I came across this video on Boing Boing. Very cool stuff.

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/20/3d-scanning-with-a-p.html

What is so nifty about this, is that it is a markerless system that works in realtime (as opposed to this other software that a commenter pointed out: http://www.strata.com/products/strata_3d_cx_suite/strata_foto_3d_cx/ ). That… and that this is made by a student.

It’s fun to think of all the uses this kind of software technology could be put towards…

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/magazine/15videogames-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=magazine

An interesting article for our week on gaming.

I feel like some of the people quoted deal with extremes a bit too much (Rohrer’s declaration that games are not meant for narrative, for example). But it is still a really interesting area worth thinking about.

(WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE IN CLIP)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BAM9fgV-ts

For the uninitiated- this is an extremely popular show using characters from the game Halo with voices added.

http://www.tobi.com/
-click on the “Enter Dressing Room” option on the “Try it On” section

Through the use of a webcam you can try on clothes without leaving your house.

Presentation on Espen Aarseth’s “Ergodic Literature”: an Etymological Intervention

Espen Aarseth’s “Ergodic Literature” is the introductory essay to his book Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature (1997), in which he describes the distinctive forms of engagement that are required by ergodic literature, those texts whose consumption entails “nontrivial effort” (1), i.e., more than mere “eye movement and the periodic or arbitrary turning of pages” (2). While his essay serves as a preliminary overview of the contents of his book, that he proposes will provide a functional and pragmatic analysis of ergodic literature, Aarseth introduces some terms that require explication before diving in further. Early on in this essay Aarseth acknowledges that his terminology is a “potential source of confusion” (2) but for him, ‘nonlinear’ was the “particularly problematic word” (ibid). I am referring instead to the neologism “cybertext” (although it has been contested that Aarseth coined it), the transposition of “ergodic” from scientific rhetoric to literary analysis, as well as his revitalization of arcane phrases like “neoteric” and “extranoematic.” As these terms are clearly essential to understanding what Aarseth means by ‘ergodic literature,’ this summary aims to function as a glossary.

Neoteric
Aarseth identifies both cybertext and ergodic as ‘neoteric’ terms in the first sentence of his essay. Neoteric refers to a type of ancient poetry (beginning in Greece, later spreading to Rome) that is perceived as a reaction to the structure and aesthetics of traditional Homeric epic poetry and the politics of the poet’s duty to celebrate the country’s traditional values and uphold the standards of the literary endeavor. The term neoteric is Greek for “new” or “modern” (to be more precise, in Greek it is a comparative adjective—”newer” or “rather new”). I think Aarseth purposely uses this term for a few reasons, and chiefly: to avoid the charge of fetishizing the new or isolating ‘ergodic literature’ as an emergent field of study; to illustrate his point that however novel the terms may be, this subversion of the standard assumptions of literature has a long history that dates back to ancient Greece; to accentuate the element of performativity in this form of textuality.

Extranoematic
This is another term Aarseth appropriates from ancient Greece, but its more contemporary use lies with the phenomenologist Husserl, who distinguishes the noematic as “meanings,” or that which is thought, but contains within it the possibilities that it might be something other than what it is perceived to be. In terms of ergodic literature, we could refer to the extranoematic aspect of participation; or the extranoematic input, activity or engagement of the user. Katherine Hayles has described this characteristic of cybertext theory as ‘a theoretical space of semiotic possibilities.’

Cybertext
“Cybertext” has become a relatively familiar term in the twelve years since this text was originally published, with the caveat that it is generally, seemingly mistakenly, conflated with hyperfiction, hypertext, and otherwise used as a catchall to describe all forms of “computer-driven electronic textuality” (1) such as computer-based interactive fictions, games, and poetry. While it does envelop these forms, cybertext is not restricted to electronic literature, poetry, games, MUDs, etc.; it also includes printed, or paper-based texts. Aarseth makes a point addressing this as a source of potential confusion for his readers: “a number of the cybertexts we shall discuss are indeed books—printed, bound, and sold in the most traditional fashion” (9).

