representations of cities. Mechanical reproduction systems, followed by photography and finally the cinema, have greatly increased the availability of images. Even in this case, the subject was often the city. With digital technology, quantity no longer poses a problem. It is rather quality that poses a problem. I am not speaking about graphic quality, which is in constant increase, but about the one which ties images to its significance. From this point of view, a parameter of judgment could be the time with which the eye can linger on a single image. Paradoxically “accessory” images (such as icons, web-banners or start up screens of software), or “container” images (such as the home page of web sites or smart devices) become important. Starting from this thought, and leveraging on the concepts of form, duration and motion, the contribution will cover the city models used as a backdrop of the video games. Images intended to influence the collective idea of urban space in a similar manner to what had been done in the past, by the seventeenth century etchings of Rome or photographs taken by the Fratelli Alinari