Here’s my concept of a surrealist modern city. The “surrealism” is in the way that buildings stack on top of each other, the way architecture plunges into the ocean area. It is also in the tipsy and melted shape of things.

SimCity models an industrial economy so it organises the buildings into Transport, Housing, Education, Industry, Power, Water, Commercial, Entertainment and Safety. That’s good for a realistic city. Surrealism models the subconsciousness, so I plan to organize the buildings for my city into Fancies, Fears, and Desires. So for example a hospital will be in Fears and a nightclub in Desires.

Recently I watched Star Trek: Picard and really like the surrealistic dreams in it. Not cities in particular, but the psychological Freudian idea of fixations in our psycho-somatic development. In other words, everyone is stuck somewhere in their past, and we’re all stuck in different ways. Picard was fixated on something particularly traumatic in his childhood. One of the other characters, I think it was a Vulcan, told him ‘You humans are like pinned butterflies, you can flap your wings but can never move on’. I really love that.

I want to amp up the surrealism even more. The task is unleashing my subconsciousness, this art movement is all about freedom in my opinion; It’s helping you release whatever it is that you have inside you.