As Aarseth explains, cybertext is a concept he borrowed and repurposed from Norbert Weiner’s foundational work in cybernetics, which developed out of his study of guided missile technology during WWII. Weiner focused in particular on how sophisticated electronics used the feedback principle—as when a missile changes its flight in response to its current position and direction—and he noticed that this principle is also a key feature of life forms from the simplest plants to the most complex animals, which change their actions in response to their environment. Weiner developed this concept into the field of cybernetics, concerning the combination of man and electronics, which he first published in his book Cybernetics (1948) [fn 1].

Like its cyber-predecessor, according to Aarseth, cybertext “must contain some kind of information feedback loop” (19) and he notes that the concept of cybertext focuses on the mechanical organization of the text.

For Aarseth, ‘text’ defines a wide range of phenomena—from short poems to large databases, and as the prefix ‘cyber’ indicates: the text itself is seen as a machine “for the production of a variety of expression” (3) and a mechanical device for the production and consumption of verbal signs (21). He distinguishes two other elements that complete a cybertext: a material medium containing a collection of words and the human operator, or user of the text. According to Aarseth, another important feature that differentiates cybertext from more traditional forms is the role of the reader. The cybertext reader has agency, that is, some degree of control over the narrative, but this comes with some degree of risk of failure. He says, “The cybertext reader is a player, a gambler; the cybertext is a game-world or world-game; it is possible to explore, get lost, and discover secret paths in these texts, not metaphorically, but through the topological structures of the textual machinery” (4). Here Aarseth makes a provocative point that there is an essential difference between games and narratives, and cybertext, albeit with some overlap, belongs to the former category. This represented a significant break from previous paradigms tendencies towards medium and genre specificity.

Aarseth makes a point of stating that there is nothing new about this mode of writing; what is new is the theoretical paradigm this study pioneers: a pragmatic, ‘function-oriented perspective’ that importantly is also pluralistic so as to “avoid the traps of technological determinism and let us see the technology as an ongoing process of, rather than a cause of, human expression” (19). He says, “Cybertext… is not a ‘new,’ ‘revolutionary’ form of text with capabilities only made possible through the invention of the digital computer. Neither is it a radical break with old-fashioned textuality, although it would be easy to make it appear so. Cybertext is a perspective on all the forms of textuality, a way to expand the scope of literary studies to include phenomena that today are perceived as outside of, or marginalized by, the field of literature—or even in opposition to it, for… purely extraneous reasons” (18). He explicitly states that he uses cybertext to “describe a broad textual media category… [it] is a perspective I used to describe and explore the communicational strategies of dynamic texts” (5).

It is also important to note that Aarseth does not consider “cybertext” as a literary genre, but rather it is a process that engages readers to make ‘nontrivial’ efforts and interventions into the text. His concept of cybertext envisions the ‘user’ of the text “as a more integrated figure than even reader-response theorists [e.g., Stanley Fish] would claim” (1).

Ergodic
As Aarseth explains, the term ergodic derives from the Greek words ergon and hodos, meaning “work” and “path.” The reader must physically exert themselves in order to trace a route through the cybertext; “nontrivial effort” is required to produce a semiotic sequence (1). The user thus performs in a significant “extranoematic” sense, a term Aarseth employs to emphasize that the reader’s activity does not take place “all in his head.”

Aarseth points out something we have explored in various texts in this class: “writing has always been a spatial activity” (9) and he elaborates that “it is reasonable to assume that ergodic textuality has been practiced as long as linear writing” (ibid.). Nevertheless, Aarseth claims to have had disputes with literary theorists and critics on his concepts of nonlinearity and inaccessibility specific to cybertexts. He details this in his short exploration into the paradigm of the labyrinth, offering Borges’ forking path and Penelope Reed Doob’s unicursal and multicursal labyrinthine structures as not just metaphors for the narrative, but the literal spatial configuration of the cybertext.

