The Phantom of Liberty: humorous critique of bourgeois conventions
"Luis Buñuel's The Phantom of Liberty was quickly dismissed upon its release in 1974. Not only did it have to contend with the lingering success of 1972's similarly themed but significantly less abstract The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, but it was quickly followed by the dreamlike, bi–polar romantic entanglement of the director's last film, That Obscure Object of Desire. Like Discreet Charm, the plot–free Phantom of Liberty is a patchwork of comedic sketches and sight gags through which Buñuel ravages a complacent European culture and the various sexual hang–ups and historical and cultural disconnects of its inhabitants. This heady, almost off–putting masterwork isn't particularly easy to decipher (maybe we aren't meant to), which is why it's best to approach it as a literal comedy of manners.
Films structured around daisy chains of dysfunction are a dime a dozen; most, though, are as tiresomely long–winded as they are content with their own strained circularity. This isn't the case with Phantom of Liberty, which begins with a shot of Goya's 1808 masterpiece 'The Third of May.' The painting depicts Napoleon's army executing a group of faceless Spaniards, and via a reenactment of this struggle, Buñuel depicts how one of Napoleon's captains tries to defile the monument of Doña Elvira only to be smacked on the head by the moving arm of the statue of the woman's husband. (He later intends to sleep with the woman's corpse, and when he opens her coffin, he's amazed by how her beauty has been preserved.) It's the first of many sight gags in the film, each and every one as startling as they are perversely funny. All these moments are possessed by a sense of shocked wonderment and discovery, and they all more or less evoke fragile pasts and characters trying to reconcile their historical detachments."
(Ed Gonzalez, 13 September 2003, Slant Magazine)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
A Game Bible is not a Game Design Document
"Some people confuse a game bible with a GDD [game design document]. Don't make this mistake. A show bible is a term taken from television production. The show bible's emphasis is on the rules of the world and the backgrounds and relationships of the characters. This is an important document to create, especially if information about your world and characters is going to be shared with other individuals (like those working on marketing materials such as websites, comic book adaptations, and merchandising) but remember that the game bible has nothing to do with gameplay. That's what the GDD is for. ...
A GDD is first and foremost about gameplay. How the character interacts with the world rather than relates to it; a subtle difference, but an important difference nonetheless. I find bibles important, especially when communicating your game's universe to other interested parties, but it really should be done after you have started to flesh out your GDD. "
(Scott Rogers, pp.72–75, 2010)
Rogers, S. (2010). "Level Up!: The Guide to Great Video Game Design", John Wiley & Sons.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Confiscation Cabinets: an exhibition of confiscated childhood objects
"Artist Guy Tarrant's display cabinets show artefacts gleaned from 150 different London primary and secondary schools over three decades. These objects include homemade games, keepsakes, cult toys, peculiar adornments, weapons and other forbidden objects which characterise the flotsam and jetsam of contemporary school children.
Since qualifying as a teacher, Guy Tarrant has investigated pupil interaction, play and resistant behaviour. The objects in the cabinets highlight mischievous and distracted behaviour played out in the controlled school setting where children spend much of their time. These confiscated items are evidence of the pupils' playful and impulsive activities and how they may reject or evade rules."
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
How much of a language is silent? What does it look like when you take the silence out? Can we use code as a tool to answer these questions?
"silenc is a tangible visualization of an interpretation of silent letters within Danish, English and French.
One of the hardest parts about language learning is pronunciation; the less phonetic the alphabet, the harder it is to correctly say the words. A common peculiarity amongst many Western languages is the silent letter. A silent letter is a letter that appears in a particular word, but does not correspond to any sound in the word's pronunciation.
A selection of works by Hans Christian Andersen is used as a common denominator for these 'translations'. All silent letters are set in red text. When viewed with a red light filter, these letters disappear, leaving only the pronounced text.
silenc is based on the concept of the find–and–replace command. This function is applied to a body of text using a database of rules. The silenc database is constructed from hundreds of rules and exceptions composed from known guidelines for 'un'pronunciation. Processing code marks up the silent letters and GREP commands format the text.
silenc is visualized in different ways. In one form of a book, silent letters are marked up in red yet remain in their original position. In another iteration, silent letters are separated from the pronounced text and exhibited on their own pages in the back of the book, the prevalence of silent letters is clearly evident."
(Momo Miyazaki, Manas Karambelkar and Kenneth Aleksander Robertsen)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
The Gestalt Principles
"Gestalt is a psychology term which means 'unified whole'. It refers to theories of visual perception developed by German psychologists in the 1920s. These theories attempt to describe how people tend to organize visual elements into groups or unified wholes when certain principles are applied."
(Spokane Falls Community College)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
