Introducing On the Same Page (A Study in Language and Intersubjectivity)

This video introduces the "On the Same Page" (OtSP) project, a collaborative study in participatory sense making that includes clinical/neural psychology, language/narrative and performance art. It is a project initiative within the SITE initiative in the Department of Psychology at Umeå University, Sweden.

My component of the project involves the opportunity to theorise the expansion of language in the On the Same Page Project. Embodied communication and the semiotics of the three-dimensional are just two areas that are outside the realms of verbal language but that at the same time define and support the space we share when we communicate with each other with spoken and written language.

Symbolic modes that are bound up with the spatial -  for example clothing, body modification (such as tattooing) and gender play -  are examples that are common for negotiating the social today. These realms of communication can be seen as exemplified in the gesture. Sign language is perhaps the most developed mode for gestural communication, but we all use gesture to communicate. Gestures are shared as nodes in the cultural fabric of reality. In fact I would argue that gestures are a primary mode for expression and experimentation within the components of social identity today. New media, such as video games, exploit gesture as a mode of communication to both convey narrative and engage in play.

My contribution to OtSP is to take up the non-verbal elements that are aspects of communication and place them in broader communicative contexts. The spatial is perhaps the most obvious of these broader contexts. I look forward to experimenting with how performance can intersect with shared spatial codes to result in evidence of intersubjectivity in relation to communication and ultimately identity and meaning. My hope is that the results of these experiments will be in the direction of contemporary narrative studies.

Virtual Worlds and Indigenous Knowledge: learning to tell stories and make positive change across cultures

My presentation at Association of Internet Researchers 11th conference 2010

The representation of place and space are powerful narrative tools in digitally mediated stories today. Virtual online worlds are one example of how space and place is realized in stories using avatars and navigation. In a seemingly distant tradition, the narrative systems that are collectively referred to as the Dreamtime Stories of the Australian Aboriginal peoples, with their constructions of space and place, are also highly developed and complex multimedia networks that rely on navigation. In both of these systems, along with place and space, performance and participation are the means to relating to the narrative. The individual contributions to narrative creation that are part of these systems are based on participant agency. The potential empowerment granted with participation in the narratives suggests a resistance to what M. M. Bakhtin terms single voice, of monologic narrative discourse (Bakhtin 1984). In the global perspective, the recognition of narratives from indigenous (often marginal and silenced) cultures can be argued to have democratizing and inclusive effects for the global community. That these societies have witnessed long-term survival also supports their status as sustainable, and by implication, that these practices are passed on through their narrative traditions. By paying attention to such old stories, and in particular how they integrate place and space into their transmission, we can re-purpose vocabularies for what are often described as the ‘new media’ stories of the digital age. A direct relationship to place, through narrative, is proposed as one of the positive results of this attention to old stories in the new media. An awareness of the interconnectedness of elements in ecology, for example, is a further possibility from these narratives, which set both characters and places on equal footing.

Virtual Worlds and Indigenous Knowledge: learning to tell stories and make positive change across cultures

Presenting tomorrow morning at the Association of Internet Researcher 11th annual conference in Gothenberg, Sweden.

"Storyworlds: The New Transmedia Business Paradigm"

Jeff Gomez (Starlight Runner Entertainment), "Storyworlds: The New Transmedia Business Paradigm"

Avatar: Blindness in an Old New Vision

I witnessed the spectacle of Avatar in 3D on the weekend. It was a late night showing and the cinema was totally crowded. The audience applauded at the end, and I understand why. Visually, Cameron's film is an amazing piece of work. Nothing is spared in the optical extravaganza that fills the 162 minutes film. On the other hand, I found the narrative at times inconsistent and unoriginal. In Avatar we are witnessing a recounting of Dances with Wolves, told by J. J. Rousseau with a bible in his hand. The film can be excused for this, as the image of the forests of Pandora are what people have come to see. But it is the imaging of the film that actually drives so much of the narrative.

In a similar sense to a computer game being composed of its own narrative architecture, the visual components of Avatar are primary in how the story is conveyed. The stereoscopic cameras (pictured above) are used to place the viewer in the perspective of a witness, in regards to the narrative action of the film. Action sequences are not shot in panorama (although there are plenty of such shots in the film), but are composed by a series of point of view shots from within the action. What is the result in the reception of the narrative? I gained some idea when I stumbled upon the Avatar fan site www.naviblue.com;

"I've read on this thread and various other sources on the web about Avatar fans feeling heightened sense of mood changes along the lines of despair and depression from the realization that Pandora and all of it's inhabitants are not tangible. I have also read about fleeting thoughts of suicide, self induced coma, and prolonged sleep from members of this website and other websites as possible ways to physically and metaphysically connect with Pandora and its inhabitants".

