關於 private visions of the world ，我們在網路上蒐集到這些相關的討論、資訊與評價

【大嶼填海 為誰而建】
【漠視民意 事倍功半】

<對「明日大嶼」計劃之聲明>
(Please scroll down for English Version)

特首林鄭月娥在剛推出的2018年施政報告中，提出「明日大嶼」計劃，目標在東大嶼填海1700公頃，建造多個人工島。作為建築、測量、都市規劃及園境界別的選委代表，我們對推出的目的、規模、程序及模式均有所保留：

【供過於求，為誰而建】
根據政府統計處推算，香港人口於2043年達至高峰，比現在增長88萬，之後便會回落。但未計現正進行的土地房屋發展和現有閒置的房屋資源，東大嶼填海後便可供110萬人居住，為何要提供過剩的供應?

如此龐大計劃，卻沒有交代規劃願景及土地分布等重要考慮，亦沒有交代填海選址及規模的理據。特首亦明言，此計劃是要「大嶼山會成為通往世界和連接其他大灣區城市的『雙門戶』」，這不禁令人擔心，新造的土地未必能聚焦解決香港的住屋問題。

【漠視民意，無視更佳選項】
土地大辯論剛結束並正進行歸納，眾多專業團體和市民提出了大量寶貴及可行的意見，例如：棕地、軍事用地、私人遊樂場地契約用地、閒置政府地、近岸填海等選項。可惜，在土地專責小組報告未出爐前，特首突然急於推出如此大規模的填海計劃，無視整個土地諮詢，視民意如無物。而且比起大規模填海，這些選項成本較低、技術要求較低、對環境影響也較小，大規模填海是捨易取難，未有充分考慮專業意見。

【不符成本效益】
當提及填海的開支，特首輕描淡寫地說「四五千億走唔甩」。但不少工程專家認為，若計算連接的道路和鐵路，加上近年基建超支的趨勢，保守估計亦要一萬億，大約是香港外匯儲備的一半。若工程期間遇到不可預期的情況，如早前港珠澳大橋人工島移位之類，開支更會進一步飆升。當然，一萬億是否合乎成本效益，要看有否其他可達至同樣目的，但成本較低的選項。而在土地供應問題上，明顯有不少成本低得多的選擇，如收回粉嶺高爾夫球場、收回棕地等。

【合理分配，按步推展】
土地和房屋問題可分短、中、長三階段處理，因而直接影響儲備的分配。在填海的開支上，若單項投放一萬億而忽略了短中期房屋措施的資金投入，恐怕顧此失彼，未能達到成果效益的社會平衡，恐陷頭重腳輕寸步難行的困境。

【天人共存，敬畏自然】
超強颱風山竹吹襲香港，市面一片狼藉，情景還歷歷在目。當大眾開始感受到全球暖化所帶來的天然災害，大規模填海是反其道而行，因其耗能大、碳排放極高，對環境影響也是不可逆轉的。雖然特首說「氣象風險可管理」，但大自然的力量並不是人類可以匹敵的。加上如此大規模的填海，需要運用大量海砂，對填海的海域和海砂的出產地造成嚴重生態災難。其實造地應以順應大自然的方式，並考慮以人居、環境互相配合的新式設計，而非因循上世紀「新市鎮」的發展模式。就算填海是不可避免，亦可以推進式堤岸及分散式堆填等方法，在增加土地的同時產生宜居及保育沿岸生態系統，相對大規模的填海工程更能抵禦氣候變化的環境改變。

【總結】
我們作為建築師、測量師、規劃師、園境師，一向關心香港的土地和房屋問題，亦明白到這些問題的急切性。但「明日大嶼」計劃不但不能解決問題，更會引發很多不能逆轉的影響。

在過去五個月，無論官方的專家小組，或者民間研究組織，在土地諮詢過程中提出了很多優秀的方案。所以，我們呼籲林鄭月娥特首，為香港福祉，為了我們的下一代，暫停「明日大嶼」計劃，重新找出一個有利香港未來的土地發展方案，讓市民共同參與，為未來重燃希望。

<建築、測量、都市規劃及園境界別選委>：
陳彥璘 蔣偉騏 黎可頴 林穎茵 陳潔華
林芷筠 柳凱瑩 關兆倫 鄭炳鴻 敖鋅琦
黎永鋒 黃智鈞 司馬文 陳元敬 高嘉雲
劉紹禧 汪整樂 陳堯坤 雷雯

