Fashionable Noise: The Pornographic Imagination January 22, 2008
Posted by bstefans in : Uncategorized, Fashionable Noise , add a commentA last remark by Sontag is suggestive of the aesthetic, even spiritual, power that CPs possess, when she writes that pornography points
to something more general than even sexual damage. I mean the traumatic failure of modern capitalist society to provide authentic outlets for the perennial human flair for high-temperature visionary obsessions, to satisfy the appetite for exalted self-transcending modes of concentration and seriousness. (p.70)
One immediately thinks of poets like Blake and Rimbaud (who were open to sexual investigation in their work) or to Carlyle and Pound (who weren’t) and their “visionary,” perhaps paranoiac (see footnote 35), obsessions that often resulted in enormous, detailed creations. None of these works could be considered “programmatic,” but they were all premised, in different ways, on rhetorical structures involving feedback and variation – Blake’s characters in Europe, for example, which never settle into stable physical properties – a poetic method that seems peculiar to information-saturated sensibilities on the verge of engulfment. The CP’s demon can thus be seen as the virtual embodiment of the medicine man, the half-cracked partner in aesthetics who makes a visionary of even the most bureaucratically-minded programming artist. Consequently, since coding is the most marginal of literary activities – if it is literature at all – it shares with pornography the distinction of being a textual industry that is nearly entirely unserviceable for personal edification or, indeed, socialization.
Five Holy Grails of Electronic Literature January 22, 2008
Posted by bstefans in : Uncategorized , add a comment- To write a piece that can be read several different ways – none predetermined by the “author” – which will provide distinctive reading experiences each time. To emply “algorithm” as the agent of writing, the holiest of holies being with a database that is not generated as a willed piece of literature but is communal (the web, for example).
- To write text for a three-dimensional environment that serves a textual function at nearly all times while maintaining the illusion of the space. That is, to move as far from “the page” as possible, either toward creating environmental pieces (ambient literature) or actual “3D” pieces (such as in Brown’s Cave).
- To create a programmed object that serves equally as a piece of literature – something that can be read – and which all serves as a “game” with all the “fun” implied in such a title. That is, to make something that is “fun” in all of the definitions of the word but also provides one with a non-trivial literary experience.
- To create an animated visual text that, while being quite atomized or impressionistic, can make bold aesthetic statements, and which aspires to the transformational visual qualities that are associated with film.
What is a Game? January 22, 2008
Posted by bstefans in : Uncategorized , add a commentFrench sociologist Roger Caillois, in his book Les jeux et les hommes (Games and Men), defined a game as an activity that must have the following characteristics:
- fun: the activity is chosen for its light-hearted character
- separate: it is circumscribed in time and place
- uncertain: the outcome of the activity is unforeseeable
- non-productive
- governed by rules: the activity has rules that are different from everyday life
- fictitious: it is accompanied by the awareness of a different reality
Computer game designer Chris Crawford attempted to define the term game using a series of dichotomies:
- Creative expression is art if made for its own beauty, and entertainment if made for money. (This is the least rigid of his definitions. Crawford acknowledges that he often chooses a creative path over conventional business wisdom, which is why he rarely produces sequels to his games.)
- A piece of entertainment is a plaything if it is interactive. Movies and books are cited as examples of non-interactive entertainment.
- If no goals are associated with a plaything, it is a toy. (Crawford notes that by his definition, (a) a toy can become a game element if the player makes up rules, and (b) The Sims and SimCity are toys, not games.) If it has goals, a plaything is a challenge.
- If a challenge has no “active agent against whom you compete,” it is a puzzle; if there is one, it is a conflict. (Crawford admits that this is a subjective test. Some games with noticeably algorithmic artificial intelligence can be played as puzzles; these include the patterns used to evade ghosts in Pac-Man.)
- Finally, if the player can only outperform the opponent, but not attack them to interfere with their performance, the conflict is a competition. (Competitions include racing and figure skating.) However, if attacks are allowed, then the conflict qualifies as a game.
Bernard Suits takes up Wittgenstein’s advice and actually looks to see if it is possible to define games. Suit’s definition is as follows:
To play a game is to engage in activity directed towards bringing about a specific state of affairs [prelusory goal], using only means permitted by rules [lusory means], where the rules prohibit more efficient in favor of less efficient means [constitutive rules], and where such rules are accepted just because they make possible such activity [lusory attitudes]. [Playing] a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.
[Note: the above quotes are cobbled together from Wikipedia and, in the last case, from a web review of Suit’s The Grasshopper. I’m assembling this blog in a rush and so am saving some time typing.]