Readings for Next Two Weeks

Here are the readings for the next two weeks. Please read the articles, but also the comments on them if there are any:

Monday, April 2
Henry Jennkins, "Game Design as Narrative Architecture"
http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/firstperson/lazzi-fair

Monday, April 9
Espen Aarseth, "Introduction: Stories and Games"
http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/firstperson/vigilant

Wednesday, April 11
Eric Zimmerman, "Narrative, Interactivity, Play and Games"
http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/firstperson/ludican-do

I'd also like you to take a look at this blog on games and narrativity and try a couple of the games in the second link from the "Slamdance" festival. Be prepared to talk about them during class.

Grand Text Auto
http://grandtextauto.gatech.edu/

Slamdance Guerilla Games
http://www.slamdance.com/games/

Academic Search Premier

Here is the link for the search engine for academic journals. If you click "Scholarly (Peer Reviewed Journals)" you will include academically suitable material for your papers:

http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/search?vid=1&hid=2&sid=1cf345b8-20f4-4f31-8155-4996308895db%40SRCSM2

You can also get to this page by clicking "Databases" on the Library homepage, then scrolling to the bottom and choosing "Academic Search Premier."

A lot of this material is free to be downloaded as a .pdf, so you don't have to make xeroxes or even go to the library. How easy can it be?

Class Presentations

On Friday, Melissa will be presenting on "Project for a Tachiscope [Bottomless Pit]." (Please don't show the whole thing. Just show some of it and give a summary.)

On Friday, April 6th, the following people will give presentations:

• Lauren Pahl, "Galatea" by Emily Short
• Dan McCarthy, "What We Will" by John Cayley, Giles Perring, Douglas Cape
• Kathryn Thomlinson, "Facade" (requires installation on PC)

Freewrite #4 (due April 2)

In this freewrite, I want you to think about the psychological implications of computer use, both in online communities and video games. Since most of you don't play online video games, however, you can base your paper on your experience with sites like Facebook, MySpace, Nerve (or other online dating service), chat rooms, IM, etc.

I don't want this to be a general description of some online service. Be sure to use as the basis of your arguments quotes from the two articles we are reading this week, "The Lessons of Lucasfilms' Habitat" and "Video Games and Computer Holding Power." Some questions you can consider are:

• what are the implications of having "avatars" and being anonymous for your online persona?
• what are the "rules" of the community, what keeps everyone in order?
• is there a form of violence that is peculiar to this community or online communities in general?
• what are the moral issues involved in this online community?
• how does the community work as a literary object? is there a way people write on the community that is different than normal?
• how does the context of the community affect what you write?
• can this community operate as a "game"? (for instance, are there "events" that bring people in the community together in a not-normal way?) what do the maintainers of the site do to make sure people come back to the site?
• what are the limitations and benefits of this community compared to "real-world" interactions?
• how does the psychology of the video game player become exhibited in this community? is it a community that is geared toward people who find regular "life" too complicated?

Format style: All papers should be at least 2.5 pages, in 12 point type (in Times Roman or similar font with serifs) with 1.5 spacing and 1 inch margins. They will be marked down if not in this format. Research papers should have the proper biography and footnotes where applicable.

Review Material

Vannever Bush, “As We May Think”
Ben Schneiderman, “Direct Manipulation: A Step Beyond Programming Languages”
“The NLS demo by Douglas Engelbart”
Jeff Han demo
Ted Nelson’s “Computer Lib / Dream Machines”
“Eliza”
Electric Sheep Comix
Robert Coover, “The End of Books”
Borges, “The Garden of Forking Paths”
Stuart Moulthrop “You Say You Want a Revolution? Hypertext and the Laws of Media”
Wikipedia article in The New Yorker
Talan Memmott, “Lexia to Perplexia”
Stuart Moulthrop, “Pax: An Instrument”
Shelly Jackson, “my body – a wunderkammer”
Daniel Howe, “Text Curtain”
Juliet Martin, “oooxxxooo”
Stephanie Strickland, “The Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot”
Thom Swiss, “The Narrative You Anticipate You May Produce”
Lev Manovich, “New Media from Borges to HTML”
Young Hae Chang Heavy Industries, “Dakota”
Chris Martin, “Intimate Alice”
William Poundstone, “Project for Tachistoscope [Bottomless Pit]”
Rachel Greene, Internet Art
“Six Selections by the Oulipo”
William Burroughs, “The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin”
Geoffrey Ryman, “253”
Scott McCloud, “The Carl Comix”
Christian Bok, “Eunoia”
Levi Lehto, “Get a Google Poem”
Noah Wardrip-Fruin, David Durand et. al., “Regime Change”

All Your Base Are Belong to Us

http://allyourbase.planettribes.gamespy.com/video1_view.shtml

Research Paper Outline

For this Friday, March 30, I'd like you to hand in a two page outline of your paper topic that includes the following:

Thesis paragraph:

• what questions do you aim to answer or what are the main points you will be making (argumentative or analyitical)
• what material do intend to investigate to answer this question
• what terms do you plan on introducing or defining
• how does this relate to the concepts of new media that we have covered

