LUDOLOGY MEETS NARRATOLOGY: Similitude and differences between (video)games and narrative
"Literary theory and narratology have been helpful to understand cybertexts and videogames. Aristotelian Poetics [Laurel, 1993], Russian formalism [Porush and Hivner, ?], and poststructuralism [Landow, 1992] are some of the different perspectives that have been used to study the subject.
Some authors see cybertexts and videogames as a new form of or as an expansion of traditional narrative or drama. The fact is that these computer programs share many elements with stories: characters, chained actions, endings, settings.
However, there is another dimension that has been usually almost ignored when studying this kind of computer software: to analyze them as games.
The problems of using a 'game' perspective are many. Basically, traditional games have always had less academic status than other objects, like narrative. And because of this, game formalist studies are fragmented through different disciplines, and not very well developed.
In this paper we will propose to explore videogames and cybertexts as games. Our intention is not to replace the narratologic approach, but to complement it. We want to better understand what is the relationship with narrative and videogames; their similarities and differences."
(Gonzalo Frasca, 1999)
Frasca, Gonzalo (1999) 'Ludology Meets Narratology. Similitude and Differences between (Video)games and Narrative'. Originally published in Finnish in Parnasso 1999: 3, 365–71.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
e-flux: an international visual art network
"Established in January 1999 in New York, e-flux is an international network which reaches more than 90,000 visual art professionals on a daily basis through its website, e-mail list and special projects. Its news digest - e-flux announcements - distributes information on some of the world's most important contemporary art exhibitions, publications and symposia.
The daily digest is put together in cooperation with nearly two thousand leading international museums, art centers, foundations, galleries, biennials and art journals. Our focused and selective approach to the information we choose to distribute has been rewarded by an exceptionally high degree of attention and responsiveness from our readers."
(e-flux)
Fig.1 "Pussy Riot" performing on top of Lobnoye Mesto stone platform on Red Square in Moscow. Photograph: Anna Artemeva/AFP/Getty Images.
Fig.2 Sally Mann "Candy Cigarette" 1989. Immediate Family. New York: Aperture, 1992.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
UK Imagineering Foundation: stimulating the imagination of young designers
"In 1999 a group of engineers in the Midlands [UK region] who were concerned at the rapidly increasing skills shortage in engineering, developed the concept of Imagineering. 'A new initiative, designed to introduce 8-16 year olds to the fascinating world of engineering and manufacturing through fun, hands-on personal experience, targets the engineers of the future at a young age, develops and holds their interest and hopefully, encourages them to consider engineering as a future career.'"
(Imagineering Foundation, UK)
Fig.1 "One young 'imagineer' constructs a working model that he can then programme using simple control technology at the Imagineering Jaguar Land Rover Education Business Partnership Centre, at Gaydon Warwickshire." [http://www.spaghettigazetti.com/2011/11/imagineering-welcomes-new-queen.html#!/2011/11/imagineering-welcomes-new-queen.html]
2). The Imagineering Timeline
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
An interactive system defines a virtual space
"An interactive system defines a virtual space, whether the system’s interface provides access to the inhospitable planet of Stroggos or the Microsoft Windows desktop. Users of both these systems interact with a place, one created by a computer and in which users and computational agents carry out their individual and collective activities. The intuitive and often-discussed benefit of a well-designed interface metaphor is that it allows users to carry over conventions from their 'real' experience when performing tasks within the interface world.
Another key and often unarticulated value of an interface arises from the interface’s mimetic quality. While mimesis is often discussed by narrative theorists as a contrast to diegesis, distinguishing the concepts of showing versus telling (Aristotle), my emphasis here is to distinguish between an artifact that is intended to be an imitation of something, but is not really that thing and an artifact that is intended to be mistaken as that thing. An example of the former case would be a film of a fictional account of the D-Day landing on the beaches of Normandy. An example of the later might be a virtual reality system displaying photo-realistic graphical images of a physical space. D-Days stories like The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan are, in some ways, imitations, and so are more mimetic than VR systems whose design is intended to '...produce synthetic images visually and measurably indistinguishable from real world images.' (Greenberg 1999)(pg. 45)."
(R. Michael Young, 1999)
Greenberg, D. P. 1999. 'A framework for realistic image synthesis'. Communications of the ACM 42(8):45-53.
1). R. Michael Young (1999). 'Notes on the Use of Plan Structures in the Creation of Interactive Plot', Papers from the 1999 Fall Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Symposium
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Trinidad Cuba, Folkloric Ballet
"Music fills every corner of this culturally rich town. In an empty courtyard on weekday mornings the Trinidad Folkloric Ballet moves to Afro-Cuban rhythms, preparing their repertoire for audiences at home and abroad. 'Some of our dance traditions are similar to those in other parts of Cuba, but others are specific to here,' says Gisela Zerquera Calderón, the group's director. 'We think it's important to keep them alive and show them to the world'"
Fig.1 "Trinidad, Cuba, Folkloric Ballet", from "Cuba's Colonial Treasure," October 1999, National Geographic magazine
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
