Grand Text Auto

Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures, a peer-reviewed online journal specializing in new media and net art, has a new issue out. It features work by Thom Swiss, Mark Marino, Braxton Soderman, Stephanie Strickland and Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo, Jaka Zeleznikar, Michael Peters, and Jeanne Hamming.

You can skip your 2008 video game conferences and just read the keynotes, in five easy pieces. Thanks to dfan for this one.

A Review of Giant Brains
or Machines That Think
by Edmund Callis Berkeley
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
1949
286 pp.
(DjVu reader required)

Let me begin by admitting that I trudged to this book like a zombie, simply hoping that I might be amused to encounter frequent, non-ironic mentions of computers as “giant brains.” What I discovered was, while not a masterwork, a clearly-written and evidently very influential volume that is fascinating at times. It provides a view that goes beyond a single computing machine but is situated very early in computing history, before the first working stored-program computer (the EDSAC) had been completed. Giant Brains enlarged my thinking about the history of computing, tickling my digital media senses with its speculations about how individuals might use computers.

With regard to your request, I cannot agree to review for your journal right now. If [it] becomes an open access journal, I will be very glad to review articles for the journal.

Having written this in an email recently, I wanted to post about my reasoning and ask what Grand Text Auto readers, commenters, and bloggers think about this issue. Open access journals and other scholarly publishing issues are classic ivory tower matters, but my concern about restricting access to Grand-Text-Auto-like subjects has a lot to do with my concern for non-academic readers and commenters here, as well as academics who aren’t at major research universities with full access to journals. This includes people at small liberal arts colleges, even if they write award-winning papers, and independent scholars, even if they regularly keynote conferences and contribute authored and edited volumes to the academic discourse. It also includes game-makers, electronic literature authors, creators of digital art, and those who arrive here curious about digital media. Not to mention one of our six drivers.

I think there must be a few things that those of us who are part of the scholarly publishing process can do to foster an open-access future. The easiest thing that I’m able to think of is simply not volunteering our labor to lock academic writing away from the public.

Lost in the Static
Sean Barrett
Silver Spaceship Software
2007

Lost in the Static is a wonderful little Windows game, one that was quickly developed around an innovative concept. The gameplay is conventional: it is a typical platformer and combines standard jumping challenges with movement through new and interesting spaces. But the means of creating an image on the screen is not at all conventional, as this screenshot should make clear.

I’m delighted to announce that Stuart Moulthrop, a longtime friend to Grand Text Auto and a valued mentor and collaborator of mine, has won the 3rd International Digital Literature Award Ciutat de Vinaròs in both categories.

His Deep Surface is the winner in the narrative category.

His Under Language shared the prize for poetry with Isaias Herrero Florensa’s Universo Molecula.

Moulthrop has already put both of his winning works online. I have not found a link to Universo Molecula yet, but will add one when I do. Isaias Herrero Florensa also received the special prize for best work in Catalan. See the announcement of the winners for more details about the award.

For our last Purple Blurb of the semester, Andrew Plotkin will be joining us at MIT in the Trope Tank (14N-233) at 6pm this Tuesday, December 4, to share some of his work with us.

Andrew, sometimes known as Zarf, is a leading interactive fiction author, having written and programmed A Change in the Weather; So Far; Spider and Web; Hunter, In Darkness; Shade; The Dreamhold and Delightful Wallpaper. He is also a designer of different sorts of computer games (such as System’s Twilight) and games off the computer (such as Capture the Flag with Stuff, a game which draws several hundred CMU students each semester). His work includes a hypertext piece created as a part of large-scale collaborative art project, a Lisp interpreter for Infocom’s virtual machine, a 32-bit portable virtual machine of his own for interactive fiction, called Glulx, and a detailed digital concordance for John M. Ford’s novel The Dragon Waiting.

A Review of Hacker Culture
by Douglas Thomas
University of Minnesota Press
2002
296 pp.
$19.95

This is a fine book that already seems antique, and not just because of the Commodore PET on the cover and the centrality of WarGames and Hackers to the discussion of the cultural situation of hacking. Not because of any dated analysis, either: there are good arguments in here about the importance of secrecy in hacking, the way the hacker becomes a locus for technological anxiety, and questions of the body in the digital realm. The book seems to raise the question, though: Where have all the hackers gone?

Computing and the Internet now seem to be fully productized and anything but an “electronic frontier.” Eternal September hit long ago like nuclear winter. The very concept of a long-distance call has almost been forgotten by most phone users. The computer-savvy obediently turn to iPhones for world wide access, to make use of whatever applications have been developed by Apple, Inc. in partnership with AT&T – all other uses being prohibited. Quite an irony, considering that the two Apple Computer founders first went into business selling phone phreaking equipment. Once hackers, now hacked.