Outline of paper:

I. Working title for your paper

II. Thesis paragraph

III. Overview of what we know so far

• historical developments
• things you have seen in passing

IV. The examples you will be reviewing and what key points you will be making

• how does each relate to the thesis
• what are the strengths and weaknesses of this example
• how will you transition to the next point

V. The conclusion

• how all of the examples relate to your thesis
• what more do we need to know to answer the questions adequately
• what are the implications of your findings
  

Sources:

• sources from the New Media Reader
• sources from books
• sources from websites (including multimedia)
• sources from magazines you research on library website

Sample outline:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/general/gl_outlinS.html

"Database Literature" reading links

Following are links for the next online reading assignments.

For Wednesday

This is for everybody to read (there won't be a presentation on it though we'll talk about it in class).

Raymond Queneau, "A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems"
http://www.bevrowe.info/Poems/QueneauRandom.htm

Scott McCloud, "The Carl Comix"
http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/carl/index.html

For Friday presentations

These are presentation links, but I would like everyone to take a look at these links so that we can have some discussion.

Geoffrey Ryman, "253"
http://www.ryman-novel.com/

Christian Bok, "Eunoia"
http://www.chbooks.com/archives/online_books/eunoia/text.html

Leevi Lehto, "Get a Google Poem"
http://www.leevilehto.net/google/google.asp (regular) http://www.leevilehto.net/google/patterns.asp (patterns)

Noah Wardrip-Fruin et. al., "News Reader" & "Regime Change" http://turbulence.org/Works/twotxt/

Daniel Howe, "Text Curtain"
http://mrl.nyu.edu/~dhowe/textcurtain/ (description)
http://mrl.nyu.edu/~dhowe/textcurtain/applet.html (applet)

Terms

Ephemeral
Plagiarism
Appropriation
Happening
Site-specific
Immaterial / dematerialized
Autonomous art object
Participatory
Oppositional
Connectivity
Mail Art
Teleactivity
Telepresence
Real-time
Marginal
Randomness
Information
Data
Media spheres / public space
Algorithm

Freewrite #3: Internet Art

For this assignment, I want you to review the terms that we talked about from the introduction to Internet Art. Most of these basic concepts appear frequently throughout the book, and if you are still unclear on some of them, do some internet research about them (such as "installation art").

For the freewrite, write at least 2.5 pages on one of the sub-chapters of Internet Art (remember to use 1.5 spacing and Times Roman font). By "sub-chapter," I mean the italicized sub-headings under the four main chapter headings. Go to the website Rhizome.org and look at some of the art works discussed (or look at other pieces by the same artists).

Your freewrite should include:

• a summary of the main points of the subchapter you have chosen (including at least three quotes from the text that you redefine in your own words)
• a brief analysis/description of the art work you have decided to look at
• a sort of "update" on what the artist is doing now -- i.e. are there works on Rhizome that were not discussed in the book? did you find anything through Google about this artist?
• your evaluation on the worth of the art work -- basically, do you like it, why or why not? (you have to give reasons)

The best way to pick a subchapter would be either by flipping through the book, reading the captions to the images, and after you've found a piece that you liked, reading that sub-chapter. Or you could just look at the table of contents and pick a subheading that seems to have something to do with your interests.

This is due on Monday, the 19th.

Student Blogs

Joanna Christen
http://joanna323.blogspot.com
Will focus on looking at the various websites and applications that are used for studying languages. Do they really work? What does programmable media have to offer to the student of language in general that is superior to books and a teacher? Will also look at the use of language labs for the teacher, and tie in some information on schools in Canada and France (not sure in what way at this point). Might want to look at more advanced theories of how languages are being taught today in the classroom and see if there is anything in particular that new media can offer them -- i.e. are there Montessori-type educational theories? (This paper needs a little focus for me, but if you start working on your blog I'll get a better idea.)

Jaclyn Dunay
http://jackiedunay.blogspot.com
Will look at the spate of “alternative” music videos to songs that already have had professional, corporate videos made for them. Has the role that was previously assigned to a business to promote their songs been handed over to fans? Is there a growing stigma attached to professional videos? What types of cultures are being created – is there a particular type of music that gets this treatment? Could also consider the issue of the “mash-up” – types of videos made by using source material from other videos – as well as the increased role of animation in AfterEffects and Flash. (Could also look at weird things like “All Your Base Are Belong to Us”).

Megan Errickson
http://meganerrickson.blogspot.com
Will look at issue of blogs and how they have managed to take over for more traditional media in terms of opinion editorials and other forms of “credibility,” including how something like Wikipedia could be seen as more credible than a traditional book source. Will concentrate on 3 or so blogs that highlight some of these issues, such as Daily Kos, an influential political blog. Must ask questions about the nature of print authority in an age in which one’s web page could be changed overnight – how can one site such a thing as a source?