【Lantau Tomorrow - Who is it for ?】


In the 2018 Policy Address, Chief Executive Mrs. Carrie Lam announced the “Lantau Tomorrow Vision” which targets to construct artificial islands with a total area of about 1700 hectares through massive land reclamation. As Election Committee members of the Architectural, Surveying, Planning and Landscape Subsector, we have reservations on the objective, scale and procedures of the proposal:

【Oversupply of land, who is it for ?】
According to the projection of the Census and Statistics Department, population of Hong Kong will reach its peak at 2043 which means there will be an increase of 880,000 people compared to the current population. Population will then decrease gradually. If we disregard the current land and housing development and vacant residential units, the proposed artificial islands alone can accommodate 1,100,000 people. Why do we have to create more supply than demand?

Important information like planning visions and land use plan was not announced, justification of reclamation scale and site selection was also absent. This is unusual and far from satisfaction for such a massive development proposal. The CE claimed that the proposal is for “making Lantau a “Double Gateway” to the world and other Greater Bay Area cities.” This makes people speculate whether the land created will be for solving housing problem in Hong Kong?

【Public Opinion Ignored】
The public consultation on land supply has just completed and the Task Force on Land Supply has not concluded the public opinions. During the consultation process, a lot of ideas were discussed and submitted. The feasible land supply options include: brownfield sites, military sites, sites under private recreational leases, vacant government land and near-shore reclamation. Surprisingly, the CE announced the massive reclamation proposal before the report of the Land Supply Taskforce, without paying respect to the consultation and all public opinions collected. Moreover, comparing to massive reclamation, the options raised in the consultation process cost less, face less technical difficulties and have less impact to the environment. Professional knowledge is apparently not thoroughly considered in the proposal.

【Not Cost Efficient】
The CE mentioned the cost of reclamation will be “roughly 4-5 hundred billions”. However, engineering experts estimated that, including all the connecting roads and railways with consideration of recent trend of infrastructure over budget, the cost of constructing the artificial islands will be at least a thousand billions ---- this will be equivalent to half of Hong Kong’s foreign currency reserve. If unforeseen conditions were encountered during construction, such as drifting of artificial island in the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge construction, the cost will be further soared. When we assess whether a project is cost efficient, we will try to see whether there is any lower cost alternatives that can achieve the same objective. The one-thousand-billion artificial islands are obviously not cost efficient as there are other options that cost a lot less such as developing the Fanling golf course and developing brownfield sites in the N.T.

【Balanced Resources Allocation】
Land and housing problems need to be solved in 3 stages: short-term, medium-term and long-term. Resources have to be allocated appropriately to all stages in order to have a coherent result. If a thousand billions were invested in a single long-term project, the resources for short-term and medium-term solutions will inevitably be limited. Such resource imbalance cannot create the desired social return.

【Living with Natural Harmony】
Our memory is fresh with the destruction of Typhoon Mangkhut which we experience the consequence of global warming. Massive reclamation is a bad response to climate change. It will spend massive energy, vast amount of carbon emission and it will bring irreversible impact to the ecosystem. Although our CE claimed that “climate risks can be mitigated”, natural force is nothing human being can be compared. In addition, this scale of massive reclamation will need incredible amount of marine sand. It will bring forth ecological disaster to the reclamation area as well as the marine sand mining area. For sustainable development, land supply shall adopt methods that are harmonious with the environment and design that balance between human habitat and nature. Just following the “New Town Development” mode that was used a century ago is not going to be a good solution. Even reclamation is inevitable, progressive reclamation along the coast shall be considered first which is more friendly to the marine ecology and less impactful to climate change.

【Conclusion】
As Architects, Surveyors, Planners and Landscape Architects, we are deeply concerned with the land and housing problems in Hong Kong. We also understand this is an urgent issue that we have to face and tackle immediately. However, we doubt whether the “Lantau Tomorrow Vision” can solve the problem, indeed, we worry that it will even bring us irreversible impacts.

In the past 5 months during the public land consultation, the official land task force and many civil research groups have proposed many feasible solutions for land supply. We urge the CE, for the sake of sustainable development in Hong Kong and for our generations to come, suspend the “Lantau Tomorrow Vision” proposal. Let’s work together with the people for a better Hong Kong and bring hopes to our future.

