DIKULT 103: DIGITAL GENRES General theories and introduction Lecture 2 Jan 21, 2016 Scot Rettberg, Professor of Digital Culture

Considering Old Media / New Media Notes from Jessica Pressman’s article in Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media

Marshall McLuhan “We look at the present through the rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.”

Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin on Remediation “What is new about the new media comes from the particular ways in which they refashion older media and the ways in which older media refashion themselves to answer the challenges of new media.” * Katherine Hayles suggests “intermediation” instead to suggest recursive nature of the feedback loop.

Cybertext

Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature Espen Aarseth, 1997.

The concept of cybertext focuses on the mechanical organization of the text, by positing the intricacies of the medium as an integral part of the literary exchange. In ergodic literature, nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text. Aarseth, Espen. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. JHU Press, 1997. Image: Scott Rettberg

Ergodic Text

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. Aarseth, Espen. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. JHU Press, 1997. Image: Scott Rettberg

I Ching as Cybertext

Raymond Queneau, Cent Mille Milliards de Poèmes

Adventure (1976) by Will Crowther and Don Woods

indicates, the text is seen as a machine-not metaphorically but as As the cyber prefix indicates, the text is seen as a machine-not metaphorically but as a mechanical device for the production and consumption of verbal signs. Aarseth, Espen. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. JHU Press, 1997. Image: Scott Rettberg

It is useful to distinguish between strings as they appear to readers and strings as they exist in the text, since these may not always be the same. For want of better terms, I call the former scriptons and the latter textons. Aarseth, Espen. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. JHU Press, 1997. Image: Scott Rettberg

Cybertext is the wide range of possible textualities seen as a typology of machines, as various kinds of literary communication systems where the functional differences among the mechanical parts play a defining role in determining the aesthetic process. Each type of text can be positioned in this multidimensional field according to its functional capabilities. Aarseth, Espen. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. JHU Press, 1997. Image: Scott Rettberg

Components of Aarseth’s Typology Dynamics Determinability Transiency Perspective Access Linking User Functions

Notes from Lev Manovich’s “Database as Symbolic Form” Database vs. Narrative? Notes from Lev Manovich’s “Database as Symbolic Form”

Many new media objects do not tell stories; they don't have beginning or end; in fact, they don't have any development, thematically, formally or otherwise which would organize their elements into a sequence. Instead, they are collections of individual items, where every item has the same significance as any other.

The open nature of the Web as medium (Web pages are computer files which can always be edited) means that the Web sites never have to be complete; and they rarely are. The sites always grow. New links are being added to what is already there. It is as easy to add new elements to the end of list as it is to insert them anywhere in it. All this further contributes to the anti-narrative logic of the Web. Image: Calit2

If new elements are being added over time, the result is a collection, not a story. Image: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtbzVuDqSas

The computerization of culture involves the projection of these two fundamental parts of computer software — and of the computer's unique ontology — onto the cultural sphere. If CD-ROMs and Web databases are cultural manifestations of one half of this ontology — data structures, then computer games are manifestations of the second half — algorithms.

in games where the game play departs from following an algorithm, the player is still engaged with an algorithm, albeit in another way: she is discovering the algorithm of the game itself. in a first person shooter, such as "Quake," the player may eventually notice that under such and such condition the enemies will appear from the left, i.e. she will literally reconstruct a part of the algorithm responsible for the game play.

As a cultural form, database represents the world as a list of items and it refuses to order this list. In contrast, a narrative creates a cause-and-effect trajectory of seemingly unordered items (events). Therefore, database and narrative are natural enemies. Note: James Joyce did not say this.

... perhaps we can arrive at new kinds of narrative by focusing our attention on how narrative and database can work together. How can a narrative take into account the fact that its elements are organised in a database? How can our new abilities to store vast amounts of data, to automatically classify, index, link, search and instantly retrieve it lead to new kinds of narratives? Image: Calit2

Platform Notes from Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost’s article in Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media

The term platform is used in digital media and textuality to describe the material and formal construction of a system that enables developers to write applications and users to run them. A true computational platform may be specialized in certain ways, but will be capable of general purpose computation. Image: Scott Rettberg

Understanding the qualities of different media and formats has been essential to both the practice and the study of the arts. Platform studies extends these sorts of insights into digital art, literature, and media, by considering the importance of a work’s platform. Image: Scott Rettberg

The creator of a computational work must take into account the hardware and/or software features of that platform in conceiving, planning, structuring and executing the creative work. Likewise, the user of a computational work must have access to the platform in question in able to operate it. Image: GDC 2011

The particular features of a platform constrain and enable the development of software while also influencing how it is accessed—who is allowed to run it, and how users interact with software in physical space. The appearance that is characteristic of particular game platforms can, fo instance, influence the aesthetics of future games… Image: Scott Rettberg

Five Levels of Platform Analysis Reception / Operation Interface Form / Function Code Platform