Grand Text Auto

Hey this is a cool project: Grafedia is attempting to write a hypertext on the streets of New York. All it takes is a picture cellfone and some magic chalk. Like the Yellow Arrow project, the idea of this project is that people mark things as significant in the physical world, and then to remark them in cyberspace. Grafedia encourages users to upload images, audio and video. To make Grafedia, you simply write a word (with a blue underline) somewhere in the world, and then email a corresponding media file to (that word)@grafedia.net. This makes me want to get one of them newfangled mobile phone things with video capabilities. Via Turbulence.

Justin Hall’s having a breakdown. I saw it on today’s installment of Justin’s Links.

opinion ahead — watch the video first before reading

Thanks to teh Dashslot Games, I learned that EA is looking into starting a Sims TV show.

One of the ideas is an interactive show that would “let viewers control the actions of the characters,” but of course, they have backup plans in case the interactive TV thing doesn’t work out. Here are a few of the concepts being thrown around…

I’m settling into Portland, Oregon now, after moving here a couple of weeks ago from Boston. Between the move and switching to working full-time on finishing Facade for the next two months, I haven’t had much time to blog, but I’ll toss out a quick post here, grinding that familiar axe… (and finally busting Nick’s 10-in-a-row postravagnza! ;)

For all the bemoaning that goes on about the lack of variety of interactive entertainment, and even more so about the slow progress in increasing the amount of agency in such games — criticisms I’ve made many times, and regularly hear others making — I want to suggest that the root cause of it all may be less blameworthy, and at the same time more troublesome, than some believe.

I heard an interesting talk today by Penn film scholar Peter Decherney, author of the soon-to-be-released Hollywood and the Culture Elite: How the Movies Became American. He spoke about the topic of his next book, which he’s just stared on: Who Owns the Movies? A Cultural History of Film Copyright. Peter is also teaching a course on Copyright and Culture this semester, with lots of good Lessigian, Vaidhyanathanian, and Stallmanic stuff on the syllabus.

We knew that putting stickers on stuff could get you in trouble with the law, and that sticker literature is subversive and charged by the context it appears in, but those folks down in Cobb County went way beyond what we did with Implementation. They were so radical in their sticker writing – back in 2002, no less – that they’ve just managed to get a federal judge to write an analysis of their work. (On Slashdot, there was much rejoicing.) It’s bad enough that Georgia Tech is such an innovative place when it comes to digital media, but you’d think that those of us in other states might at least be able to develop the most controversial and groundbreaking sticker literature…

A Review of Narrative across Media
edited by Marie-Laure Ryan
University of Nebraska Press
2004
422 pp.
$35.00

This collection of essays, framed by Marie-Laure Ryan’s clear explanations of narratology and its application to different media, is an indispensable resource for those interested in how narrative and digital media interrelate. Without ever making the assertion that narratology will offer the dominant or controlling means of understanding video games or other computer works, the essays included explain how the approaches of narratology can work across different media to inform many different sorts of investigations. Ryan’s writing – the overall introduction, and introduction to each of the five sections, and an article on narrative in digital media – makes the volume particularly useful to the narratology newcomer and to those interested in digital media.

The Graduate Humanities Forum here at the University of Pennsylvania will be hosting an interdisciplinary conference on Collecting the Unconscious: Reflections on Sleep and Dreams on March 3-4, 2005. Princeton history professor Christine Stansell will keynote. This year, we invite applications from grad students at other universities: just supply a 200-word abstract by January 20. New media topics aren’t highlighted by the call for papers, it’s true, but takes on digital dreaming should be welcome at this gathering. The list of topics includes nightmares; nocturnes; dreams and the subversive discursive; dream poetics; prophecy, divination, or the oracular dream; and “brain in a vat”: from Descartes to The Matrix. For one thing, I bet there are some creative new media works about this sleep and dream stuff…

A post on ifMUD alerted me to the slim but intriguing public book selection that the California Digital Library has made freely available for online reading. Personally, my interest in this history-heavy, literature-heavy selection was piqued by The Collected Essays of Robert Creeley and by Christopher Beach’s book ABC of Influence: Ezra Pound and the Remaking of American Poetic Tradition. I was about ready to start reading one of these, in fact…

I’ve been thinking a bit of the recent Macworld keynote and its slew of announcements, and of Apple’s lawsuit against Apple information site Think Secret, a lawsuit which lines the bad-boy corporation, “rip mix burn” Apple, up against the EFF.

After this latest salvo, will the sjuzet need a health pack?

Espen Aarseth declares on the first page of “Quest Games as Post-Narrative Discourse,” his article in Narrative across Media: “The thought that these complex media [MMORPGs] can be understood by any existing media theory, such as narratology, which was developed for a totally different genre, grows more unlikely with every stage of the ongoing computer evolution.” I found this statement both potentially misleading and slightly amusing…

I finally finished reading Jesper Juul’s dissertation, “Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds.” It’s a great treatise on video games, devoting a lot of discussion to earlier forms of games, from sports to board and card games. While Jesper is a bit apologetic about this in his conclusion, I think it’s quite necessary to attend to the history of games and to games of other, non-computer forms. I’ve mentioned to Espen before that I find his strong focus on video games (to the exclusion of earlier games) a bit problematic, especially when you consider that there are computer chess games and computer simulations of sports games. I think Jesper’s work, along with Salen and Zimmerman’s Rules of Play, will begin to address the issue of how computer games fit into the millennia-long tradition of games. Of course, there is plenty more to say about the matter, but it’s good that several scholars have started to pick up on the relationship between computer games and “classical” games.