Aarseth’s meditation on ‘nonlinearity’ and the ‘inaccessibility’ it engenders is functionally where a text is most ergodic, and thus is also source of the text’s ‘alterity’ and potential subversiveness. [*To be explored further where time and space permit.]

Some examples that Aarseth gives of ergodic literature include: ancient Egyptian religious wall inscriptions (c. 3200 BC); the I Ching (c. 50 BC-AD 10); Appolinaire’s concrete poetry or “calligrammes” (c. 1913-1916); Ayn Rand’s play Night of January 16th (1936); Raymond Queneau’s Cent Mille Milliards de Poemes (1961); as well as the ‘textual technology’ offered by computers since the mid-twentieth century (e.g., databases, AI, text generators, hypertext, hyperfiction, etc.).

This preliminary selection gives us some compelling ideas about what kinds of textualities Aarseth will be exploring in his book, but it also contains equally compelling absences, which although he addresses by saying his book doesn’t seek to “catalogue every known instance of ergodicity” (9), will serve as my questions to the class:

1) What explains the absence of the concept “interactivity” (or at least “transactivity”) in Aarseth’s introduction—weren’t they the buzzwords of the late-90s in the context of cultural analyses of digital aesthetic forms? [The concept of ‘interaction’ is only mentioned once by Aarseth in this introduction, as part of a short critique of the ideological forces surrounding new technologies and the literatures they enable (14).] Perhaps this is limited to the introduction, but it seems like an Oulipo-style exercise in restraint to not discuss the concept of interactivity (especially considering when this text was published) in the context of developing a framework for ergodic literature. [p.s. Forget Baudrillard too?]

2) Aarseth describes a MUD (multi-user dungeon) as a text “without either beginning or end, an endless labyrinthine plateau of textual bliss for the community that builds it” (2) and I couldn’t help but think immediately of Julian Dibbell’s text “A Rape in Cyberspace” which describes quite the opposite experience, or the violent denouement of that textual jouissance a MUD offers to its participants. Aarseth explains that in its early years (late 1980s), the MUD was seen as “a new social reality” (13) in which “users came to regard themselves as participants in a community, rather than a game, with communication rather than competition as the main social activity” (ibid.). The MUD is characterized by its anonymous readership and writership, which is why the claim of participatory intimacy has always, to me, seemed to be stretched a bit thin. Nevertheless, the MUD’s ‘anonymous community’ and ‘textual intimacy’ have become the dominant paradigms for the majority of our social networking. Perhaps this is what Aarseth refers to as “the cybernetic intercourse between the various part(icipant)s in the textual machine” (22)?

Links
Some OULIPO:
http://soluslocus.blogspot.com/2008/07/ouvroir-de-littrature-potentiell.html

Jane As Text:
http://www.blipstation.com/content/articles/JaneAsText.html

More Locus Solus:
http://outoftheboxintermedia.org/

Cyber-Queneau:
http://www.uni-mannheim.de/users/bibsplit/nink/test/sonnets.html

Catullus poem:
http://www.vroma.org/~hwalker/VRomaCatullus/006x.html

Affectual project (Pain):
http://www.panoplie.org/ecart/annie/separa_1200_eng.html

J. Dibbell’s A Rape in Cyberspace (Or TINYSOCIETY, and How to Make One)
http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle.html

Footnotes

1 http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_wiener.htm

http://www.shapeshift.tv/about

Carolyn Handler Miller opens her article with a description of three narratives, any of which could be the pitch for the latest Hollywood blockbuster. These narratives, the reader is surprised to learn, however, are all the basis for works of interactive cinema, which requires active participation to “assist” in unfolding the story. These works appear on either a DVD or CD-ROM format, formats that allow some sort of participant intervention, and share common threads that are liken to video games (although Miller attempts to avoid this obvious correlation) or choose your adventure novels:

* They are story driven
* They have dimensional characters
* Though they may have some game-like features, narrative plays an essential role
* Choices made by the users profoundly affect how the story is experienced (pg 334)