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"I've had problems with depression for years, and the first time I saw Avatar didn't help. My entire reality was shattered, so to speak. there was such a wave of emotions flowing through me that I really didn't know what to feel. I simply had to see it again, which helped a bit. A little less shock and awe, but still some general depression with the reality of how much of a crap-hole this planet is".

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"There's something about the Na'vi that I just love to watch. They must have stuff that we Sky People do not..the connection with their world, animals and each other that I wish was possible to obtain".

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"I also plan to hand out ballot papers during the convention, but I will be giving them to everybody, including non-Avatar fans to ensure a fair referendum. The issue will be as follows:

Option A: The Na'vi remaining part of Avatar based fangroups (An autonomous tribe will not be formed) (the status quo)
Option B: The Na'vi becoming a self governing tribe according to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Option C: The Na'vi becoming a new ethnic group and community in hopes of "self-determination"

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I am astounded by the reactions of these (and many many more) people to the film. Especially when one thinks of the struggle by actual indigenous groups in the world (i.e. planet Earth) to survive in the present moment as distinct cultures. Consider a story such as that of anti-mining activist Dora “Alicia” Sorto Recinos, who was murdered last week in El Salvador, while carrying her two year-old child. Is anyone in the United States or Europe likely to form a tribe dedicated to the Environmental Committee of Cabañas? No, I doubt it. But the giant blue forest-dwellers of Pandora seem to have awoken an almost Noble Savage fantasy in the minds of many. The prospect of a stunning, green, far away world where apparent harmony with natural forces is what governs society is attractive to many people. The visual technologies of Avatar have succeeded in bringing the image of such a place into such a sharp focus that people are willing to believe that it is possible for it to exist.

"First of all I would like to say that everything on Pandora is 100% scientifically possible, yes even the floating mountains. but more to the point I would like to direct everyone's attention to these two articles about more or less the same thing: we may very well discover a planet a like Pandora within the next few years (i'm not sure how many few is supposed to be but lets be reasonable and say 10 years.) For all we know now, there could be a planet out there very similar to Pandora, all we need to do is discover it!

http://www.sidewaysnews.com/science-technology/avatars-pandora-possible-within-years
also
http://cs.astronomy.com/asycs/blogs/astronomy/2009/12/28/pandora-made-possible.aspx"

I would suggest that people who are looking for a deeper sense of meaning in their lives check out sites such as Intercontinental Cry, a blog that focuses on "the world's many indigenous struggles, and reading material focused on alternatives, movements, social issues, and related". Or the website Conversations with the Earth:

Conversations with the Earth is a collaboration between an international indigenous-led advocate for the rights of indigenous peoples Land Is Life, an expert in participatory video, InsightShare, and a Paris-based photographer, curator, and specialist in maintaining oral traditions, Nicolas Villaume, founder of Conversations du Monde. CWE also draws on contributions from a range of editorial sources, including Project Word, a media NGO that helps develop journalism articles on indigenous communities and by native writers.

A generally felt need for a more engaged sense of presence in relation to the biological processes of the planet is reflected in both the forums of Naviblue and in the enormous earnings of the film. In Avatar, we are presented with an idealized image of the Other, where any need to question the values of our late Capitalist, post-industrialized, globalized world are relieved by the Hollywood fantasy that it will 'all be right in the end'.

The POV created in Avatar places the experiencing of the narrative of the film in the sight of one sharing the struggle of the Na'vi. A struggle for what their savior, the ex-marine 'gone native' Jake Scully describes as "our land". The contradictions are many and the vision as old as it is new. The power of new forms of cinematography to present these old subjects in new skins is something we shall be seeing more of in the near future. Where they shall lead people is going to be interesting to watch. Where it has come from is not such a mystery:


A detail from Benjamin West's heroic, neoclassical history painting, The Death of General Wolfe (1771), depicting an idealized American Indian.

