Grand Text Auto

Marie-Laure Ryan and I recently began an email discussion about The Impermanence Agent. As our conversation turned toward the impact of the Agent’s textual alterations, and the relationship of such techniques to story, Marie-Laure suggested that we open our dialogue into a conversation on GTxA. As happened with our previous, impromptu exchange (in the comments on my review of her Narrative as Virtual Reality) we’re hoping for contributions from this site’s drivers and visitors. Our plan is for things to kick off tomorrow, with Marie-Laure posting an initial message as a comment on this entry. We’ll see where things go from there…

I’m back from a week in England where I attended Cosign 2003. I’ll post a trip report in the near future. In the meantime, here are two new conference annoucements.

Ernest Adams, freelance game designer, writer and lecturer (formerly at Electronic Arts) gave a keynote address at Cosign. He is also one of the organizers of ACE2004 (Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology). “The purpose of this conference is to bring together academic and industry researchers, as well as computer entertainment developers and practitioners, to address and advance the research and development issues related to computer entertainment.” ACE2004 is happening June 3-5, 2004, in Singapore.

About a year ago, Janet Murray and grad student Chaim Gingold initiated a “game morphology” project at Georgia Tech. They asked several game designers and researchers, What ten games have been most important to you as a designer/reseracher, and/or most important to the development of electronic gaming in general?

Some initial results of the project are now tabulated and made public on their website. It’s pretty interesting to see how each designer/researcher’s influences are similar and different to one another.

There.com has announced a special limited-time offer, where if you become a beta-tester in the very near future, for $30 you can become a lifetime member with no monthly fees.

I recently downloaded the installer for There, but it required me to upgrade my video drivers, which I was reluctant to do on my machine, on which I’m currently developing Facade. So I still haven’t tried There yet (or Second Life for that matter). But I will soon find some other machine to install There, and sign up for this $30 lifetime thing.

I’ve been thinking about machine learning more acutely than usual recently, since I’m part of a seminar on the topic this semester. And I’ve been wondering about literary applications of support vector machines and kernel methods and so on. (Sounds fun, doesn’t it?)

… cries the interviewer of Chris Crawford in a new joystick101.org article, in which Chris discusses his long-time-in-development Erasmatron interactive storytelling technology. (via Torill) Also, here’s another recent interview with Chris on Gamasutra.

When I last talked to Chris at TIDSE, he said he hopes to use the Erasmatron in the near future as the foundation for a new version of his classic Balance of Power. That would be great. I truly hope Chris gets a chance to reap the rewards of all the hard work he’s put into his system.

Reading Nick’s summary of the history of AI and narrative he’s writing for the Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, it stands out how few notable research milestones in AI and narrative have occurred over the last *40* years, since ELIZA first appeared…! We need to pick up the pace here, folks!

Is it because it’s difficult to get funding for this kind of research? Surely it can’t be for lack of interest on the part of researchers. Maybe narrative intelligence research has never quite recovered from the AI winter of the 1980’s? Or, probably more likely, “narrative” is such an huge, umbrella-like topic that actually all sorts of already-underway AI research projects, e.g., Cyc, the Shruti project (mentioned by William in an earlier comment), etc., are effectively laying the needed groundwork for more explicit narrative intelligence research in the future?

Next week I’ll be in Middlesbrough UK for Cosign 2003: Computational Semiotics in Games and New Media. I’ll be presenting a structuralist semiotic treatment of architectural affordances, a way of understanding how AI architectures support meaning-making for both the authors and audiences of AI-based new media work. Hope to see some of you there!

Quick note from the Q∓A session of a talk on Mass Observation, a project in mass reportage/mass surveillance that began in 1937 in Britain and which gives its title to an exhibit opening today at the Philadelphia ICA. It was a sociological sort of project, involving artists (painters and photographers) at times and involving a lot of hanging around at pubs. It reminded me a bit of Invisible Seattle in the way it invovled others who submitted questionnaires.

I just finished a draft of an encyclopedia entry about “artificial intelligence.” It’s for the Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory and so, of course, it deals with how AI relates to narrative. Following Jill’s example, I have posted this draft in case anyone has comments on who I might have slighted, how I might have misrepresented AI, etc. I’d be greatful for any comments. It is as long as it can be, though, so I will have to cut things out if anything else is to go in there!