Miller continues to praise interactive cinema as a direct descendant of cinema, specifically beloved narrative-based cinema, but questions why “relatively little work is currently being done for either large-screen or small-screen interactive cinema,” but is confident in the work that is being produced.
The article pinpoints certain companies that have embraced interactive cinema, dominated by a local Toronto company, Immersion Studios. However, large-scale immersive works are mostly produced by academic institutions and government funded works, where “interactive storytellers can get the necessary support to work in their field” (334). Although I can’t say I participate in the following works, I am well aware of the porn industry taking advantage of interactive cinema for its means, where choices, I would imagine, revolve around choosing a sexual partner(s), positions, and even a climax option. Ultimately, Miller laments that the majority of interactive cinema is geared towards three different purposes: for pure entertainment, for training, or for education (335).
Miller begins her exploration of interactive cinema with a description of “large-screen interactive cinemas” and the companies that champion(ed) them, namely, Interfilm, whose films were ultimately commercially disastrous. Nevertheless, like the Phoenix that rises from the ashes, the previously mentioned, Immersion Studios, took up where Interfilm left off, and has produced a number of works, mainly interactive educational pieces for prestigious institutions such as The Smithsonian, and the Mystic Aquarium. Although the interactive film’s tackle scientific themes, Miller argues they are “edutainment” – once again cinema has found a way to trick our kids into learning!
Miller spends a large portion of her piece explaining the user’s experience with the interactive films, involving buttons in arm rests, allowing audiences to choose at various points in the film, but stresses, that the point of interactive cinema is for the participant to feel as though they are an active member of the narrative – that their decisions matter. Furthermore, some works involve group-based activity, meaning that the decisions of the group will affect how the narrative progresses, which Miller compares to MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Game), such as World of Warcraft, a fantastical multiplayer game that has been known to consume participants to achieve new levels of experience that may or may not exist, develop its own currency, been parodied on Southpark, and has broken up at least two relationships in my personal sphere of acquaintances. However, the form, content, and mediums of the works Miller describes differ from conventional MMOGs because of their educational or narrative agendas.
While Miller was initially successful in distancing Interactive Cinema from gaming, this fell apart when Miller quotes Stacy Spiegel, CEO of Immersion Studios, saying that “audiences respond strongly to gameplay and his company is thus steadily increasing the amount of gaming in their productions” (337). Which, if the films are meant to be educational, one must question whether or not the participant is actually learning something, or is just caught up in the competition. Miller goes on to explain how a participant can “become deeply involved with the stories, to the point of shedding tears if their action are unsuccessful” (337).

Angry German Gamer Kid

This, to me, is no different from any game out there be it Monopoly or the Olympics, where the goal is to win, not to learn.
Under the section of “A Sample Large-Screen Experience,” Miller describes the educational goal or Vital Space “to give an inside look at the major human body systems” (337). The last paragraph of this short section, continuing the description of “cinema,” seems to depart from this goal, and proceeds to describe the more interesting aspect of the “film,” its gaming content: “like a first-person shooter” (338). I again have a hard time understanding how anyone is supposed to learn about major human body systems while their immersed, shooting down parasitic intruders.
An inarguable positive aspect of Immersive Cinema is that, as Brian Katz of Immersion Studios points out, the works have attracted visitors to the educational institutions they were made for. Interestingly, the younger participants typically had a more positive experience with the works because of a developed comfortableness with multiple screens and multitasking, as opposed to older participants who are unsure of where to look, which poses some challenges to the creators of these works. Moreover, while the goal of these works is educational, the gaming components do make more active participants, allowing them to pay closer attention to the slower, potentially more pedagogical moments. However, these works may also need to be approached from an epistemological point of view if their mode of pedagogy becomes increasingly popular.
For the remainder of the article, Miller shifts her focus to small-screen interactive cinemas, largely comprised of works that are viewed on a CD or DVD-ROM, which allows for increased participation and interactivity; a user is able to select different aspects of a story, affecting its narrative trajectory. Furthermore, the increased opportunity for multiple, simultaneous narratives with small-screen interactive allows these works to take on more “probing sophisticated psychological themes, somewhat like the films one can find in art house movie theaters.” I believe this is where immersive cinema is most likely to benefit and gain in popularity, as this cinema is generally accepted to be more challenging, creative and innovative, before being ultimately swallowed up by the mainstream, allowing for more commercial funding for these works.
Lastly, immersive cinema used as a learning tool was utilized by Boeing in a film titled Transition to Management, which was a hyperstory designed to “help new managers deal with tough issues that had no black and white answers, particularly in matters involving communication” (334). This goal of these learning immersive cinemas is reminiscent of NASA Flight Simulators, where astronauts learn their skill in the safety of a pod, which simulates some of the problems they may encounter on real missions; why not adapt this idea to fit the growing experience-lacking, white collar workforce, in a negative outcome-free zone?
Although the multiple modes of immersive cinema seem exciting, Miller is disappointed that the progress of future or different works have slowed down to a crawl due to unsuccessful business models as well as an unsatisfactory attempt to meld cinematic storytelling and interactivity.

