Rabbits Full of Magic

I am doing research for a videogame I am making called Super Madrigal Bros., which is based in medieval times. Mostly this is Googling images of Renaissance and Baroque paintings, opening them in Photoshop, and cutting out parts that look interesting, filing them in a folder for later. Today I ended up in a Wikipedia wormhole about someone who is definitely going to be in this game:

Paracelsus was born Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim in 1493, the son of a Swiss German chemist and physician. By age 16 he was considered a prodigy in Alchemical studies and began started studying medicine at the University of Basel, moved to Vienna, and eventually finished schooling at the University of Ferrara when he was 25. Thus began a charmed life of travelling -- first around Europe, attempting to hold official positions. He considered himself a Revolutionary, and publicly criticized traditional methods while rebelling at authority. "All they can do is gaze at piss", he sneered.

This won him many enemies and his cantankerous nature led the rest of his life to be spent travelling. He travelled around Europe as a Plague Doctor, at a time when trained physicians stayed out of that profession. Indeed, he displayed a lifelong commitment to the impoverished and suffering, of which there were many. Europe experienced nearly half a millenia of plague outbreaks occuring once a generation, and the population was consistently devastated.

One of his contributions to science was considering the health of a person as result of something bad ingested from food or the air, rather than the Four Humors of Hippocratic Medicine which were commonly accepted at the time. He devised a tincture of opium that became widely used for hundreds of years, primarily as a cough suppressant (it is related to codeine). This substance and others were packed into the beak of a strange mask, resulting in the surreal bird-like costume of the Plague Doctors. Doctors began wearing these outfits while attending to plague victims, so much so that the sight of one could terrify an unsuspecting villager. The sight of a plague doctor foretold nothing less than a local apocalypse.

It is difficult to consider this kind of life, from the 21st century. The plague continued to decimate Europe until the 20th century, and medical practices were for a long time unable to have any positive effect whatsoever. In the face of such hopelessness I'm sure any success, however incidental to procedure, would be seen as a sign of hope. If the plague doctors were powerful enough to inspire fear (their presence so often coinciding with the plague) no doubt their powers were looked up to, however fanciful. A successful plague doctor was tirelessly self-promoting, perhaps not adverse to inventing an Initiation to Grand Mysteries upon visiting an exotic location. Certainly if you were travelling around Europe, surviving while watching thousands of people die around you, granted the anonymity of a mask, and intoxicated on potent narcotic mixtures you yourself were experimenting with, you would have quite a high opinion of yourself!

In 1526 he bought the rights of citizenship in Strasbourg to establish his own practice. But soon after he was called to Basel to the sickbed of Johann Froben or Frobenius, a successful printer and publisher. Based on historical accounts, Paracelsus cured Frobenius.

Paracelsus was one of the first medical professors to recognize that physicians required a solid academic knowledge in the natural sciences, especially chemistry. Furthermore, he allowed for the access of medical academic work to learned people. Surgeons for example often were not academically trained and ranked with the barbers and butchers in the same guild.

Paracelsus is also a folk legend, and bizarre tales about his life circulated Central Europe for centuries. In the minds of many, he became a wonder-healer and spiritual protector of health. His aid to villages during the plague in the 16th century was for many an act of heroism, his works and achievements therefore often abused and falsely copied.

While attending the sick bed of Frobenius (see above), Erasmus of Rotterdam witnessed the curative powers of Paracelsus' therapy. Deeply impressed by his skills, he must have recommended him to his humanist friends at the University of Basel, one of the most progressive schools at that time. Paracelsus' contact with Erasmus also initiated a letter dialogue between them.

He died at the age of 47 in Salzburg, and his remains were buried according to his wishes in the cemetery at the church of St. Sebastian in Salzburg. His remains are now located in a tomb in the porch of that church.

After his death, the movement of Paracelsianism was seized upon by many wishing to subvert the traditional Galenic physics, and his therapies became more widely known and used.