Charles Ess Tomorrow

Charles Ess at Århus Univeristy 'Global Convergences, Political Futures? Self, Community, and Ethics in Digital Mediatized Worlds'

Tomorrow I will be attending a seminar (and having lunch) with Prof. Charles Ess at HUMlab. While I have read Ess on new media ethics I have been looking further into his work and found something that almost excites me. He works with a concept termed 'relational self':

This takes us still further to the left – to the sense of self as relational or, in slightly different terms, “smeared out.” This is a sense of self that is characteristic of many cultures and peoples around the world, including those countries shaped by Confucian traditions, as well as indigenous peoples, e.g., in Africa (see Paterson 2007), North America, the polar peoples, etc. My friend and colleague Henry Rosemont, Jr., uses the metaphor of the onion vs. the peach. The atomistic self is something like the peach-pit that underlies an external body: while the external body undergoes change and decay – the peach-pit remains the same through time. Relationships with others for such a self are always extrinsic: even if all such relationships are removed, the peach-pit will continue to exist. By contrast, the relational self is constituted by its diverse relationships with others – e.g., friends, family, the larger community, etc. – with each relationship analogous to a layer in the onion. Such relationships are intrinsic to such a self: remove the relationships – peel away every layer of the onion – and there is nothing left.

The concept of the relational self is similar to what I have been thinking about for quite a few years as a result of studying Australian Aboriginal narrative systems. Traditional Aboriginal narratives cannot be classified as fiction or non-fiction, they organize society in such a total and integrated way that they defy all conceptions of narrative according to Western classifications. It was precisely this that I was thinking of when I wrote a long piece Narratives of Creation and Space: Pilgrimage, Aboriginal, and Digital:

To even speak about narrative in the context of Australian Aboriginal story systems is to misrepresent the roles of story in cultural contexts. The distinction between fiction and non-fiction cannot be successfully applied to Aboriginal story systems. The language based knowledge systems that are termed in English ‘Dreamtime’ were given the name by the British anthropologist Baldwin Spencer in 1896 in relation to what he understood of Aranda culture of the Central Australian desert (Silverman 2001). The term persists today and is now used by many Aboriginal people to describe how the “actualized transiency in the present, and the perduring life of the world is carried by ephemeral life- forms. All living things are held to have an interest in the life of living things with whom they are connected because their own life is dependant upon them. Care requires presence not absence….those who destroy their country destroy themselves” (Bird xvi). Over the enormous landmass of Australia very different Dreamtime law systems developed and I am speaking generally when I discuss aspects of them here. In every system however, the individual is bound within complex networks of relationships and responsibilities to the land area from which they come, context dependent family relations, the histories of both of these and their “actualized transiency in the present”. How these relationships develop through a person’s life is expressed in visual, spatial, linguistic and sonic arts. These arts assist my general exploration of Aboriginal language based media.

My hope is that an awareness of context-dependent, relational selves will draw human beings back from the moral precepts of bourgeois individualism, what Mikhail Bakhtin described as “the culture of essential and inescapable solitude”. Is it possible? This may be a question I ask Professor Ess tomorrow.

How do You Recognise the Nonlinear when you Meet It?

An article by Sherol Chen on the Expressive Intelligence Studio blog entitled Nonlinear Storytelling in Games: Deconstructing the Varieties of Nonlinear Experiences inspired some thoughts relating to my own research work in digital narrative. I begin with the words of Sherol Chen:

Narrative is the combination of story and discourse. I believe the distinction of story and discourse is quite novel and under-appreciated in the area of interactive storytelling. For the purposes of this discussion, I’d like to deconstruct the nonlinear in narrative to give deeper insight into what this relationship between story and discourse actually entails. The term nonlinear takes many meanings depending on context, which is a result of the complexity in the meaning of both story and discourse.

The last sentence I found particularly thought provoking. The relationship between context, story and discourse is used to define the potential qualities of the 'nonlinear', almost in the sense of a matryoshka doll, with one nested within the other and so on. Context is posited as a result of story and discourse working upon each other. To further focus this approach I would add the concept of response, as the X factor in a digital text, which allows narrative alternatives to not only move along in multiple directions (not necessarily forwards), but to also be interpreted in a variety of ways. The potentials for response that are encoded in a digital work of narrative rely on both the articulation and recognition of discourse structures (or, as I use in my thesis following the work of Kittler; as networks). Thus far I am totally with Chen. The problem I have with Nonlinear Storytelling in Games: Deconstructing the Varieties of Nonlinear Experiences is buying into the entire concept of the 'nonlinear'. The supposed tensions between the linear/nonlinear in narrative I see as a dead-end discussion (in ways similar to the ludologists/narratologists divisions in the digital studies of the late 90s and early 00s).