：
Chan Yin Lun Jeremy, Tseung Wai Ki, Lai Ho Wing, Lam Wing Yan, Chan Kit Wah Eva, Lam Tsz Kwan, Lau Hoi Ying, Kwan Siu Lun, Chang Ping Hung, Ngo Tsz Kei, Lai Wing Fung, Wong Chi Kwan, Paul Zimmerman, Chan Yuen King Paul, Gavin Coates, Lau Siu Hay Derek, Wong Ching Lok Christopher, Chan Yiu Kwan, Lui Man

Nobody’s Fool　　( January 2011 )

Yoshitomo Nara

Do people look to my childhood for sources of my imagery? Back then, the snow-covered fields of the north were about as far away as you could get from the rapid economic growth happening elsewhere. Both my parents worked and my brothers were much older, so the only one home to greet me when I got back from elementary school was a stray cat we’d taken in. Even so, this was the center of my world. In my lonely room, I would twist the radio dial to the American military base station and out blasted rock and roll music. One of history’s first man-made satellites revolved around me up in the night sky. There I was, in touch with the stars and radio waves.

It doesn’t take much imagination to envision how a lonely childhood in such surroundings might give rise to the sensibility in my work. In fact, I also used to believe in this connection. I would close my eyes and conjure childhood scenes, letting my imagination amplify them like the music coming from my speakers.

But now, past the age of fifty and more cool-headed, I’ve begun to wonder how big a role childhood plays in making us who we are as adults. Looking through reproductions of the countless works I’ve made between my late twenties and now, I get the feeling that childhood experiences were merely a catalyst. My art derives less from the self-centered instincts of childhood than from the day-to-day sensory experiences of an adult who has left this realm behind. And, ultimately, taking the big steps pales in importance to the daily need to keep on walking.

While I was in high school, before I had anything to do with art, I worked part-time in a rock café. There I became friends with a graduate student of mathematics who one day started telling me, in layman’s terms, about his major in topology. His explanation made the subject seem less like a branch of mathematics than some fascinating organic philosophy. My understanding is that topology offers you a way to discover the underlying sameness of countless, seemingly disparate, forms. Conversely, it explains why many people, when confronted with apparently identical things, will accept a fake as the genuine article. I later went on to study art, live in Germany, and travel around the world, and the broader perspective I’ve gained has shown me that topology has long been a subtext of my thinking. The more we add complexity, the more we obscure what is truly valuable. Perhaps the reason I began, in the mid-90s, trying to make paintings as simple as possible stems from that introduction to topology gained in my youth.

As a kid listening to U.S. armed-forces radio, I had no idea what the lyrics meant, but I loved the melody and rhythm of the music. In junior high school, my friends and I were already discussing rock and roll like credible music critics, and by the time I started high school, I was hanging out in rock coffee shops and going to live shows. We may have been a small group of social outcasts, but the older kids, who smoked cigarettes and drank, talked to us all night long about movies they’d seen or books they’d read. If the nighttime student quarter had been the school, I’m sure I would have been a straight-A student.

In the 80s, I left my hometown to attend art school, where I was anything but an honors student. There, a model student was one who brought a researcher’s focus to the work at hand. Your bookshelves were stacked with catalogues and reference materials. When you weren’t working away in your studio, you were meeting with like-minded classmates to discuss art past and present, including your own. You were hoping to set new trends in motion. Wholly lacking any grand ambition, I fell well short of this model, with most of my paintings done to satisfy class assignments. I was, however, filling every one of my notebooks, sketchbooks, and scraps of wrapping paper with crazy, graffiti-like drawings.

Looking back on my younger days—Where did where all that sparkling energy go? I used the money from part-time jobs to buy record albums instead of art supplies and catalogues. I went to movies and concerts, hung out with my girlfriend, did funky drawings on paper, and made midnight raids on friends whose boarding-room lights still happened to be on. I spent the passions of my student days outside the school studio. This is not to say I wasn’t envious of the kids who earned the teachers’ praise or who debuted their talents in early exhibitions. Maybe envy is the wrong word. I guess I had the feeling that we were living in separate worlds. Like puffs of cigarette smoke or the rock songs from my speaker, my adolescent energies all vanished in the sky.

Being outside the city and surrounded by rice fields, my art school had no art scene to speak of—I imagined the art world existing in some unknown dimension, like that of TV or the movies. At the time, art could only be discussed in a Western context, and, therefore, seemed unreal. But just as every country kid dreams of life in the big city, this shaky art-school student had visions of the dazzling, far-off realm of contemporary art. Along with this yearning was an equally strong belief that I didn’t deserve admittance to such a world. A typical provincial underachiever!