Something to be thankful for: Steven Poole placed a PDF of his 2000 book Trigger Happy online under the CC by-nc-nd 3.0 license. Trigger Happy is an important early book about video games and aesthetics. The electronic edition, revised in 2001 and 2004, has been noted on Mefi and elsewhere; thanks also go to ifmud’s inky for the tip.

A reminder about a call for papers recently ended up in my inbox – quite a surprise, since I had not seen the original call and didn’t even know that this journal existed. But there is a new open-access, peer-reviewed journal on computer gaming that has already published its first issue. The journal is called Eludamos, and these are the people behind it. I’ve pasted the call for papers below.

That is, the Society for Literature, Science, and Arts ’07 conference, CODE, vis-a-vis the AAAI Fall Symposium on Intelligent Narrative Technologies (INT).

Recently I participated in a conference in Portland, Maine, the SLSA ’07: CODE, and then, the next weekend, the AAAI 2007 Fall Symposium on Intelligent Narrative Technologies in Alexandria, Virginia. Andrew has already offered very detailed notes about the AAAI symposium, but I wanted to mention, more briefly, a few things about both of these interesting events.

The winner of the 2007 Interactive Fiction Competition was just announced. It is Lost Pig And Place Under Ground, a brilliant work which may quickly become my main example of what interactive fiction can do. It has a character you can converse with, unusual physical laws that allow for a system of magic, a riddle-like object recognition puzzle, a mini-maze, pants, fire, and loads of in-jokes. There is a good explanation of how IF works, and the writing is brilliant. The game is attributed to the orc Grunk although the author’s “real” name (in the IF community) is Admiral Jota. Grunk explains the concept of interactive fiction on his livejournal:

In normal story, one person tell story and other person listen to story. … But this not like that. In this kind of story, one person tell story and other person help tell story. It other person job, figure out what person in story do next. Some time, person in story have really tricky problem, so person that helping can only finish story by thinking really hard to figure out how person in story can do that thing. Like “PUT BUTTER ON BOTTLE THEN TAKE FROG OUT OF BOTTLE AND EAT FROG”. Or some time it easy like “EAT FROG”. It depend on story.

Congratulations also go to Christopher Huang, who wrote #2 An Act of Murder, Sam Gordon who wrote #3 Lord Bellwater’s Secret, and all the others who fielded games that people played and enjoyed. The game with the highest standard deviation

(THAT IS ALARMINGLY THESE ARE NOT LOVESICK ZOMBINES ZOMBIES A NEW GAME IN FLASH BY JASON NELSON) IT WOULD PERHAPS LOOK LIKE EXCEPT PERHAPS LESS WORKSAFE AND WITH VIDEOS OF JASON NELSON

MIT students compose literary texts on Dymo label makers.

In The Commonplace Book Project that “dead” medium, interactive fiction, is used to give shape and machinery to unborn works by everyone’s favorite author of the ancient and eldritch, H.P. Lovecraft. The project began during April-June of this year. There are now seven games in three languages (English, Spanish, and French), which are sure to make for delicious snacks if one has not been sated by the IF Comp that is currently underway. But in the Lovecraft universe … games snack on YOU!

A Review of A Commuications Primer
By Charles and Ray Eames
1953
Running time 0:21:29
Internet Archive (Prelinger Collection)

I recently made time to view an important short film made by Charles and Ray Eames. This influential American husband-and-wife team were designers who applied their art to many forms: furniture, film, exhibitions, books, toys. Their house provided an early example of the use of industrial elements in a domestic space. I find that their chairs enhance the viewing of A Communications Primer and many other media experiences.

The Eames’ best-known film is the 1977 Powers of Ten, the zooming visual explanation of scale which has no doubt been shown in more than 10^4 classrooms and 10^2 science museums. In their much earlier film A Communications Primer they describe the application of Claude Shannon’s model of communication to familiar media experiences, along with some that aren’t very familiar nowadays, such as telegraphy. There are very nice iconic images deployed, as well as shots of media technologies in use.

A lot has been mentioned on here about Indigo Prophecy already – by Andrew, by Noah (1 2), and by commenters who followed up those posts.

I want to add two things: First, an argument that Indigo Prophecy is not an adventure game, and second, a defense of its Simon-like gameplay.

A topic that came up at the UC Irvine symposium – and, actually, before the symposium – is whether Grand Text Auto is a movement along the lines of surrealism, Dada, and the Oulipo. Scott knows all about these movements and things and probably has the definitive word here, but as all of us were discussing, we’re of the opinion that we’re not such a movement. A movement typically promulates manifestos which declare the movement’s intentions and set forth some sort of agenda. That’s not Grand Text Auto at all. As Mary said during the symposium, we’re a manifesto in reverse. We’re united only by our blog, which is at best a system for writing manifestos along with many other other things. It certainly isn’t a manifesto itself.