As Chen suggests in Nonlinear Storytelling in Games, the concept of a linear narrative as relevant to digital media has emerged out of a series of assumptions about the role of time, and I would argue to a lesser degree space, expressed primary via the medium of language. My use of language to express my ideas is still widely considered (despite the efforts of Roland Barthes et al.) relative in that what I say is mine and me. To have command over language and harness its properties in order to express myself is considered an important part of education and realizing my own potential.

Language in this sense is regarded as the product of an authorial process, be it attributed to a single person or a team. The reality in a narrative is understood as contingent upon the style/s developed within the authorial process. There is the suggestion that there is something original and unique regarding a particular work of narrative. The idea that the 'story' begins and ends at a certain point, that it relates to particular situation/s or 'discourses' from the (for examples) social, geopolitical or gendered world. This is proposed as the case with Facade, the work Chen gives as both an example of a linear - "Facade is clearly linear on the discourse-level"- and nonlinear - "Clearly, Facade was created with an extremely nonlinear gameplay in mind"- story. However, in order to understand Facade, and any other work of narrative (digital, enacted, written or recorded) one must be equipped with the technical, discursive and interpretive skills that are demanded by it as a text. These skills are the literacies we are watching evolve around us today.

In Nonlinear Storytelling in Games, statements such as "Stories that start at the beginning of time", and "human beings live linear existences", fail to clarify the representational and experiential aspects of narrative in digital works. Further examples of the infusion of what the digital work does and what can be interpreted from it include Chen's statements; "You enter the apartment, you leave the apartment, and your experience is not disrupted neither temporally nor are you ever separated from your initial perspective", and "The presentation is determined by the audience interaction". In the case of Facade the apartment should be understood as a narrative construction in itself and it is filled with discursive values and assumptions that must be subscribed to for the narrative to function, both as material and story. When it comes to this synaesthesiae area of narrative architectures I usually first refer to Henry Jenkins' Games Design as narrative Architecture as a good starting point.

The distinction between linear and nonlinear suggests a hierarchy, or at the very least a différance. The latter fuels the fires of speculation with endless discussions on the levels, terms, attributes, and forms of so called linear and nonlinear narratives. The former has a much more discursive implications. Narrative becomes a cultural construction and what is considered as narrative shuts out of the circle of knowledge production that which is deemed not. In a similar system to that which Reawyn Connell points out in Southern Theory, in regards to

Mainstream social science pictures the world as understood by the educated and affluent in Europe and North America. From Weber and Keynes to Friedman and Foucault, theorists from the global North dominate the imagination of social scientists, and the reading lists of students, all over the world. For most of modern history, the majority world has served social science only as a data mine.

In the classifying of narrative, such as non/fiction, non/linear, and diegesis/mimesis, an enormous amount of human expression is relegated to the status of objects. An example of this exclusion comes from how narrative itself is defined. The Wikipedia entry (despite its digital and inclusive reputation) privileges the same origins of narrative that have been in use in the European academy for the past 200 years;

Stories are of ancient origin, existing in ancient Egyptian, ancient Greek, Chinese and Indian culture.

The civil, sedentary nation-state origins of the story are maintained, privileging a form of narrative that excludes an enormous number of cultures and systems of knowledge. An example of such exclusion comes from my own homeland. While the stories of the many Aboriginal Australian cultures have been studied extensively by anthropologists, linguists, sociologists and religious scholars, it is most often divided into their parts according to the traditions of inquiry. An Aboriginal oral account of a place name, for example, has corresponding portions of its telling in body markings, landscapes, song, dance and painting. Knowledge of many of these features of a story often requires initiation and a defined status within the groups to which the story belongs. This trans-medial and highly social format is a whole, but in terms of academic discourse it remains divided along lines of classification that had their nearest origins in the 18th century of Europe. I believe such distinctions as linear and nonlinear are an extension of this hierarchical organizing of knowledge systems. To illustrate this point I quote from a translated Central Desert story from the Walpiri people of Australia;

"This dreaming that belongs to Yajarlu. There was a woman digging a big hole. It was a woman, digging, an old woman. Nearby there was a small child, crawling about. The woman emerged from the hole and she walked about nearby. The child was still crawling about, crawling about near her. Another woman arrived. She saw the child" (Yimikirli 39).

