Grand Text Auto

Nick turned Grand Text Auto into a platform for literary gameplay with his post on When Musicians Play Interactive Fiction. Then a recent email query from Mike Alber reminded me of one of my favorite Oulipian literary games, much less well known than “N + 7”: larding. I suggest we give larding a try here on GTxA.

The process of larding, also known as “line-stretcher’s constraint” (after 19th Century writers who were paid by the line) creates a very simple game. From a given text, pick two sentences. Then write another sentence in the interval between them. Then write another sentence in each of the two available intervals of the new text (between first and second, between second and third). Then write another sentence in each of the four available intervals, and so on until the desired length is reached.

There’s a new character-driven episodic-content company on the block… SuperEgo Games, based in NYC, has announced Rat Race, “an action-comedy title set in a dysfunctional office, tasking players with just getting through the day amid a cast of difficult characters”. They’re using writing and voice talent from the TV industry in NYC, going for a sitcom-flavored game.

Our goal is to give you the feeling of ‘playing’ inside an episode of your favorite TV show. Sometimes we describe Rat Race as an interactive sitcom, but that doesn’t do it justice. There’s more to the experience than funny dialogue. Along the way you’ll sneak, sprint, solve puzzles, eavesdrop, steal, and even ‘neutralize’ that lab monkey.

Tom Boellstorff, author of the eagerly anticipated Coming of Age in Second Life (expected next spring), sends word of a UC Irvine / Intel Research workshop on the Cultures of Virtual Worlds. There’s an abstract deadline December 1st, graduate student submissions are particularly encouraged, and there are even some travel funds to support grad student participation.

I’ve been talking with Raph Koster about using Metaplace for a graduate workshop I’ll be teaching at UCSD. I’ve had conversations with a number of PhD and MFA students who are excited by the potential — and I’m looking forward to it myself.

Recently, on Raph’s website, I came upon a link to a large (three part) interview about Metaplace on MMO Gamer. It’s wide-ranging and generous, delving into the history from which the project grows, its future goals, and its current state. If you’re hungry for a discussion of the future of virtual worlds that talks more about things like DikuMUD, open architectures, and community experimentation than World of Warcraft and Second Life, this interview is for you.

At GTxA we’ve already mentioned two reviews of Second Person (by Emily Short and Bijan Forutanpour) and recently two more have caught my eye, by two Davids: Dave Thomas and David Cox. One is from Games for Lunch, a quirky review site that plays a game for an hour, gives a stream-of-consciousness overview of that hour, and then asks the all-important question: “Do I want to keep playing?”

The Paris-based International Poetry Bienniale has announced a media poetry competition to be judged by luminaries in digital poetics. The prize is an expense-paid trip to the Poetry Biennale in Paris.

From Jean-Pierre Balpe
Director
BIPVAL (Biennale Internationale des Poètes en Val-de-Marne)

For its tenth edition (May 2009), the International Poetry Biennial is
pleased to announce an International Media Poetry Contest.

Works considered “media poetry” are those that place contemporary
technologies at the service of poetry, be it within the framework of a
performance or in that of a recorded and projectable work. Among the many
forms accepted are included videopoetry, digital poetry, multimedia poetry,
sound poetry, interactive poetry, and poetic installations in physical space
or on the Internet. Works that illustrate a poem will not be considered
(these are works that use sound or images to represent or complement a poem,
for example). There are no restrictions regarding the form or content of the
media poems submitted.

One of our goals for the Grand Text Auto show at the Beall Center for Art and Technology is to create connections between the blog and the gallery. This Guest Book is one of them, which Ivan Rosero and Noah put together.

A Hewlett Packard DraftMaster II sits in the Beall gallery, right now.

Since moving from http://grandtextauto.gatech.edu to http://grandtextauto.org, I’ve noticed some problems. Technorati, for example, thinks the two URLs point to two different blogs — and, even after “claiming” both on Technorati’s site, I can’t find a way to tell it they’re the same blog. We also had some serious trouble getting Google to pay attention — and now I notice we’re often not one of the top Google hits for our own posts, even after doing a “301” permanent redirect of all our old pages. Anyone out there have advice or experience with these sorts of issues?

I’ve enjoyed reading a couple rather different responses to the Grand Text Auto show at the Beall Center for Art and Technology. One appeared in New University, the campus paper at UC Irvine. The general take of “Big Joy Stick, Big Fun at the Beall Center” is probably clear from this sentence:

Anyone expecting guns and violence because of this title might be disappointed, but any student who is interested in the future of video games, digital literature or technology or their impact on culture will be pleasantly surprised.

I had little rest during the five days I spent in Bergen, Norway in between DAC in Perth and the Grand Text Auto Exhibition in Irvine. Tempting as the bed seemed during my interphase jetlag, I was pulled out into the Bergen International Theater for Audiatur 2007. For four days at the end of September, it seemed that Bergen became the international capital of innovative poetry. The Audiatur Festival, in its third biennial iteration, featured a multilingual performance including many of the leading lights of the international sound and constrained poetry scenes. Christian Bök opened the festival with an energetic performance of Kurt Schwitter’s Ursonate and closed the festival with a reading that included highlights of his works Crystallography, Eunoia, and The Cyborg Opera. The talented multicultural Caroline Bergvall was on hand to present cross-cultural prose and poems. I had the pleasure of sitting at a table with Jaques Robuad of the Oulipo who read several of his highly amusing prose works, poems, and a presentation on the work of the Oulipo. Finnish poet Leevi Lehto gave a great performance of a few Finnish classics along with his sound and procedural poetry. The performances of Japanese sound poet and musician Tomomi Adachi were another highlight of the festival. The majority of the performances were recorded, and are available for your listening pleasure. The festival organizers also produced a very impressive 800-page Katalog, which may be the most extensive anthology of contemporary experimental poetry I’ve seen in any language, and certainly in Norwegian.

From Gamasutra via USC IMD:

The East and West organizations of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) have announced the creation of the WGA’s inaugural Videogame Writing Award to be presented for the first time ever at the Los Angeles ceremony of the 2008 Writers Guild Awards … The new award was developed by the WGA and spearheaded by the guild’s New Media Caucus “to encourage storytelling excellence in video games, to improve the status of writers, and to begin to encourage uniform standards” within the gaming industry.

One of the pleasures of SIGGRAPH 2007 was the art gallery, clearly back in full glory — with installations, wall pieces, monitor-based works, papers, panels, and even performances. Personally, I was particularly excited that the gallery provided the opportunity to finally play, myself, two experimental games I’d previously only read about and seen demonstrated: Scalable City and The Night Journey. In their gameplay and installation forms I found them two very different approaches to the experimental art game, an impression deepened by my conversations with the lead designer of each project.

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…