Does interactive cinema, in its various modes, affect the way viewers participate in narrative films, change they way we learn, or is a viable way to achieve experience-based development?

What are some ideas to meld cinematic storytelling and interactivity in a sustainable way?

I was listening to CBC Spark today and heard about Esquire’s December 2009 AR Issue. Robert Downey Jr. shares the cover with a fiducial! There is a demo on their website – it’s pretty cool.
http://www.esquire.com/the-side/augmented-reality

http://www.esquire.com/the-side/augmented-reality

*** Although this reading is not hyperlinked on the coursepack page, it can be accessed through a posting from Caitlin from October 27, 2009.****

Steve Dixon’s approach to theorizing cinematic interactivity is systematically categorized and historicized. He stresses from the onset that “interactivity” is not a new idea in any art form; that there has always been a negotiation between “the beholder and the beheld” (559). Yet, digital interactivity, in its varied modules, provides new possibilities for the user (and/or viewer) to more personally define, effect and even change the outcome of the art piece. Dixon stresses that these new experiences allow a user/viewer to be “directly addressed” and thereby to “respond meaningfully.” For the first time, in the advent of this digital interactive technology, the performer is aligned with the “us” – the spectators – who are at once positioned as active users (561).

Dixon traces the outcome of this new interactive relationship as a retort to our television-era “‘of non-response – of irresponsibility’ where television’s very presence is a form of Orwellian social-control” as it adopts a non-conversational, passive spectator form (561). Interactive digital art works, according to the numerous examples Dixon presents throughout his article, stress subjective agency that allow for a connective conversation with the mass media not possible with prior technological forms, such as television or traditional cinema. Dixon presents us with Weibel and Dinkla’s poetic definition of interactivity (a floating work of art ) as a ‘connective’ state – “a web of influences that are continually reorganized by all participants” (560-61, italics added).

The emphasis on Dixon’s (and Weibel and Dinkla’s) ideas of interactivity is fluidity: these are continually shifting pieces of art, without predetermined outcomes, that place a limited about of responsibility on the user. I do stress the word limited, though, because as Dixon illustrates throughout his article, many of the pieces he cites are performing a controlled environment of interactivity. Dixon very clearly states that this is because “users only want a modest level of freedom” (564). So, when he presents us with an early example of cinematic interactivity such as Lorna, by Lynn Hershman (http://www.lynnhershman.com/investigations/voyeurism/lorna/lorna.html), what we notice is not necessarily an unleashing of user/viewer control, but rather, as Dinkla notes: “The simultaneity of active and passive roles in one person – controlling and being controlled – becomes clear right at the beginning … Paradoxically, they (the viewers/visitors) are asked to free Lorna from her plight using precisely the media which increases her fears (568).”