This is a complicated passage with much suggested but not stated in it, for example the relationship between the old woman and the young child not being maternal. The causality that usually attaches features of narrative to each other, in terms of space and time, are never really stated. As a result what could be termed the 'non/linear' nature of the narrative is played out in a spatial field featuring depth (the hole) but no edges, where characters move and events take place seemingly at random and repetitively. In the book format from which the narrative is re/presented, abstract and highly symbolic paintings are featured, which are the trans-medial portions of its overall manifestation. As well, dance and singing are aspects of its telling. The trans-medial configuration of what is tilted in the book The Travels of the Witi Poles make its inclusion in a library difficult in its original form or its construction as an internet mediated narrative extremely limited.

Digital media does move us closer to being able to present in an assemblage the many elements of such a story as The Travels of the Witi Poles, across various formats within a single telling. The barriers which define much of our present (preset) inquiries into such telling dissolve when faced with the ways such modes of expression articulate narrative truth. In the case of the Walpiri, narratives such as The Travels of the Witi Poles were/are survival manuals in the extreme conditions of the Tanami Desert. Such a function, along with defining personal identity of the keeper of such a story, renders the classifying system of present day narrative studies as marginal.

Many of the problems that arise in working with reality-defining narratives from indigenous societies can be seen to have resonances in digital story telling. The embodiment of texts through fan cultures, the participatory nature of computer games, the spatial and even topographic possibilities of Alternate Reality Games and GIS are a few of the examples of new media defining new realities. By continuing to solely use binary systems of logic based on selective examples in relation to the embodied and relational spectrum of representation and participation found in digital works, we deny ourselves the full potential of the media. We need to look more broadly towards other systems of telling that include cultures once considered antithetical to the grounding principles of the inquiry. By using other sources to inspire a more inclusive and integrated narrative environment I believe we can assist with overcoming some of the problems that face the world today. The realization that humanity is not separate from nature and the spaces we build and occupy are testament to this is one possible outcome of a revision of how narratives are created using digital tools.

I thank Sherol Chen for inspiring this rant.

Discourse and the Vampire Slayer

Buffy vs Edward: Twilight Remixed

"The author's design for a character is a design for discourse. Thus the author's discourse about a character is a discourse about discourse. It is orientated towards the hero as if toward a discourse and is therefore dialogically addressed to him [sic]. By the very construction of the novel [remix] the author speaks not about a character, but with him [sic]. M. M. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics p63.

Video Description
In this remixed narrative Edward Cullen from the Twilight Series meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer at Sunnydale High. It’s an example of transformative storytelling serving as a pro-feminist visual critique of Edward’s character and generally creepy behavior. Seen through Buffy’s eyes, some of the more sexist gender roles and patriarchal Hollywood themes embedded in the Twilight saga are exposed in hilarious ways. Ultimately this remix is about more than a decisive showdown between the slayer and the sparkly vampire. It also doubles as a metaphor for the ongoing battle between two opposing visions of gender roles in the 21ist century.

Conspiracy Brings Power Closer (as Narrative)

Yesterday a good friend told me about a film he saw on the net that made an impression on him. It is called The Obama Deception and it deals with:

The Obama phenomenon is a hoax carefully crafted by the captains of the New World Order. He is being pushed as savior in an attempt to con the American people into accepting global slavery.

Last night I watched some of it with this blog post in mind and a critical eye at the ready. My thoughts congealed around the idea that power for 99% of the population is as distant as the moon. Conspiracy (and I will explain what I mean by that) is one way of bringing the conception of power closer to the mundaneness of daily life. To explain how I came to this idea I go back to the Goombungee school bus in the hot summer of 1983. The Australian government had just changed and after 8 years of centre-right leadership the adults who could had just voted in a Labour government led by Robert (Bob) Hawke, then holder of the beer sculling world record, a yard glass - approximately 3 imperial pints or 1.7 litres - in eleven seconds.

