It focuses on aesthetic pursuits and similar practices in the field of art, as well as the technical elements in order to create immersive city mapping experiences. The conceptual basis of the project connects autobiographical performances within a general reporting and correlation framework that maps the origin of the city, the successive mutations exist and the relationships that characterize it. The research strengthens the reference areas of the project in managing the urban landscape experience in a simulated and aesthetically modified, virtual representation. The project is titled Aqua polis-Ancient Evenings, sight sea ing and negotiates the "voyage" of the visitor through exploration, wandering into a rebuilt "universe". The dissertation illustrates the artistic practices through the immersive virtual reality experience and is articulated on the concept of mapping through the viewpoint of the path-flow, the organization and the interaction of elements that make up a Polis. Further, I show how video games have the capacity to reinscribe dominant Western ideological trends that through the art of immersion and play become more than abstract paradigms reserved for academia, and instead are inscribed as common consumer understandings of foreign territories, peoples and histories through a new subject-positioning of the player. Ultimately I argue that through digital reinscription, video games render the region, the geographies and the people of the Orient as meaningful only through the subjective Western gaze that comes to understand these geographical, material, and human spaces through a stereotyped and Western-centric cultural lens. Focusing specifically on the recent World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria, I argue that by making Pandaria and the Pandaren race so stereotypically Asian, so bluntly Othered, and so vividly exotic merely encapsulates the idea that diversity, difference and especially the East are all now more easily consumed by a world entrenched in such a clash of ideology and clash of cultures, where all facets of identity and play have been transformed into consumable products in the virtual world as potently as they also have in the real world. Focusing first on the capitalist fairytale that is recreated in the virtual economy and gaming ludology, I briefly discuss “gold farming” and how this real world aspect of WoW bridges the Oriental ideology in both real and virtual spaces, as both spaces benefit from this process. It is with this understanding that I see ideology in video games as both an illusion that informs our understanding of the world, as well as an allusion to our very real subject positionings within the real world. Applying Louis Althusser, Edward Said, and many other pertinent scholars, I consider World of Warcraft, the world’s largest online video game, and what our digital production and consumption of this gamic space says about our identities and place in a larger cultural ideological framework. You can even take screenshots of your burgeoning island and post your dream creation on your Tropico 4 Facebook page and compare your interactive Dictator Ranking on the online leaderboards.Considering video games as sites of semiotic play, I argue that video games are a commodity that inscribes the consumer into various subject positions that often participate in the replication of ideology in simulated spaces. Post comments on Twitter direct from the game and have updates go out when you complete missions or unlock new achievements. Tropico 4 also brings a new level of social interaction with the addition of Facebook and Twitter integration (Windows PC version only). But remember to keep your friends close and your enemies closer as everyone has an agenda! Your political mettle will be thoroughly tested, as new natural disasters will have the populace clamoring for you and your cabinet to help them recover from some of the worst Mother Nature can dish out. Tropico 4 expands on the gameplay of the previous game with new political additions ~ including more superpowers to negotiate with, along with the ability to elect ministers into power to help get your more controversial policies passed. Your decisions will shape the future of your nation, and more importantly, the size of your off-shore bank account. If you are to triumph over your naysayers you will need to gain as much support from your people as possible. The world is changing and Tropico is moving with the times - geographical powers rise and fall and the world market is dominated by new players with new demands and offers - and you, as El Presidente, face a whole new set of challenges. Buy Tropico 4: Steam Special Edition as a Steam key at
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