Smoke & Mirrors (Afternoon of 01/06/21)


    In the afternoon, our eccentric collective of gamers, philosophers, and architects brought all of these different aspects together. After leaving the simulation for a quick lunch break, we all reconvened to discuss the themes of The Matrix and how we could tie in yesterday's seminar about Plato's Allegory of the Cave into the plot of the movie. One of the most apparent connections that we discussed was the psychological parallel between the prisoners in the cave and those stuck in the Matrix. In both stories, the people are presented with a false reality and an option to see past the illusion which they have been led to believe. When presented with such an earth-shattering truth, the characters in both stories find it hard to accept that everything they believe in is a lie. If only Orpheus had been there to convince the prisoners in the cave to take the red pill. Maybe if they had been presented with the choice in such an exciting and tense way, they would've wanted to see what was beyond the depths of the cave. We also talked about what makes something a simulation and how it differs from a representation of something. Although we weren't able to come to a mutual consensus about all of the questions and ideas that we discussed, we all left the seminar with a new perspective about the movie and a better understanding of how our minds perceive the world and environments around us.
 After our seminar, we loaded back into our collective Minecraft world with a new objective. This objective was one that required us to think outside of the box (or maybe I should say blocks). Thinking about how we can make Minecraft a simulation instead of a game and the philosophical ideas of The Allegory of the Cave and The Matrix, we each found a way to represent one of these ideas by building our own creations. Although the confines of Minecraft made it hard to recreate Plato's cave, my group decided that we would build the cave and put our own twist on it. Since there aren't any shadows in the game, we decided to dig a pit behind the wall of the cave where we placed an assortment of different animals and creatures. The reasoning for this addition was that all of these animals would make noises that the prisoners in the cave would be able to hear. Since they could hear the animals yet not be able to see them, we thought that it would be logical for the prisoners to assume that the illuminated dragon and skeleton heads in the cave were the sources of these sounds. We also used a beacon of light to represent the light that blinded the prisoner that was able to escape in Plato's story.
Representation of Plato's Cave
   
The prisoners watch and listen to the shadows and sounds of the unknown.

The beacon of light represents the light from the sun that blinded the freed prisoner.

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