This quotation refers to precisely how many (if not, all) of the pieces Dixon cites are “performing” interactivity. In their controlled environments of interactivity, they are highlighting the process, the act, of interactivity lacking from traditional television and cinema. Much like Dinkla, I would argue that these interactive pieces refer to the process of spectatorship as limited in their self-reflexive mode. Of course, these pieces are controlled: they are authored and programmed, but in the spaces of interactivity they provide, they are allowing the viewer/user to imagine a space of spectatorship which is less limited, less controlled, and more fluid.

After introducing us to Augusto Boal’s (who just recently passed this May) theories of the Theatre of the Oppressed, Dixon proceeds to align Boal’s concern with participatory theatre ethics with digital interactivity ethics. Dixon presents us with 4 qualitative categories to organize and understand different types and levels of interactivity present in various digital artworks. He stresses that the 4 categories are not meant to assess quantitative hierarchies among the various pieces, but rather to assist him in the untangling process of understanding the systems and depths by which the user interacts with each piece.

For Dixon, this is a very important categorical process as it frames the proceeding methodological assessment of the interactive works. My initial question is whether or not he succeeds in his categorization? Did you find these 4 categories useful in understanding their interactive potential? I notice that he does not provide a definitive breakdown of each category until page 583. He defines them in saying: “navigation (the course the user takes), participation (user’s helping to bring to life the environment’s sensory features), conversation (a dialogue between the world and the computer) or collaboration (the user and computer creating art together).” Why would Dixon place such a clear definitive breakdown of these categories so late into the article?

A prevailing theme in the article is the success and failures of certain examples of interactive cinema. This binary translates into many of the arguments and examples Dixon places forward: commercial movies vs. artistic examples of interactivity; yes or no questions in specific moments of cinematic interactivity, etc. If we are asked to understand interactive cinema solely in binaries, how can we simultaneously understand it as an exercise in exposition? Perhaps, if we move away from binaries and understand all of these pieces and their layouts through more complex formulas, we will become closer to really capitalizing on the potentiality of thinking about interactive cinema. As such, I do believe certain examples Dixon brought forth such as Telesymphony (http://www.flong.com/projects/telesymphony/) and Touch Cinema did provide a “successful” environment in which to perform interactivity. Rather than relying on the binaries of yes/no interactivity, these pieces create an interesting immersive and fluid environment meant to expose certain viewing limitations we do not always think about as traditional media spectators.

Further Questions:

1) The earlier examples of interactive cinema Dixon cites (from the 1970-80s) seem to be more about exposing the form of traditional media/cinema, rather than about the novelty of the “interactive cinema” (578), which many of the newer examples seem to be relying on. What can we take from this idea? What does it inform us about the nature and potential of storytelling from an interactive perspective?

2) There is a lot of emphasis throughout Dixon’s article placed on the crowd vs. individual cinematic interactivity (another binary, but I think, as useful one). Tender Loving Care (574-577) seems not to work because it is geared towards an individual (male???) user, while The Consensual Fantasy Engine (579) appears successful because its smart use of democratic vote “empowered the audience to become highly active and interactive with one another” (579). Does the greatest potential of interactive cinema lie in crowd-based participation (and I cite again examples such as Telesymphony and Touch Cinema)?

3) Hitchcock’s Rear Window is referenced numerous times throughout this article. Why is a film about the pleasure of voyeurism cited so often in an article about “performing interactivity?” I think there is an important link here between discussing the form of interactive performance as an exposition of the nature of traditional forms of media. What do you think?

Since we are getting closer to our seminar on “machinima/game + cinema convergence,” I would like to draw your attention to the fact that video games are taken really seriously in some countries, where they are even considered as a “sport.” The World Cyber Games 2009 in Chengdu, China, is having its grand finals today in a variety of disciplines with 700 computer “athletes” from 65 nations competing for a total prize money of $ 2.7 million! If you are interested in reading more, please follow the link: http://www.wcg.com/6th/main.asp
At any rate, have a great weekend!