I just think it's so fascinating that, even on an extremely low-budget show, either some designer sat there and thought "okay, what can I actually do that will look both unusual and futuristic, but can be done on almost no money?" and came up with Art Nouveau, or JMS sat the set guys down one day with their plyboard and paint and a couple of bucks to go to garage sales or something and said "I think we need an Art Nouveau look, here." Whereupon they nearly died. Either version just delights me, and I admit that I sort of wish I knew which was the one that happened.
This may well be a function of CGI being in its infancy rather than a particular design choice...and Nouveau and Deco are so close together that it's hard to tell lots of pieces apart anyway.
I've wondered about that, too - they do seem more Deco, but... it's so painful in some of the shots on Minbar to wonder what it was that they were actually trying to get across, as opposed to what the computers actually managed to spit out. On the other hand, that's true of other, non-computer moments as well... I have a little bit of an angry determination that the glowy pastel erector set Delenn plays with through the first season was meant to be crystals... they're just so hideous, I couldn't help but ret-con them here.
(And yes, I admit that I tend to sort the two styles more or less into buckets based on "organic shapes = Nouveau, straight lines = Deco, which I know is not necessarily correct. But art history was a very long time ago, and I've yet to come up with another system that doesn't land me in the wrong buckets about the same amount as my false dichotomy, so...) Someday I'll figure it out for sure. Someday.)
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This may well be a function of CGI being in its infancy rather than a particular design choice...and Nouveau and Deco are so close together that it's hard to tell lots of pieces apart anyway.
I've wondered about that, too - they do seem more Deco, but... it's so painful in some of the shots on Minbar to wonder what it was that they were actually trying to get across, as opposed to what the computers actually managed to spit out. On the other hand, that's true of other, non-computer moments as well... I have a little bit of an angry determination that the glowy pastel erector set Delenn plays with through the first season was meant to be crystals... they're just so hideous, I couldn't help but ret-con them here.
(And yes, I admit that I tend to sort the two styles more or less into buckets based on "organic shapes = Nouveau, straight lines = Deco, which I know is not necessarily correct. But art history was a very long time ago, and I've yet to come up with another system that doesn't land me in the wrong buckets about the same amount as my false dichotomy, so...) Someday I'll figure it out for sure. Someday.)