Grand Text Auto

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.

The Cybertext Yearbooks, starting in the year 2000, have been an outstanding series of anthologies covering one of GTxA’s favorite topics: textual machines. This year, editors Markku Eskelinen and Raine Koskimaa decided to convert the series to a freely-available online database, new additions to which will continue to be released as a series of volumes. As a result, I’m finally getting a chance to read the articles from 2006’s yearbook, Ergodic Histories.

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.

In the NYTimes today, check out Matt Richtel’s article “Thou Shalt Not Kill, Except in a Popular Video Game at Church.” He describes how ministers and pastors desperate to reach young congregants are using the video game Halo as a recruiting tool…

The designer, artist, and architect “Le Corbusier” may be quite familiar to many of you, the architectural grandaddy (1887-1965) born under the name of Charles-Edouard Jeanneret. Le Corbu altered world architecture forever with his modernist passion for clarity, line, modularity, and what can only be described as ‘legibility.’ His book, The Decorative Art of Today, was a polemic against craft and ornamentation in interior decor (translated by James Dunnett, published by MIT Press in 1987). His other works, The City of Tomorrow and The Modulor series were also published by MIT in translation. His 1925 “Plan Voisin” for Paris, for example, will be a familiar style of modernist urban architecture:

The new Le Corbusier exhibition in Tokyo at the Mori Museum —

The first time all drivers are gathered in the same place at the same time. Version 2.0 GTxA, here we come!

More photos from the fabulous opening on my flickr site.

A brief note of deep gratitude to all who attended the opening and symposium on friday. Fabulous discussion and play! We bloggers learned a great deal from the audience and from each other, not only about our blog but about our creative work and our research agendas. Thanks!

Update: Scott posted additional photos in a flickr set.

Finally, it arrives.

EXHIBITION: Grand Text Auto

LOCATION: The Beall Center for Art and Technology, UC Irvine

OPENING RECEPTION: October 4th, 6:30pm-9:00pm, Beall Center

SYMPOSIUM: October 5th, 1:00-5:00pm, Studio Art Bldg. 712, Room 160, UC Irvine

PERFORMANCE: October 5th, 6:00-8:00pm, Winifred Smith Hall, UC Irvine

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.

We at Grand Text Auto are happy to announce our move to sunny southern California, where we’re now hosted by UC San Diego’s Center for Research in Computing in the Arts. CRCA’s interdisciplinary mission and high-octane crew make it a perfect match. We also want to offer our sincere thanks to the Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Literature, Communication, and Culture for hosting us from 2003 to the present.

Also, apologies to you who had trouble reaching the blog over the last week. Some issues arose in the testing and implementation of the move, including our shift to “grandtextauto.org” as our primary domain. Hopefully we’ve finished bumping through that set of potholes…

In addition to the two game-related jobs at UC Santa Cruz, there are a lot of other interesting jobs out there right now. For example, UCLA has two digital humanities faculty positions, and a post-doc.

My eye was also caught by an interesting creative writing job at Eastern Michigan University.

In our two-part Values @ Play Board game Modding Workshop at DiGRA 2007 Sept 25 and 27, Tokyo, Celia Pearce and Tracy Fullerton (representing the Ludica group), and I used the “Grow-a-Game” cards to stir up discussion on incorporating values into game design. This tool seemed to work very well in starting discussion, and will be expanded with the ongoing discussion and suggestions of those who use the cards.

Here is the group at DiGRA modding the card game “Pit.”

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.

It’s amazing how often I learn about a new group or individual with their own particular approach to building interactive stories. Here’s a couple dozen (!) descriptions and/or updates on the efforts that have caught or re-caught my eye recently.

If you’ve read this blog over the years, then you’ve heard it all before, but perhaps not quite so succinctly, eloquently, and certainly not as an op-ed piece in the New York Times! But here it is, by journalist Daniel Radosh.

If games are to become more than mere entertainment, they will need to use the fundamentals of gameplay — giving players challenges to work through and choices to make — in entirely new ways. … Like cinema, games will need to embrace the dynamics of failure, tragedy, comedy and romance. They will need to stop pandering to the player’s desire for mastery in favor of enhancing the player’s emotional and intellectual life.

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.

Michael Mateas and I are both representing at DiGRA 2007 in Tokyo. As you will see by the website, there are plenty of sessions here going on all week. I hope Michael and I can blog a few of the talks we found compelling.

Edward Castronova hosted an unusual interactive keynote yesterday, with a goal to demonstrate two things: the importance of the magic circle and fantasy, and the importance of creating sustainable systems.

So my day at the Tokyo Game Show was predictably exciting, overwhelming, and just plain loud. There is plenty o’ detailed online commentary on the TGS out there, so here I’ll just briefly mention the games that caught my eye.

Echochrome is a puzzle game that plays with Escher-like optical illusions. The player’s job is to allow a small walking figure to traverse a platform construction by rotating the construction, and thus changing the camera’s perspective. The figure’s ability to navigate the platforms depends on the subjective truth of the current visual perspective, rather than the objective truth of the 3D model. You can play with the game engine online.

Patapon is a rhythm game in which you control your army of cute little 2D procedural critters by tapping out rhythms composed of different button combinations. The lines to play were too long, so I didn’t get the chance, though I definitely love the visual style. Gamespot has a nice description of actually playing the game.

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.

After much deliberation with my blue ribbon panel and the neighborhood kangaroo, I’m pleased to announce that the winner of the first Annual Alan Turing Memorial International Grand Text Auto T-Shirt Competition is Alex, for his “Grand Text Auto Matrix” design. I thought all of the entries were very creative, from the appropriation of the Grand Theft Auto logo to the Patriotic model to the Lettrist version and Grand Text Eliza and my love of Scrabble nearly drew me to the courageous first entry, but in the end, I was pulled to GTAM because of the fact that it evinced so much reading on the part of the designer (a rare and enviable combination), and because I think it will look cool both at a distance and for the squinty-eyed chardonnay-swilling electronic art lovers who will doubtless pull close to my chest to read it at the GTxA exhibition opening in Irvine. Alex, if you’ll send your address to me at scott at retts dot net, I’ll get your T-shirt and other prizes on their way. I’m ordering mine right now. Hopefully it’ll get there in time for me show up wearing it in Irvine. Thanks to everyone for participating and making this first competition such a success. Remind us this time next year if we haven’t announced the second round.

So, I’ve been pretty remiss about blogging lately, with all the usual excuses (moving, new job, adjusting to parenthood, buying a house, going up for tenure – I like to engage in every life stressor at the same time). But I’m getting my feet back under me, and one of my new year’s resolutions (new academic year, that is) is to get back on the blogging scene.

So, without further ado, I’d like to announce that we’re looking for, not one, but two, new faculty to join the game design program in computer science at UC Santa Cruz . We’re looking for applicants with demonstrated research excellence in either:

• Computational aspects of videogame design, such as artificial intelligence, real-time animation/graphics and Human Computer Interaction (CS) or
• Computational digital media in the context of video games, including game design, game studies, and game art (DM)

My recollection of the Digital Arts and Culture Conference (DAC) 2007 is unfortunately a bit blurred by some type of flu contracted in either Perth, Kuala Lumpur, or Tokyo, where I am now at my desk, writing amidst sniffling. But due to Scott’s invocation, I must post! Because I’m in Tokyo for the next conference up, DiGRA, and that’s sure to generate more reasons to post soon enough.

As a typical and enjoyable DAC, a cross-section of practitioners and scholars were in attendance,