Hexagons that should not be, yet which are

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 05:06:12 +0000

I have recently been made aware of a contest being held on Kotaku Australia regarding "hexagons that should not be." Apparently inspired by the hex tiling in Civilization V, they are giving away a free copy of the same to whoever most impressively photoshops a hexagonal shape onto an object that is not normally hexagonal. Unfortunately, the contest ends Monday night, so there's very little time to spread word of this to the larger hexagonal community. I wish I'd heard about it sooner. Anyway, samples of submitted work can be found on the following pages, and are most interesting:

[Edit: The winners and runners up can be found here and here, respectively.]

I find it fascinating, obviously, both as a Civ fan (still trying to get 5 running under Wine!) and as a hexagonalist. Creative exercises of this sort, inducing people to think artistically about the roles and potential roles of hexagons in everyday life, are potentially very valuable tools in expanding hexagonal consciousness. It reminds me in some ways of last month's Interdependence Day Hexagon Project—in both cases, the hexagon is explicitly employed not for some incidental aesthetic reasons, but for its very hexagonality itself. This can only be, I think, a positive trend in our society, as we as a species come to terms with the implications of our glorious hexagonal future. I am hoping to see more and more of this sort of thing in the coming years, as hexagons rise to ever greater prominence in the collective human experience, perhaps leading at some point to the formation of an explicitly "hexagonalist" movement in art and design.

Civilization and its contents

Sun, 04 Jul 2010 22:16:00 +0000

Anyone following the hexagonal news of late has no doubt noticed a flurry of stories related to the upcoming release of Civilization V, and in particular its new hexagonal tile system. In this blog's opinion, the adoption of hexagonal tiles by the Civ franchise is a long overdue development, and frankly one that should've been incorporated into at least the last two Civ releases. Indeed, many DOS-based strategy games have used hexagonal tiles going back to the late '80s, and one has to wonder why Civilization ever used square tiles. (I remember playing the original Civilization in the early '90s, well before the advent of my own hexagonal illumination, and thinking that, in fact, it would be better with a hexagonal grid. I can only imagine part of the media excitement here—aside from just the general awesomeness of hexagons—is due to the fact that many, many other people have had the exact same thought over the past twenty years.)

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Hexagons that should not be, yet which are

Civilization and its contents