Revised: Thanks for your comments! I have replaced the first draft with the copy that I just submitted. (nm, 7 Sep 2003)

I recently read Lawrence Lessig’s The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World, a properly alarmist text about the Internet, the law, copyright, and the slow steady creep towards a future in which every text, film, song, picture, and thought that runs across your consciousness is licensed property, in which the spectrum is owned by highest bidder, and in which innovation is patented to such an extent that new innovation becomes nearly impossible.

Lessig is a constitutional scholar, a Stanford law professor who is scared shitless about the poorly-thought controls currently and relentlessly being placed on our intellectual lives by “the extremists in power.” Lessig was the chief architect of Eldred v. Ashcroft, the legal action which attempted to overturn the Copyright Term Extension Act, and the chair of The Creative Commons Project. I won’t give Lessig’s book a proper review in this forum, but I would like to highlight a few points, and suggest that, as new media creators, many Grand Text Auto participants and readers might want to take some proactive steps contra the current intellectual property paradigm.

Ever wondered what the underlying plot structure of a “choose your own adventure” book actually looks like? I recently bought Night of a Thousand Boyfriends, a kind of dating adventure book, by Miranda Clarke. It had been a long time since I’d read a “choose-your-own”-type book, and was now curious to better understand the exact nature of its plot branching — would branches multiply systematically, leading to dozens of distinct paths and endings, or would the branches tend to fold back on themselves? Would there be any of clever re-use of pages in different contexts?

Check out these notes from a speech given by Matteo Bittanti last week at Europe’s Game Developers Conference, suggesting the future of game studies and game art “looks extremely promising”, but with a warning that they must avoid being perceived as “mental masturbation” by the game community at large. I agree. (via Ludology.org)

The Christian Science Monitor ran an article about game studies today. Besides quotes from some usual defenders of game studies, including Janet Murray, Celia Pearce and James Gee (who was featured in the recent Chronical of Higher Education chat on games), the article includes representatives of the academy who think game studies is bunk:

“It’s just another concession to the customer. Kids have grown up playing Nintendo. They don’t read because they don’t know how to read – they don’t cultivate the imagination…. They need to be put through the intellectual rigors of a traditional format for education. Video games are just an easy way to avoid it.” – Edward Smith, director of American Studies at American University

While commuting in today there was radio news story about Carabella Goes to College, an edugame designed to teach new college students (presumably straying from the safety of the nest for the first time) to protect themselves from the dangers of a prying world:

Players of Carabella Goes to College experience a college-bound girl’s first week of school, when she has to make routine choices that determine whether she will be beset by identity thieves, aggressive marketers and hungry profiling software.

Players earn points by making decisions balancing privacy and convenience.

Full story available at Wired News.

The Chronicle of Higher Education is hosting an online chat on video games in the classroom today at 2:00pm EST. They are asking the questions:

Are video games a valid academic field of research? Will video games one day become a teaching tool in the classroom, alongside textbooks and other traditional media? Or are video games yet another distraction leading students and instructors away from quiet, concentrated study and time-honored teaching methods?

The Chronicle’s latest issue has articles on games studies.

After spending a good deal of time buttering Scott Rettberg up by praising his creative and critical writing, I’m pleased to announce that he has joined our band of automatic hooligans. Having already mentioned some of Scott’s many creative contributions, I’ll just note that Scott also founded the Electronic Literature Organization and is now an assistant professor at Stockton College, where he’s starting up a new media track in the Literature Program.

Early in the Summer we had a discussion about the craft of programming in new media art (Artist Programmers: an ongoing discussion, Meaning Machines, Collaborations) in which I took the position that new media artists should program (or understand computational thinking) because it enables a deeper engagement with computers as meaning machines (Meaning Machines). But what would an introduction to programming for art and design students look like if it was fundamentally organized around programming as a medium? Last week I began teaching Computation as an Expressive Medium (original syllabus, current syllabus), a new core course in Georgia Tech’s masters program in Information Design and Technology. This class is an alternative introduction to programming, juxtaposing readings from the New Media Reader with programming projects designed to exercise specific programming competencies while simultaneously exploring conceptual and theoretical issues raised in the readings. Rather than using a special purpose programming language that has been designed specifically for artists, I’m teaching Java. I’m hoping that using a full-featured, general-purpose language will give students a broad understanding of programming as well as give them skills in a widely disseminated language that will be useful in future projects. I’ve included links to both the original syllabus and the current syllabus – I’m sure the syllabus will change as I adjust to the realities of teaching this course. As the semester progresses, I’ll post updates on how the course is going.