I did, however, love to draw every day and the scrawled sketches, never shown to anybody, started piling up. Like journal entries reflecting the events of each day, they sometimes intersected memories from the past. My little everyday world became a trigger for the imagination, and I learned to develop and capture the imagery that arose. I was, however, still a long way off from being able to translate those countless images from paper to canvas.

Visions come to us through daydreams and fantasies. Our emotional reaction towards these images makes them real. Listening to my record collection gave me a similar experience. Before the Internet, the precious little information that did exist was to be found in the two or three music magazines available. Most of my records were imported—no liner notes or lyric sheets in Japanese. No matter how much I liked the music, living in a non-English speaking world sadly meant limited access to the meaning of the lyrics. The music came from a land of societal, religious, and subcultural sensibilities apart from my own, where people moved their bodies to it in a different rhythm. But that didn’t stop me from loving it. I never got tired of poring over every inch of the record jackets on my 12-inch vinyl LPs. I took the sounds and verses into my body. Amidst today’s superabundance of information, choosing music is about how best to single out the right album. For me, it was about making the most use of scant information to sharpen my sensibilities, imagination, and conviction. It might be one verse, melody, guitar riff, rhythmic drum beat or bass line, or record jacket that would inspire me and conjure up fresh imagery. Then, with pencil in hand, I would draw these images on paper, one after the other. Beyond good or bad, the pictures had a will of their own, inhabiting the torn pages with freedom and friendliness.

By the time I graduated from university, my painting began to approach the independence of my drawing. As a means for me to represent a world that was mine and mine alone, the paintings may not have been as nimble as the drawings, but I did them without any preliminary sketching. Prizing feelings that arose as I worked, I just kept painting and over-painting until I gained a certain freedom and the sense, though vague at the time, that I had established a singular way of putting images onto canvas. Yet, I hadn’t reached the point where I could declare that I would paint for the rest of my life.

After receiving my undergraduate degree, I entered the graduate school of my university and got a part-time job teaching at an art yobiko—a prep school for students seeking entrance to an art college. As an instructor, training students how to look at and compose things artistically, meant that I also had to learn how to verbalize my thoughts and feelings. This significant growth experience not only allowed me to take stock of my life at the time, but also provided a refreshing opportunity to connect with teenage hearts and minds.

And idealism! Talking to groups of art students, I naturally found myself describing the ideals of an artist. A painful experience for me—I still had no sense of myself as an artist. The more the students showed their affection for me, the more I felt like a failed artist masquerading as a sensei (teacher). After completing my graduate studies, I kept working as a yobiko instructor. And in telling students about the path to becoming an artist, I began to realize that I was still a student myself, with many things yet to learn. I felt that I needed to become a true art student. I decided to study in Germany. The day I left the city where I had long lived, many of my students appeared on the platform to see me off.

Life as a student in Germany was a happy time. I originally intended to go to London, but for economic reasons chose a tuition-free, and, fortunately, academism-free German school. Personal approaches coexisted with conceptual ones, and students tried out a wide range of modes of expression. Technically speaking, we were all students, but each of us brought a creator’s spirit to the fore. The strong wills and opinions of the local students, though, were well in place before they became artists thanks to the German system of early education. As a reticent foreign student from a far-off land, I must have seemed like a mute child. I decided that I would try to make myself understood not through words, but through having people look at my pictures. When winter came and leaden clouds filled the skies, I found myself slipping back to the winters of my childhood. Forgoing attempts to speak in an unknown language, I redoubled my efforts to express myself through visions of my private world. Thinking rather than talking, then illustrating this thought process in drawings and, finally, realizing it in a painting. Instead of defeating you in an argument, I wanted to invite you inside me. Here I was, in a most unexpected place, rediscovering a value that I thought I had lost—I felt that I had finally gained the ability to learn and think, that I had become a student in the truest sense of the word.

But I still wasn’t your typical honors student. My paintings clearly didn’t look like contemporary art, and nobody would say my images fit in the context of European painting. They did, however, catch the gaze of dealers who, with their antennae out for young artists, saw my paintings as new objects that belonged less to the singular world of art and more to the realm of everyday life. Several were impressed by the freshness of my art, and before I knew it, I was invited to hold exhibitions in established galleries—a big step into a wider world.