Looks like Natalie Bookchin’s speaking on January 25 at the next Global Interface UCR Mellon Workshop. Bookchin (creator of “The Intruder,” Metapet, and, with Jackie Stevens, agoraXchange) “will examine debates about the life and death of net art,” and she’ll apparently attempt to resurrect it, a surprise for the many of us who didn’t know it had died, and an even bigger surprise for the huge number of others who never knew net art was alive to begin with. I think the period in between “net” and “art” may have finally died, though, and it certainly deserves a eulogy.

A puzzling republication and tribute to literary semi-madman Harry Stephen Keeler can now be found at Spineless Books. Keeler, an arcane mystery writer, wrote a treatise describing how to construct the sort of elaborate plots that he used in his print novels. It was called ” The Mechanics (and Kinematics) of Web-Work Plot Construction,” and William Gillespie has just published it in a new edition, online. Gillespie also presents a graphical bibliography of Keeler, an illustrated explication of Keeler’s theories and their applicability to hypertext writing, and a brief illustrated guide to writing like Keeler.

Intellectual property in the context of games and new media is one of our regular themes here at GTxA (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9). So I was particularly struck by the IP concerns raised in More than Human, an article appearing in CIO Magazine (“The Resource for Information Executives”). The article matter-of-factly explores the corporate implications of transhumanism, particularly for Chief Information Officers. As corporate employees enhance their bodies and minds, there will be the need to adjust digital rights management policies.

When brains can interact with hard disks, remembering will become the equivalent of copying. Presumably, intellectual property producers will react with the usual mix of policies, some generous, some not. Some producers will want you to pay every time you remember something; others will allow you to keep content in consciousness for as long as you like but levy an extra charge for moving it into long-term memory; still others will want to erase their content entirely as rights expire, essentially inducing a contractually limited form of amnesia.

The Creative Capital Foundation has announced that during the 2005-06 grant cycle, they will accept proposals for innovative literature in their emerging fields category. Creative Capital is a nonprofit organization, which acts as a catalyst for the development of adventurous and imaginative ideas by supporting artists who pursue innovation in form and/or content in the performing and visual arts, film and video, and in emerging fields. They work in partnership with the artists whom they fund, providing advisory services and professional development assistance along with multi-faceted financial aid and promotional support throughout the life of each Creative Capital project. In their press release, they define innovative literature as “work created by writers who challenge traditional notions of literary forms and concepts. We are interested in projects by literary artists who are striving to express themselves in alternative ways through manipulating language, formal structures, or new processes.” To apply for a grant, artists must first submit an Inquiry Form, which will be available February 14, 2005 on the foundation’s website. The deadline for completed Inquiry Forms is March 14, 2005; those invited to apply will be notified in June 2005.

There’s much news from Turbulence these days. First, they’re sponsoring (with the Andy Warhol Foundation) another juried international net art competition (deadline March 31). They’re also sponsoring (with Emerson College) a lecture series this spring titled “Floating Points 2: Networked Art In Public Space.” The speakers include (01.26.05) Anne Galloway; (02.23.05) Andy Deck and Ricardo Miranda Zuniga; (03.30.05) Jeff Knowlton, Naomi Spellman, and Pete Gomes; and (04.27.05) Elizabeth Goodman, Teri Rueb, Julian Bleecker and Andrew Shoben/Greyworld. And the events don’t stop there — with Art Interactive they’re firing up a Boston edition of The Upgrade! Yael Kanarek, Teri Rueb, Larissa Harris, and kanarinka are already scheduled for the Spring. Finally, Turbulence’s latest artist studio has launched, featuring hypnotic “Flash Polaroids” by Brian Kim Stefans.

Those in NYC on Saturday will want to head to the Chelsea Art Museum for a 2pm reception and talk celebrating two events: the opening of Lev Manovich’s “Mission to Earth” installation (which will run through the 26th) and the publication of his collaborative DVD Soft Cinema: Navigating the Database (MIT Press, 2005) created with Andreas Kratky.

In addition to Manovich, Saturday’s talk will also include luminaries Christiane Paul, Barbara London, Marty St. James, Sue Hubbard, and Ken Feinstein. The Soft Cinema DVD includes, in addition to the work of Manovich and Kratky, contributions from DJ Spooky, Scanner, George Lewis and Jóhann Jóhannsson (music), servo (architecture), Schoenerwissen/ Office for Computational Design (data visualization), and Ross Cooper Studios (media design).

Looks like A Theory of Fun for Game Design, by game designer Raph Koster, is now out, as Andrew mentioned it soon would be. Perhaps that explains why Koster didn’t update his blog in 2004.

It was great getting to hang out with Christian Bök at MLA, even if his university wrote a horribly-headlined publicity article about him. His work in progress, The Cyborg Opera, attempts to take poetry straight from the influences of jazz into techno music. Parts of the poem, using ordinary English words, imitate the sound of the music from different segments of Super Mario Bros. You can get a sample of this work in these two bits of it, “Motorized Razor” and “Mushroom Clouds” [MP3]. Yes, Christian sounds pretty much like that in person, although he uses the word “cadenza” less often.