I decided to experience Hegirascope and Pax in a very stodgy, un-postmodern way: I read the instructions first. <\/p>\n
I read the introduction to Hegirascope. I marked the index page as the text told me to. Then I clicked "begin". After a few minutes, I gave up trying to come up with some erudite opinions on it, and just noticed how I felt. Sometimes I wanted control, and sometimes I didn’t. At times, I let the model take me where it wanted me to go, and at times, I steered myself. What I realized after I was "finished" was that no two people could really play either of the models the same way. No two people would make the same choices at all times. So, each time a person played, a creation was born. The user changed the game, and the game changed the user. Each time, something unique was created. <\/p>\n
I think that Poster touches on this in his article, "The Mode of Information and Postmodernity". In talking about TV ads, he writes: "The viewer is the absent hero or heroine of the ad. The viewer is solicited to displace him or herself into the ad and become one with the meanings associated with the product" (62). It’s not an exact parallel, but it reminded me of playing Hegirascope and Pax – the user adds him\/herself, the model adds itself to the user, and somehow something new, something separate, is created. <\/p>\n
Although the models are not meant to be narrative (as Stuart Moultroup himself points out in Pax), I did come away with the sense that I went on a "journey", as one might experience when reading a novel. I felt that there was absence as presence – because, when a user begins the models, what we don’t know is bigger than what we do know. The user slowly chips away at the information, making something out of fragments. Perhaps it is a bit like making one’s own "dream-dump", or mash-up, or some such. <\/p>\n
Playing the models also made me think about choices. There seemed to be an infinite number of choices in the two models – you could choose to go to another screen in Hegirascope, or choose to interact with another character in Pax. Or you could choose not to choose. I’m not sure what this all has to do with postmodernism, but I think I still like narratives, though. When I read something, or do something, I have decided to give up my control and let the author lead me. Plus, I think I still like reading\/experiencing things from beginning to end – I still prefer the journey that way. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I decided to experience Hegirascope and Pax in a very stodgy, un-postmodern way: I read the instructions first. I read the introduction to Hegirascope. I marked the index page as the text told me to. Then I clicked "begin". After a few minutes, I gave up trying to come up with some erudite opinions on … Continue reading The art of control<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}