At the end of an earlier post where I was curious about the history of leading lines, I mentioned I might read The Education of the Eye by Peter de Bolla. I did read it.
I had gone in expecting to focus on the attitudes towards painting, but he also has chapters on English gardens which feel surprisingly relevant to video games and maybe the “leading lines” I was wondering about.
Metaphorics of the Eye
At the start of the Vauxhall Gardens chapter, he refers to “metaphorics of the eye” and gives as examples:
… in the viewing of a landscape, for example, the eye is “thrown” to a particular point, or sometimes it is “drawn” toward an object in the landscape known as an “eye-catcher.”
Which sounds very much what I’m after. It doesn’t specifically say that leading the eye is something that a line can achieve, but it does show the same focus on the location of the eye and the ability of things in front of it to control its movement.
But why gardens?
I wonder if this attitude is here in the gardens, because they are primed to think of it as a sequence. As someone travels along the garden path, they will encounter things in a given order, so does that make the garden designers inclined to also think about what order they will draw your attention?
With a painting you can also step back and take it in as a whole. With a garden, that’s impossible. There’s simply too much over too large of an area for anyone to take it in at once. So a garden’s designers must contend with the idea of in what order will people view it. So I could see directing the viewer’s attention like this being of greater focus in garden design than it had been painting.
De Bolla frames this as the development of a new English aesthetic for gardens. It contrasts with an earlier aesthetic that favoured clearly artificial geometric shapes. And develops in parallel with landscape painting.
So this has all lead me to read 18th century essays on landscape that de Bolla had cited, and summarize the stuff I find interesting from the perspective of 21st century level design.
Essay on Landscape Gardening
First up, John Dalrymple’s Essay on Landscape Gardening.
He starts out with a bit lamenting that the art of gardening is not yet treated as a fine art, even by other practitioners, which might feel a little familiar to game designers.
He then defines four dispositions of landscape. With a passing reference to the four types of guy who like each kind of landscape. Most of the essay is structured around what will get the best use from each kind of landscape.
He doesn’t expressly give each a title, instead starting each section with “First Situation” “Second Situation” etc. So I’ll go with the Highlands, the Romantic, the Rolling Hillocks and the Dead Flat.
Highlands
In the highland landscape, he recommends Gothic over Grecian architecture. Choose few large arches over many small arches. Square buildings more than round.
Although it comes up here in the context of saying the Highlands need to evoke still-living things, he mentions building a ruin or “a temple … to any imaginary deity.” So this shows this kind of semi-fictional construction wasn’t unheard of. Ruins of buildings that were never whole and temples at which nobody has worshiped.
He mentions Salvator Rosa and Nicolas Poussin as possible aesthetics, which shows he does connect landscape painting with gardens.
Romantic
This is more forested regions. The sentiment is “that of composure of mind, and perhaps even of melancholy.”
Here, he also talks about making ruins:
For this reason, the views of ruins are much more proper to this situation, than those of houses intended for use; at the same time, if it necessary to have buildings of the latter kind, they ought to be of the GOTHIC architecture. With regard to the architecture of ruins, they are full as proper to be of the GRECIAN form;
Rolling Hillocks
He also calls this “champaign rich country, full of gentle inequalities.”
The sentiment which it creates is cheerfullness; and therefore in a garden in this country, the disposition and assemblage should be such as may still farther carry on that sentiment.
He favours planting single or clumps of trees at the summits of these hills, while keeping the slopes clear.
Buildings should consist of the CHINESE and GRECIAN architecture; and in this last, the simplicity and elegance of the IONIC order…
Dead Flat
He doesn’t seem to be a fan. (Emphasis mine.)
As such a situation of itself raises little or no sentiment, so the whole fancy of the gardener should be employed in carrying the thought, by the parade of art, from attending to this defect of nature.
Maybe also of note is “carrying the thought.” Not quite about directing the eye, but a similar idea. Drawing attention away from how boring and flat this landscape is, and towards more interesting subjects.
Unconnected Thoughts on Gardening
This is by William Shenstone, from 1764. De Bolla also quotes it in his book. It’s shorter than Dalrymple’s Essays.
GROUND should first be considered with an eye to it’s peculiar character; whether it be the grand, the savage, the sprightly, the melancholy, the horrid, or the beautifull.
Unlike Darymple, he doesn’t get into the details for those listed characters.
WHEN a building, or other object has been once viewed from its proper in point, the foot should never travel to it by the same path, which the eye has travelled over before. Lose the object, and draw nigh, obliquely.
This is also quoted by de Bolla, because he is talking about “the eye” travelling. This might support my idea that garden designers were thinking in terms of leading the viewer along a path.
It also does seem close enough to modern sensibilities, that you probably would see similar advice in a level design book today. Show the player something in the distance, but don’t encourage them to walk straight there, but instead, meander a bit, hide the distant landmark, and show it again from a different angle.
He was responding to an earlier French tradition of making very straight paths with evenly-spaced trees, so it may be worth trying to understand the point of view of that tradition. More geometric, while the later English tradition that de Bolla writes about rejects the artificial feeling of that.
RUINATED structures appear to derive their power of pleasing, from the irregularity of surface, which is VARIETY; … The breaks in them should be as bold and abrupt as possible, …
Here, he also acknowledges you might build pre-ruined structures, giving advice as to the aesthetic choice for what shape to pretend it collapsed in.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/38829/38829-h/38829-h.htm
GARDEN-CRAFT OLD AND NEW
On the other hand, John D. Sedding does not like the fake ruins, calling them “sham ruins.”
“Deception may be allowable in imitating the works of Nature. Thus artificial rivers, lakes, and rock scenery can only be great by deception, and the mind acquiesces in the fraud after it is detected, but in works of Art every trick ought to be avoided. Sham churches, sham ruins, sham bridges, and everything which appears what it is not, disgusts when the trick is discovered.”