His motto was "Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest" which means "Let no man belong to another who can belong to himself." -- Wikipedia

posted by Adam  # 7:39:00 PM 0 Comments

Had a huge brainstorm last weekend and decided to make a Super Madrigal Bros. videogame. If you don't know, SMB was a chiptune band started by Momus in 2001. I had been working on electronic music based on Gameboy samples for an album dedicated to Bjork (I was ~18) and impressed him with a demo enough to qualify for a spot in the duo, which was a conceptual idea he had had that was really quite flexible and naturally put together. I think at one point he may have even been singing, but he was organizing a tour and running a label and this was perhaps a concept he could have followed through had he not had all of that to deal with in addition to being an brilliant post-rock pervert DIY David Bowie. At any rate we put out an album and went on a tour in 2002 across the USA with three other additions to his personal label American Patchwork, inspired by Harry Smith-style and eclectic electronic folk people like Bruce Haack. The additional bands were Rroland, Phiiliip, and The Gongs, who all released some of my favorite music of all time during this period. Phiiliip was described as an electroclash version of early Beck, and had a Van Dyke Parks-meets-T-Rex thing going for him. He brought along some of the dancers from Fischerspooner and they performed during our sets in the New York shows. The Gongs were like third-album Velvet Underground-meets-The Incredible String Band, and they all played custom-made instruments with silly names like The Chucky, or a home-build drum machine made from a log found in Lake Eerie. Peter Blasser still makes futuristic analog-electro-acoustic instruments at http://www.ciat-lonbarde.net/. Rroland joined us for some dates in California, where he was a cool married middle-aged man (to us teenagers) who played amazing bubbly synth landscape expressions of his past lives. All incredible stuff.

Anyways back to the videogame I am making. The original idea was to use old art, because during the reign of SMB (2002-2004?) I made a great deal of sprite art, stills for websites, video art, etc, and of course we had all these songs and sounds and remixes and stuff. Plus it would have that pixel look that people love. I mean, I love that stuff, who doesn't. But my HD wouldn't work! I plugged it in and it said "File system not recognized."!!! It asked me if I wanted to format!!!

Fear not, I figured it out, cos I am a huge nerd who knows to how hack RAW file systems. Luckily that means my entire life's worth, all the music I have recorded, all the bands I have played with, all the videos I have made, have not been lost! That's kind of cool.

Transferring everything will take hours, probably all night long, so I can't access any of that stuff until my computer finishes up. It doesn't matter, I have this inspiration, I have wanted to make a videogame for a long time but just never had the right spark, so here I go. I have access to Unity and am programming in that, which is nice because (1) it has some great youtube tutorials and (2) can output to more or less any format, from Windows and OSX to Android and iPhone and even PS3/4, and the XBones. Nintendo is still out of reach but that's ok, they are wizards from the future and I wouldn't want to dilute their magic.

By the end of this week I aim to have a demo up for download. It probably will not be much, maybe a half dozen screens worth of level design that is mostly just pretty backgrounds layered on top of each other like a diorama. At first the desire was there to make a Castlevania clone, but the more I think about it the more I think it should be about exploring these strange lands and listening to this strange music instead. There can be enemies, but maybe they can hurt you but you can't hurt them. The game controller has a really sophisticated physics system built in, so I think you could build sliding puzzles or something. I don't know, I'm still learning. Right now there is a main character, who can walk left and right, and who has 2 different jumps with a single button. The sprite flips horizontally when you move from right to left and back again, so it does not look like he is moonwalking. There is a camera and it follows your movements, which is handy. The ground is a bit from a painting stretched out and colored green, it's only a placeholder. The background is from an idyllic landscape by Salvator Rosa, and the main character is from a Jan van Eyck, both Renaissance painters. I am not sure I will stick to this style the whole time or if the whole thing is going to be a mishmash of styles. I really want to do pixel art so there may be some levels like that. I also am interested in incorporating woodcuts, because lots of important books and grimoires from that time period used those. Then again since I'm digitizing it I may as well color and shade them myself. As you can see, I have my work cut out! I think art/sound is going to be 90% of this game!

Stay Tuned

posted by Adam  # 1:27:00 AM 0 Comments