Looking at Alternatives

For the first time, Sphynx brings a long-running personal project to the company for ultimate realisation, so first off - Why a personal project?

"Most of my graphic projects are financed either by a third party, as you would expect for a commercial project, or by one of my own companies in connection with a project that they are undertaking internally. I started this project four or five years ago now, and have been doing sketch ideas and research for most of that time but because of workload have never really been able to take it to full realisation."

So this is an opportunity to get it out in the open, so to speak?

"Yes - while it will still be a personal project, without the time constraints that you would normally expect of a project, it will see some 'product' for want of a better description, making its way into Glyph's store - mainly in the form of smaller models and educational posters."

Whenever I hear the word 'educational' that tends to mean that it will neither be Science Fiction or fully in the contemporary real world. So what is it all about?

"The project is called Alternatives, with a tag line of 'Because there has to be an alternative'. While I am not an environmental activist, I am very concerned about the world that I have brought my daughter into - not now, but in the very near future. People are having this big argument about whether humans created climate change, but my viewpoint is basically, 'who cares?' The changing environment, and the damage that mankind is doing to both the planet and itself is very real - even if it is not the whole trigger to climate change. Changing our ways therefore makes perfect sense regardless of the causes.

So the project is all about alternative living?

"In some ways yes, but the title also refers to some problems that we have. Unfortunately, there seems to be a big obstacle in our way - and that is mankind itself. I see two problems: the first is typified by my own journey to my local college / university where I lecture part-time. The council have limited the number of cars that are allowed in the car-park in order to help keep cars off the road. At the same time, between the college and my home is a tunnel under the river - a road tunnel, that only takes motor vehicle traffic, built by the same council, with no public transport through it. This type of no-alternative situation created by the establishment itself is a big problem in preventing people change their lifestyles.

"(Just for the record, I now ride a 110mpg motorcycle to do that journey - I still don't use a car)

"The other problem is the fact that mankind likes to take an easy route: while there are those who like big fast cars for example, the bulk of people use a car simply because of the convenience. It is a simple fact that despite all of the rhetoric, we still are not providing viable alternatives that give any incentive for people to switch away from their current modes of living to more environmentally friendly, and therefore in the long term mankind friendly, alternatives."

That certainly explains the project title - so what should we be expecting from the project?

"Quite a varied range of topics actually - over the years I've been looking at every thing from commuter traffic and personal transport to environmentally friendly homes and the big problem that we have in the UK of so many houses being built on flood planes, to personal space and agriculture. The biggest problem is going to be sorting out some sort of order in which to realise the sketches and research into a coherent set of CG developments."

That is quite a varied set of topics - have you had a particular influence in what you have been developing?

"No specific aims - this is a personal project, not financed by a third-party, so a particular destination has never really been in sight. I think that I have had two big influences. The first one is simple personal interest in certain areas of science and technology - I am for example, a member of the Airship Association here in the UK, so airships have played a big part in many of my designs - not all of which will make it here into the project. The other has been where I live."

That's Medway, Kent in the UK, isn't it?

"That's right - most people who live here - actually in any place - don't see what they have. They tend to live too close to it. The Medway towns have an incredibly varied history extending from it's place on the Roman road from Dover to London, the home of Dickens and the site of the Tower of London prototype in the form of Rochester Castle, and the castle itself being the site of the siege that ultimately decided the fate of democracy in Europe through the Magna Carta. In more recent history we also have important features as well however - we have the EuroTunnel / Eurostar bridges with the major Ebbsfleet terminal just down the road, and an important airport historically linked to a great deal of development in the industry.

"Air travel, probably not fully realised by many of the locals, has been very important to the area: we also the site of the Shorts factory on the river, now long gone and rebuilt with flats, responsible for the Empire and Sunderland flying boats, and the Kingsnorth Power station, soon to be rebuilt as a next-generation coal-fired station but once home to a Royal Navy airship station responsible for protecting the channel. Even from a simple residential perspective, we are a major commuter hub for travel into the heart of London.

Everywhere you look in the area - if you keep your eyes open - is a clue to a problem that can be a trigger for part of the project."

There certainly is a lot of material there. So what can we expect from the CG - are we looking at some real futuristic product, or something more down to Earth?

"Well, this type of design work is often called 'futurist' but it is often misleading on what is actually produced. That term has a broad meaning and extends from designs that are not quite possible yet. For most science-fiction work that gets produced we tend to use a principle called 'rubber-band science' - taking a very real topic in science and stretching it. In some cases, such as Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica, that stretching is so extreme that the rubber-band is very near snapping. This is a principle that we simply can't afford in Alternatives. The very idea of rubber-band science makes a mockery of what we are trying to achieve with the project.

"Instead, I have a term that I call 'Curt' - I use it in videos and talks that I give and often forget that it's a personal term that others don't know about".

So what is Curt?

"It simply means 'Currently UnRealistic Technology' and refers to anything in a design that we can't do industrially at this very moment in time. The 'industrially' is also a very important clause, because some of things that I refer to as a Curt can be created, exist as prototypes, or are extremely expensive. Because Alternatives is about incentives, I don't go into too much details about which Curt's are which - though I'll sometimes give a clue by referring to an 'extreme curt' [smiles]".

Sounds great - so when will we see the first products of the project?

"I'm the process of working on a commuter solution right now, with a number of images destined to be created - they are really designed to go together to provide a cohesive idea of the solution's use - once I get them completed to a reasonable level, they may well start to appear in the WIP [work in progress] section of the forums, then later in the website store."

Thanks for talking to us Sphynx.