In a talk that Henry Jenkins gave at Macon State College earlier this semester, he stated that technology is interactive, but participation is cultural. I interpret this to mean that computers interact with one another, and this is not a human-like interaction; this communication in itself is not inherently meaningful without interpretation — without a [...]
Archive | December, 2005
The Configuration of Ludology (Or, Technology and the Creative Artist Wrap Up, Part 4)
Simply, the ludologists are concerned with the game as game, primarily, before any other considerations. They criticize the narrativists for applying previous schemas to the study of what they consider to be a unique field, deserving of its own disciplinary typology. More to come…
Narrativism (Or, Technology and the Creative Artist Wrap Up, Part 3)
Taking their cue from Murray’s work, the narrativists see developing video games aligned with peotic and narrative, combining elements of existing artistic expressions in a way that has never been possible previously. Theirs is a hybrid approach that seeks to define a poetics of interactive cyberdrama that centers around a cultural expression of narrative, rather [...]
Janet Murray’s Holodeck (Or, Technology and the Creative Artist Wrap Up, Part 2)
For many, Janet Murray‘s Hamlet on the Holodeck represents the foundational text that defines cyberdrama and narrativism. Her seminal work theorizes a “universal fantasy machine” that the “half hacker, half bard” could use “to write stories that cannot be told in other ways” (15, 9). This experience, one that Murray likens to Star Trek‘s holodeck, [...]
Hey, What About Truth and Beauty? (Or, Technology and the Creative Artist Wrap Up, Part 1)
I began this semester by asking the question “what is art”? After a discussion that suggested art was anything from an escape to humanity’s finest achievement, we, perhaps artificially, narrowed our definition to state that art is always: critical, penetrating, challenging, engaging public: influential, inspiring, controversial historically positioned: technologically positioned/determined imaginative narrative mimetic: mirrors the [...]