The six years that I spent in Germany after completing my studies and before returning to Japan were golden days, both for me and my work. Every day and every night, I worked tirelessly to fix onto canvas all the visions that welled up in my head. My living space/studio was in a dreary, concrete former factory building on the outskirts of Cologne. It was the center of my world. Late at night, my surroundings were enveloped in darkness, but my studio was brightly lit. The songs of folk poets flowed out of my speakers. In that place, standing in front of the canvas sometimes felt like traveling on a solitary voyage in outer space—a lonely little spacecraft floating in the darkness of the void. My spaceship could go anywhere in this fantasy while I was painting, even to the edge of the universe.

Suddenly one day, I was flung outside—my spaceship was to be scrapped. My little vehicle turned back into an old concrete building, one that was slated for destruction because it was falling apart. Having lost the spaceship that had accompanied me on my lonely travels, and lacking the energy to look for a new studio, I immediately decided that I might as well go back to my homeland. It was painful and sad to leave the country where I had lived for twelve years and the handful of people I could call friends. But I had lost my ship. The only place I thought to land was my mother country, where long ago those teenagers had waved me goodbye and, in retrospect, whose letters to me while I was in Germany were a valuable source of fuel.

After my long space flight, I returned to Japan with the strange sense of having made a full orbit around the planet. The new studio was a little warehouse on the outskirts of Tokyo, in an area dotted with rice fields and small factories. When the wind blew, swirls of dust slipped in through the cracks, and water leaked down the walls in heavy rains. In my dilapidated warehouse, only one sheet of corrugated metal separated me from the summer heat and winter cold. Despite the funky environment, I was somehow able to keep in midnight contact with the cosmos—the beings I had drawn and painted in Germany began to mature. The emotional quality of the earlier work gave way to a new sense of composure. I worked at refining the former impulsiveness of the drawings and the monochromatic, almost reverent, backgrounds of the paintings. In my pursuit of fresh imagery, I switched from idle experimentation to a more workmanlike approach towards capturing what I saw beyond the canvas.

Children and animals—what simple motifs! Appearing on neat canvases or in ephemeral drawings, these figures are easy on the viewers’ eyes. Occasionally, they shake off my intentions and leap to the feet of their audience, never to return. Because my motifs are accessible, they are often only understood on a superficial level. Sometimes art that results from a long process of development receives only shallow general acceptance, and those who should be interpreting it fail to do so, either through a lack of knowledge or insufficient powers of expression. Take, for example, the music of a specific era. People who lived during this era will naturally appreciate the music that was then popular. Few of these listeners, however, will know, let alone value, the music produced by minor labels, by introspective musicians working under the radar, because it’s music that’s made in answer to an individual’s desire, not the desires of the times. In this way, people who say that “Nara loves rock,” or “Nara loves punk” should see my album collection. Of four thousand records there are probably fewer than fifty punk albums. I do have a lot of 60s and 70s rock and roll, but most of my music is from little labels that never saw commercial success—traditional roots music by black musicians and white musicians, and contemplative folk. The spirit of any era gives birth to trends and fashions as well as their opposite: countless introspective individual worlds. A simultaneous embrace of both has cultivated my sensibility and way of thinking. My artwork is merely the tip of the iceberg that is my self. But if you analyzed the DNA from this tip, you would probably discover a new way of looking at my art. My viewers become a true audience when they take what I’ve made and make it their own. That’s the moment the works gain their freedom, even from their maker.

After contemplative folk singers taught me about deep empathy, the punk rockers schooled me in explosive expression.

I was born on this star, and I’m still breathing. Since childhood, I’ve been a jumble of things learned and experienced and memories that can’t be forgotten. Their involuntary locomotion is my inspiration. I don’t express in words the contents of my work. I’ll only tell you my history. The countless stories living inside my work would become mere fabrications the moment I put them into words. Instead, I use my pencil to turn them into pictures. Standing before the dark abyss, here’s hoping my spaceship launches safely tonight….