Benjamin Esser
http://dailywitandwisom.blogspot.com
Will look at issues of gender as it is represented in video games, especially the psychological conditioning that it produces and its effects on society. Questions that should be asked is whether the types of identifications that we believe occur in movies and in politics (or non-fictional television) really carry over to video games, and how much the presumed audience for video games (mostly younger boys) effects the representations. This can also extend into considerations of race and other issues of societal representation (Nazis, car thieves, etc.)

Melissa Garafolo
http://mydreamsneverdie.blogspot.com
Will do a series of short critiques of electronic literature, specifically those that appear on the Electronic Literature Organization’s first CD collection of works. (I will lend her such books as Kate Hayles’ Writing Machines and the Digital Poetics book from MIT). Questions being asked are the usual: how do these pieces operate in terms of conventional genre, how do they make us rethink the issue of the author of the text, how is the text being used as image itself, etc.

Daniel McCarthy
http://eleganceandstyle.blogspot.com
Concerning the internet communities centered around file-sharing of bootleg live recordings of bands such as the Grateful Dead. Will research into pre-internet file-sharing issues, including those of copyright, and how this has changed. (Look at Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig). Nugs.net will be the primary focus of his research, but also will look at internet archives of prior years’ websites. How does the internet affect communities previously considered “underground” (punks, for example) – has this exposure killed some of the excitement? How has it turned a previous “hobby” into a “profession” – i.e. who is earning cash from this?

Thomas McCarthy
http://mccarthyscorner.blogspot.com
Will look at Borges and other writers of the speculative, metaphysical sort (Cortazar, the Oulipo) and the influence they have had on hypertext theory. Most of the concentration will be on Borges and how his intermingling of real-life historical events – “taking what is lying around there to begin with” – with his fictional world is a form of “interactive fiction.” (Could also look at Philip K. Dick, especially The Man in the High Tower.) Will have some discussion of how Borges developed some of these techniques as he made contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos of H.P. Lovecraft.

Cortney Murray
http://cortneysblog-cortney.blogspot.com/
Will look a celebrity gossip blogs and websites as well as mainstream new channels, such as MSNBC, Fox News Channel and CNN, devoted an unusual amount of time covering the death of Anna Nicole Smith as opposed to more substantial material. She will look at sites like tmc.com and perezhilton.com and ask questions of what keeps them going and why people have become so obsessed with this. How do these sites relate to more traditional fare like Us Weekly? How have the distinctions between mainstream media and self-published media collapsed? Is there more authority invested in a self-motivated obsessive than a paid journalist? Might also ask how these phenomena relate to things like daily talk shows and other forms of voyeuristic television like Reality TV. Ideally, would follow a story on the caliber of Anna Nicole Smith as it makes its way through the news.

Danielle Sanzone
http://daniellesmcblog.blogspot.com/
Will look at the phenomenon of fan fiction – fictional extensions of the reality of popular television shows – specifically concerning the show Grey’s Anatomy. Will ask questions of how this was done before the internet, and maybe also how some people have taken to creating video extensions of these fictional worlds. Should ask questions of genre, narrativity, and also the nature of writing style (have any of these authors managed to add legitimate new dimensions to their worlds?). Of course, must ask why this flourishes on the internet and what relationship it has to other web phenomena. Do the television producers care? Has fan fiction generated revenue for the show? Has fan fiction ever saved a show from being cancelled?

Brian Sullivan
http://stopremembering.blogspot.com
Will look at the videogame industry and the internet cultures that have arisen around it, such as the websites with news and reviews, but especially the discussion forums in which gamers “yell, fight, and talk amongst themselves.” How do the fans play a role in advancing the industry? Is there anything equating to a “celebrity” in gaming culture? I would like to see some question of “auteur theory” applied to video games – i.e. are there individual game creators whose personal stamps are so deep that people play their games just to extend their understanding of this creators’ work as a whole?

Kathryn Tomlinson
http://stk36695.blogspot.com/
Will investigate the issue of internet addiction, looking at statistical studies that try to determine the role the internet has played in changing general habits, especially social habits. What role does AIM and cell phones play? How has the increase in general “writing” changed how we think of text (is the culture more literary?) What are the major types of internet addiction, and are some of them more harmful than others? Does the computer industry attempt to promote this addiction the way cigarette companies did? This needs to have a sharper angle (we should discuss it more, and send me links).

Annalysa Coleman
http://annalysasblog.blogspot.com

Alyssa Machado
http://literatuream.blogspot.com

Lauren Pahl
http://lauren301.blogspot.com

All three of these students are interested in working on technology and the classroom. They should visit the offices of MAIT, the Stockton graduate degree in instructional technology. Lauren is particularly interested in asking questions about the purposes and functions of schools, where they succeed and what other options are available. Could probably look at Montessori instruction theory and relate that to what sorts of possibilities exist in cyberculture. These projects could all benefit from interviews with Stockton professors about their use of technology in the classroom, as well as with questionnaires to students about their experience with technology. Would be neat to be able to talk to Stockton graduates who have had to deal with technology in their professional lives.