On my school bus sat several teenagers from religious families. I remember one of these kids speaking at length about Hawke "being pushed as savior in an attempt to con the American Australian people into accepting global slavery" involving a world bank and Zionist plots. There was even a prophecy from Nostradamus involved in his explanation (something about "a man with the name of a wild bird in a land yet undiscovered coming to power"). We on the Goombungee bus looked out over the eucalyptus scrub and dry fields and felt somehow involved in the functions of power by being privy to this 'truth'. The machinery of power may have been impossibly distant from us there in that hot tin box on wheels, but we understood something that perhaps others did not. There was a conspiracy at work and we had come into contact with it through narrative.

Later in my life, in 1994 I attended a lecture at Sydney University by Noam Chomsky (who no doubt is part of the same conspiracy as Bob Hawke but we on the Goombungee bus did not get much exposure to the anarchist linguist so he was never in the story). I remember Chomsky touched on the idea of conspiracy theories in his presentation. He said that conspiracy theories are dependent on distance; if it is an enemy state it is not a conspiracy, it is intelligence (think Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, the famine that has been going on in North Korea for a decade and so on). If the theory under consideration is closer to 'home' and involves one's own government then we are talking conspiracy.

In the decade and a half since I saw Chomsky speak, power has drifted even further away from the masses in many lands. With jobs moving to the new industrial economies of the East and governments moving upwards into a level of global blocs (NAFTA, EU, ASEAN and so on) the average citizen can be forgiven for feeling there is more to the story of government than what they are being told. The concept of politic agency at the individual level is not strong and healthy at the moment in many nations. It is here that the conspiracy enters into the fabric of political narrative. Conspiracy, such as The Obama Deception brings power closer to people via narrative and thereby provides a sense of mythic agency in relation to politics.

The tragedy of media such as The Obama Deception is not the possible degrees of truth value that can be related to it as a text. Rather, that political agency is translated into complex narratives and enacted out along reactionary lines of behaviour as a part of the political process (it has had 2.5 million views on just one of its YouTube sites) I find very disturbing. The more time people spend putting together the pieces of The Obama Deception puzzle (even if it is just in their minds) the less time is being spent on actually doing something to participate in the democratic political process. Of course the people behind The Obama Deception would say that there is no democratic process today. That's the way they want it. The result of such a narrative as The Obama Deception and "the man with the name of a wild bird" from 1983 is a negation of what few democratic rights we have remaining.

Video Games for Teaching and Stories

Two particles from the spheres that are interesting. First Virtual Learning: 25 Best Sims and Games For the Classroom:

Video and computer games aren’t always associated with their educational value, but as virtual media grows and develops, educators are finding that games are a great way to get children engaged in learning while still allowing them to have fun in their classes. Not every game is well suited for the classroom, but there are loads out there that have something of value to teach, guide and grow the interest of kids both inside and outside of school.

and the [online] world waits for Spore, the next big thing from the creator of The Sims, Will Wright. An interesting analogy in connection with Spore has been made by the New York Post; "Spore is anticipated as much as James Joyce's Ulysses was in the 1900's." While this statement is inaccurate in many ways (think Katherine Mansfield's infamous reaction and this statement: “but Ulysses was a moral thunderstorm, with a universal world war and the noise of all its engines of destruction shocking through it." - The Irish Statesman 4 July 1925: 529), the correlation between a now canonical literary text and a massive simulation computer program indicates a discursive direction in the medium. Wright himself elaborates on the possibilities as he sees them in an article on Gamasutra:

"I do believe that games can be a form of artistic expression," Will Wright said, "a co-collaboration between player and designer. We have yet to prove we can do meaningful things with this form of expression, but I believe we are at the cusp of a Cambrian explosion of possibilities [referencing the geological era in which complex life flourished]. We are a couple years away from being respected as a form of expression, but it's not a battle we need to fight. We'll win anyway."

Wright betrays a technofile and essentialist position (marketing??) towards what has already been done with "this form of expression". It is, has and will happen Will. But not as a sudden "Cambrian explosion of possibilities " (which actually lasted over 100 million years).

New Hayles Book on the Horizon

Released 1st March 2008:

N. Katherine Hayles, Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary (ND Ward Phillips Lectures)

A visible presence for some two decades, electronic literature has already produced many works that deserve the rigorous scrutiny critics have long practiced with print literature. Only now, however, with Electronic Literature by N. Katherine Hayles, do we have the first systematic survey of the field and an analysis of its importance, breadth, and wide-ranging implications for literary study.
Hayles's book is designed to help electronic literature move into the classroom. Her systematic survey of the field addresses its major genres, the challenges it poses to traditional literary theory, and the complex and compelling issues at stake. She develops a theoretical framework for understanding how electronic literature both draws on the print tradition and requires new reading and interpretive strategies. Grounding her approach in the evolutionary dynamic between humans and technology, Hayles argues that neither the body nor the machine should be given absolute theoretical priority. Rather, she focuses on the interconnections between embodied writers and users and the intelligent machines that perform electronic texts.