The Sinking City พากย์ไทย แปลไทย

Charles W. Reed อดีตทหารเรือของกองทัพเรือสหรัฐฯและทหารผ่านศึกผู้ผันตัวเองมาเป็นนักสืบเอกชนเดินทางจาก Boston ไปยัง Oakmont ตามคำเชิญของ Johannes van der Berg เพื่อค้นหาสาเหตุของภาพฝันร้ายที่รบกวนเขามาหลายปี โดยภาพฝันร้ายนี้ได้กับหลายคนใน Oakmont Reedได้รับการว่าจ้างจาก Robert Throgmorton หัวหน้าผู้มีอิทธิพลและแข็งแรงของหนึ่งในครอบครัวชั้นนำของ Oakmont ผู้ซึ่งได้ศึกษาเกี่ยวกับปรากฎการภาพหลอนนี้อยู่เพื่อที่จะหาสาเหตุของน้ำท่วมที่ทำให้เกิดภัยพิบัติในเมือง ในขณะที่ Reed ทำการสืบสวนเรื่องนี้และเขาได้ใช้พลังนักสืบที่ดูเหมือนจะมอบให้โดยนิมิตของเขาในการเปิดเผยเรื่องราวลึกลับที่อยู่ใน Oakmont

ณ เมือง Oakmont ที่ประกอบไปด้วย 7 ย่าน (Advent, Coverside, Grimhaven Bay, Oldgrove, Reed Heights, Salvation Harbor, and The Shells) ทั้งหมดได้รับผลกระทบจากน้ำท่วม ผู้เล่นจะต้องใช้เรือเพื่อความปลอดภัยในการออกสำรวจเพื่อไปยังพื้นที่ที่น้ำไม่ท่วมโดยที่ผู้เล่นสามารถว่ายน้ำได้ถ้าจำเป็น แต่น้ำนั้นสามารถสร้างความเสียหายให้กับตัวละครเราได้ ในการเล่นนั้นจะมีระบบประกอบอาวุธและเครื่องมือต่าง ๆ และบางครั้งต้องใช้พวกมันสู้กับสัตว์ร้ายและทำลายภาพหลอน เนื่องจาก Oakmont เป็นสถานที่โดดเดี่ยวที่มีทรัพยากรลดน้อยลง กระสุนได้เปลี่ยนเงินเป็นสกุลเงิน หากใช้กระสุนที่มากเกินไปก็อาจจะทำให้ผู้เล่นไม่สามารถแลกเปลี่ยนสิ่งของที่ต้องการได้ ทรัพยากรสำคัญอีกอย่างคือพลังในการสืบสวนซึ่งใช้ในการสร้างฉากอาชญากรรมขึ้นใหม่และระบุเบาะแส มันสามารถ regenerates ด้วยตัวเอง แต่สามารถเติมได้เร็วขึ้นด้วยยารักษาโรคจิต เพื่อใช้ในยามฉุกเฉิน

The Sinking City is an open-world detective game with a third-person camera perspective. It features an open investigation system in which the outcome of the player's quests will often be defined by how observant the players are when investigating different clues and pieces of evidence.

Charles W. Reed, a U.S. Navy sailor and Great War veteran turned private investigator, travels from Boston to Oakmont at the invitation of intellectual Johannes van der Berg to discover the cause of the nightmarish visions that have been plaguing him for years, visions which are shared by numerous other people and most commonly occur in Oakmont. Reed is hired by Robert Throgmorton, the influential and physically striking head of one of Oakmont's leading families who has also been studying the visions, to help uncover the cause of the Flood plaguing the town. While Reed pursues this investigation and others using extrasensory powers of observation seemingly bestowed by his visions, uncovering the shadowy history and seedy underbelly of Oakmont along the way, he must guard his sanity as it is eroded by the town's darkness, otherworldly creatures attracted to death called Wylebeasts, and the use of his own powers.

The town of Oakmont is made up of seven districts (Advent, Coverside, Grimhaven Bay, Oldgrove, Reed Heights, Salvation Harbor, and The Shells) which have all been affected by flooding to various degrees, and the player must use a boat to safely traverse the flooded streets to reach drier areas. The player can swim if necessary, but the water is infested and can fatally damage the player's health and sanity. The player also assembles an arsenal of tools and weapons, and at times must use them to kill otherworldly creatures and dispel hallucinations. However, as Oakmont is an isolated place with dwindling resources and deteriorating social order, bullets have replaced money as the preferred currency; expending too many bullets can leave the player unable to barter for desired items. Another major resource is sanity, which is spent on investigative powers used to reconstruct crime scenes and identify clues. Sanity slowly regenerates on its own, but can be replenished faster with antipsychotic drugs. Disturbing scenes and encounters can cause sudden, sharp drops in sanity, affecting the player's perception of the surrounding environment, and complete loss of sanity is fatal.