I truly enjoyed every element of the Grand Text Auto show, from the more technologically elaborate pieces requiring special attire (AR Façade, Screen) to the subtly interactive Tableau Machine to the more “standard PC” exhibits of Petz 3, Babyz, non-AR Façade and The Unknown. And, of course, I liked seeing the pieces in which I had a hand as they were viewed and accessed by visitors. But as I’m co-authoring a book about the Atari VCS, a.k.a. Atari 2600, I took special pleasure in getting to use Mary Flanagan’s scaled-up controller for that system, [giantJoystick].

It was great fun to man one element – button or stick – of the massive controller, which is best operated by two people. I may have learned some about interpersonal communication and collaborative play. But I’m sure that I learned a few things about the this controller and various Atari VCS games, things that will inform the critical work I’m doing on this platform.

I went to the MIT Libraries booksale today, and I got a few things, including some old computer books of the sort I am always looking for.

My haul wasn’t that great, and I wouldn’t have commented upon it under most circumstances. But what was uncanny was that, when I went to shelve them … well, look at the last names of the authors!

You can now download the entries in the 2007 Interactive Fiction Competition. And play them. And vote on them, at any point before November 15. There are 23 games this year for seven platforms. One of them has my favorite name of all the entries, but we’re not supposed to talk about entries during the competition, so I’ll leave it at that. Update: As pointed out below in comments, we can talk. The name that caught my eye was Deadline Enchanter.

Those who won’t be able to join us in Los Angeles on October 3 and 4 for the Grand Text Auto exhibit opening, symposium, and performance, but who are able to make it to Brown University in Providence, should certainly attend the October 4-7 Reading Digital Literature, a US-German conference that Roberto Simanowski has organized. There’s an exhibition and screening, a full two days of events plus an opening before that and a day of wrapping up on Sunday, and a great slate of people who will be offering close readings of particular works and other discussions of e-lit. I wish I could make it, but I’ll look forward to hearing about how it went … and to telling the folks there about how great the Grand Text Auto gig was out at UCI’s Beall Center for Art + Technology.

And there’s more in the museum and text world…

A Review of Why Software Sucks … and What You Can Do About It
By David S. Platt
Addison-Wesley
2006
243 pp.
$19.99

A tissue of yarns, Microsoft and computing jokes, and the occasional bit of discussion of software deficiencies. Initially, I liked the idea of a book-length rant about software. I did manage to find some high points and things that at least made me smile. For instance, there’s the section about how the “save changes” dialog in Microsoft Windows Notepad needlessly exposes the underlying workings of the program. It is not clear why the average computer user or would be interested in most of this when they could turn to some more coherent discussion of the main topics of substance: user interface, privacy, and security. And, I feel that developers will probably not want to consult this book regarding specific systems or topics of interest to them. Why Software Sucks has no index, so the author must have felt the same way.

A Review of re:skin
Edited by Mary Flanagan and Austin Booth
The MIT Press
2007
370 pp.
$40.00

In re:skin, Grand Text Auto‘s own Mary Flanagan and co-editor Austin Booth suture essays, stories, and documentation of projects to flesh out a book that explores our ever-present bodily boundary. The items collected in re:skin are not just about the metaphorical “re-skinning” that one can undertake with a browser or with WinAmp, and not just about the virtual covering that some seek to wrap around 3-D characters. Rather, the book explores how we allow our actual, literal skin to define and segment us and how it can be a medium for expression or a provocation to rethink our concepts of boundary.

From plastic surgery to fur implants, from illegal tattooing to skin grafts, the use of technology to alter the physical body is, for women writers, less a tool for empowerment than a means to construct alternative, multiple selves. Bodily boundaries are malleable, and bodily markers which distinguish bodies are reprogrammable. The pieces gathered in re:skin claim that the technologically mutable body is neither simply liberating nor limiting, but offers instead narratives of ways of living in, and adapting to, a technological culture.

A Review of Pilgrim in the Microworld: Eye, Mind, and the Essence of Video Skill
David Sudnow
Warner Books
1983
227 pp.
$15.50

The King of Kong‘s Steve Wiebe looks like a casual gamer compared to David Sudnow. While Sudnow may not be a video game champion, it is evident that he had the same relationship with Breakout that Ishmael had with whales. I know of no story of monomania, since those in the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, at least, that can match Sudnow’s memoir of his obsession with one single Atari VCS cartridge. For the love of God, Sudnow! How can you break down those luminescent, rainbow bands of bricks again and again, so attentive to your own physiology, almost ready to report to us your galvanic skin response at the moment of breakout?

The text of Pilgrim in the Microworld, after briefly visiting the finer points of Missile Command, fixes its gaze upon the arcade port of Breakout as intently as Sudnow fixed his grip upon the paddle controller – or “knob,” as he calls it to distinguish it from the virtual paddle. Sudnow’s struggles with “the slam shot,” his joy at the music of the rebounding ball, his attempts to learn a precise opening, midgame, and endgame – all are chronicled in what is certainly the most fanatical report of video game play that has ever been provided.