Through close readings of important works, Hayles demonstrates that a new mode of narration is emerging that differs significantly from previous models. Key to her argument is the observation that almost all contemporary literature has its genesis as electronic files, so that print becomes a specific mode for electronic text rather than an entirely different medium. Hayles illustrates the implications of this condition with three contemporary novels that bear the mark of the digital.

Included with the book is a CD, The Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 1, containing sixty new and recent works of electronic literature with keyword index, authors' notes, and editorial headnotes. Representing multiple modalities of electronic writing--hypertext fiction, kinetic poetry, generative and combinatory forms, network writing, codework, 3D, narrative animations, installation pieces, and Flash poetry--the ELC 1 encompasses comparatively low-tech work alongside heavily coded pieces. Complementing the text and the CD-ROM is a website offering resources for teachers and students, including sample syllabi, original essays, author biographies, and useful links. Together, the three elements provide an exceptional pedagogical opportunity.

Ive ordered mine already........

Transform Your Life With Hasbro

This northern summer product placement, viral marketing and film special effects are going to be taken to a new level. I am talking Transformers and the film by Micheal Bay due for release in July (Steven Speilberg is executive producer). I have the feeling this is going to be huge. My 7 year old son worships at the alter of Optimus Prime and many of the adult males I work with recognise the words "More than meets the eye" at their mention (I did not until my son got a action figure last Christmas...who needs Christ when you have Optimus). Now the decks are being cleared for what will be a very distributed release program:

Transformers - with Spielberg reckoned by Hollywood observers to be very much the power behind the film - seems equipped for battle both at the box office and the aisles of Toys R Us. Last month, Hasbro revealed an entirely new line of movie-linked Transformers. And in an effort to make the consumer's world "more than meets the eye" (a longtime teaser for the toy line), it will have further spin-offs in stores at the start of June, such as the Optimus Prime Voice Changer Helmet, Optimus Prime Big Rig Blaster, and Starscream Barrel Roll Blaster. (The Guardian)

When you think about it, what could be more perfect for product promotion than a group of dynamic polymorphic mechanical robots who can take the form of potentially any mechanical device. So far the companies announced as on board for the Transformers juggernaut are Pepsi, Hasbro and General Motors. I am sure there will be more. It is rumoured that new devices featured in the Tranformers movie will be The Xbox 360 game console, iPod music player, and plasma televisions.

We are discussing whether our 7 year old will see the film on release. I must admit I have a soft spot for the original Transformers (I don't for Beast Wars). However seeing the film and navigating the aftermath of consumption are two different things. Its going to be a hectic summer.

A Million Penguins too Many?

Big Tony stretched his arm, yawned, and lazily flicked the channel from world news to a documentary on photography which aroused his interest only because of the scantily clad bathing models currently in front of the camera.

If you are wondering where this is going check out A Million Penguins a wiki novel project that was unveiled yesterday by publishing giant Penguin. This is the opening paragraph of chapter one as of midnight Friday 2nd February 2006. It may have changed by now. It is being presented in the terms of an experiment, but it could be easily called publicity.
I am not sure the term novel should be applied to a wiki that builds on a narrative network. It will be interesting to see if another term emerges along the way. According to the 'About' page for the project:

Can a collective create a believable fictional voice? How does a plot find any sort of coherent trajectory when different people have a different idea about how a story should end – or even begin? And, perhaps most importantly, can writers really leave their egos at the door? Typically, a writer will acknowledge in print the efforts of their book’s editor, copy editor and agent, since they each will have read the work in draft form. But such acknowledgments regularly include a disclaimer along these lines : “Any errors that remain are, of course, my own”.

Oh look, in the time I took to write/paste the above, the opening paragraph is now:

Big Tony stretched his arm and gave himself one final yank. He yawned, and lazily flicked the channel from world news to a documentary on photography which aroused his interest only because of the scantily clad bathing models currently in front of the camera.