They’re almost 5 years old at this point, but a collection of interviews with digital storytelling practitioners, some touching upon issues of interactivity and agency, continue to satisfy. Brought to you by the Digital Diner in Berkeley. Brenda Laurel talks about being a bit disillusioned with AI, and the practical need for using a “low tech” approach in her Purple Moon projects. Mark Bernstein offers useful examples of when and why hypertext fiction “works”. Justin Hall on blogging, back when it was called “web diaries”. Abbe Don reflects on cracking (or not) the interactive narrative problem. Alex Mayhew on our “negative obsession” with non-linear paths. Jon Sanborn suggests people want interactive worlds, not stories. Mark Petrakis envisions conversational computer characters.

Scott Rettberg’s dissertation, which was mentioned earlier, deserves some further comment. His dissertation has a first part in which he writes about the network context of The Unknown, discussing some similar efforts by other authors. The rest of it contains mainly Rettberg-authored Unknown texts – a.k.a. shovelware. Although funny, it’s hard to imagine why one would want to read this section instead of the hypertext or the Unknown Anthology book in which contributions from the three other Unknown authors are also included, but perhaps some Italians will consult the section as they work thoroughly on their own dissertations about The Unknown. They and others may be more interested in the preface to part two, which describes the project of The Unknown and even (gasp!) specifically attributes the authorship of some sections.

The 127 double-spaced pages that make up “Part One: Experiments in the Network Novel” are not dense with new advances in literary theory, but they are certainly worth reading. They share the following affinity with the more typological and semiotic Cybertext: Rettberg’s writing also is trying to describe a new, interesting category of texts, and to explain what makes this category interesting. In this case, the chief promoter of the term “electronic literature” discusses a more specific form or genre: the “network novel.” The term was much in his mind as he worked on Kind of Blue, which I wrote about recently, at some length.

I came across an amusing new play called Games for Married Couples, by D. Bruno Starrs, published in last February’s issue of Ygdrasil: A Journal of the Poetic Arts. It was a very fun read for me, both for its witty dialog and for its structure, which bears a lot of resemblance to our interactive drama project, Facade. Both plays are short one-acts, have just three characters — a married couple and a friend, all action takes place in a single room, and shows variation when the scene is repeated over and over. It even has a reference to Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, a key inspiration for Facade.

The Brown alumni magazine just did a great writeup of Bob Coover and Talan Memmott, describing some of the ways their unusual, different backgrounds ended in their working together now at Brown on CAVE projects and other electronic writing. It’s a great story which, contrasting with the usual unbridled alumni-mag ebullience, describes Talan as shift-eyed and suggests that Bob may have bought his clothes at Costco, giving the profile some nice color. (It’s quite a positive profile overall, of course, as these two deserve.) Thanks to Scott for the link.

Immemory, a CD-ROM by Chris Marker
English edition translated by Brian Holmes, Exact Change, 2002. $19.95
Originally published in French, Èditions du Centre Pompidou, 1998

Arrest images as photographs; play about the photo with the movie camera’s voyueristic, predatory gaze; add a narrated commentary that is both surprising and yet inevitable: such is the modus operandi of Chris Marker, who most famously employed these methods in the 1962 La Jette (The Jetty) and who has used them to great effect since then, for instance in the 2001 Souvenir d’un avenir (Remembrance of Things to Come), a film he made with Yannick Bellon. In the former film, which Twelve Monkeys is based upon, a man in an apocalyptic future travels back in time to recapture his society’s past, able to do so because of the single memory he retains from his youth. In the latter, Denise Bellon’s photographs are revealed as portentous records of the time between the wars.

These two films demonstrate Marker’s artistic obsession with memory and the way in which his unusual use of still photographs and a commenting voice can play upon the topic beautifully. Given this sort of work, it should not be surprising that Marker’s CD-ROM Immemory contains wonders.

sagasnet, a network of European professionals interested in creating interactive narrative content, is holding their yearly seminar next week in Leipzig, Germany. Between TIDSE, ICVS, sagasnet and all the other shindigs going on, Europe seems like a very busy place these days for interactive narrative. (More than the US, that’s for sure.)

Here’s a new interview with Mark Laidlaw, a head writer and designer at Valve of Half-Life (1999) and the much-anticipated Half-Life 2. These are among the best commercial projects out there that integrate game and story.