textual media

Jason Nelson’s “Game, Game, Game, and Again Game” utilizes some of the same aspects as his other work, “The Bomar Gene”. Both creations incorporate multiple different forms of media, generating an amalgamation that is puzzling both in appearance and in its context. With “The Bomar Gene”, viewers can only speculate as to what each “gene” means based on its presentation on the screen and the different elements contained within it. However, after watching the interview with Nelson, it seems that the genes can only truly be understood by him. Most of them are references to Nelson’s own childhood and family members, and upon hearing this I realized that my own speculations about what a few of the genes meant was – in truth- a load of crap. I was frustrated by this realization, and felt that I had been the butt of Nelson’s joke – but then again, so is everyone else who reads too much into his work. After watching the interview, “The Bomar Gene” transformed from a perplexing cipher to a critical commentary on its audience. I think, perhaps, in his effort to confuse us, Nelson also wanted to point out that maybe some art isn’t as sophisticated as some people think it is or should be. “Game, Game, Game, and Again Game”  similarly pokes fun at its audience. The more desperate we become to understand it, the more we play into Nelson’s hand. We can try to interpret the home movies that pop up occasionally, but only Nelson knows their significance (or maybe even satirical insignificance) in the piece. I think that Nelson is fascinated with altering the events of his life into seemingly non-sensical pieces of electronic media for his audience to attempt to dissect. 

Moving on from my own bitter frustration with Nelson’s methods, I think that “Game, Game, Game, and Again Game” is a hybrid of both the conventional and counter game that we discussed in class. It challenges the ideologies of both, sometimes fusing the opposing characteristics together. In terms of its image, “GGGAG” rejects transparency and favors the foregrounding of its construction. As a result, this adds a sort of messy aestheticism to the piece, while simultaneously providing the user with gameplay. The graphics may be poor in comparison to conventional games, but they are still functional (just under their own “rules”). Like counter games, “GGGAG” uses visual artifacts such as squiggly circles and hand drawn bombs. There is no representational modeling beyond the outlining of certain recognizable shapes like buildings, doors, and crosses. Also, “GGGAG” makes use of invented physics. There is no linear path to follow, instead, the user’s “character” moves up and down and sideways and backwards to get to his/her destination (the glowing door). Like conventional games, “GGGAG” employs interactivity. Depending on what visual artifact we come in contact with, the landscape of the game changes. Distracting text suddenly appears, random home movies begin to play, etc. I would argue that our relationship to these changes in the game is one of non-correspondence. Though the game relies on our interaction for it to move and progress, it doesn’t assist in our interpretation of it. In Super Mario Bros., when we hit a  block and a mushroom is produced we are “super-sized”. In contrast, the visual artifacts produced by our actions in “GGGAG” neither help nor hinder the playing of the game. They simply exist as modes of distraction from the assumed objective (get to the end). In this sense, “GGGAG” does display gamic action. There is an objective to reach the glowing door in each level, until we reach the final level and finish the game. However, its rejection of formal and conventional gameplay lends it the radical action of counter games. “GGGAG” calls attention to itself as a game, in effect critiquing our own definition of what constitutes as a “real” game – a complex mission? precise objective? impressive graphics? multiple levels? choice in direction and decisions of character? “GGGAG’s” interplay of the characteristics of both conventional and counter games brings us to this very question. Again, displaying Nelson’s work’s self-deprecating humor. In making fun of itself, it makes fun of the conventional genres to which we compare it.

I thought Arteroids was a great example of a work that teeters on the line of game and art.  It prompted some questions that I think are worth exploring:  Can a game be considered a piece of artwork?  What about game as literature?  That’s the question I keep coming back to.  I think it’s safe to say that Arteroids can be considered both game and art.  What’s art anyway?  If we just consider art to be something that’s visually appealing, Arteroids would definitely be considered art.  Even if we act more as players than readers, we have to admit that we are hypnotized by those words and phrases, which seem to twirl aimlessly in a never ending space.  

If we say that the function of art is to make some sort of commentary on a particular issue, Arteroids would still be considered art.  As Professor Sample pointed out in class, Arteroids illustrates the fragility of language.  It plays on some of the same ideas as Neil Hennessey’s JABBER: The Jabberwocky Engine.  If you think about it, these two works comment on the arbitrariness of the English language.  The phrases in Arteroids are free flowing.  This free movement symbolizes the looseness of words.  By this I mean that their meanings are very loose, as interpretations vary with each player or reader.  As you get more and more wrapped up in the gameplay, you start to notice that the words don’t mean very much.  You just want to destroy as many as you can with precision and accuracy.  The message comes with playing the game.  The fact that Arteroids comes in game form fits in with the theme.  In essence, Jim Andrews is trivializing the English language by making it into a game.  Andrews is saying that words don’t mean much at all.  Words are merely representations of concrete things.

I am intrigued by the idea of a work of art being based on the transcription of bird sounds into phonemes.  I love to listen to the different sounds birds make.  Even within a genus like gulls (Larus), there can be a wide variance of sounds produced by birds of different species.  In the summer, I live on Hatteras Island and witness this fact.  Bonaparte’s gulls make a “cherr” sound.   Ring-billed gulls call “hyah hyah.”  Herring gulls have a longer call that sounds like “ow ow ow keekeekee kyow kyow.”   Lesser black-backed gulls make the same sound but in a lower pitch.  Great black-backed gulls make a low “cowp cowp cowp” sound.  My favorites, laughing gulls, make a high pitched call that sounds like laughing.  In Birds Singing Other Birds’ Songs, humans voice the linguistic interpretations of bird sounds.  In a variety of creative ways, these sounds are merged with a corresponding visual image of a bird.  In each image, the analogous phonemes are represented.

When I first watched and listened to this piece, I was disappointed.  I have heard people mimic bird calls with accuracy, and that is what I was expecting.  Although the introduction stated otherwise, I still wanted the shape of each bird to accurately correspond to the sound it makes. But it seems that Marie Mencia had something else in mind.  Clearly, Mencia wanted the emphasis to be on the human voiced phonemes and morphemes not the accuracy of the birds, thus the difference between what I was expecting and what I experienced.  The piece is interesting and to some degree thought provoking.  I love nature and couldn’t help but think of other animal sounds that could be transcribed, like the sounds made by marine mammals.  Although it would be challenging to transcribe whistles, they could be scored like music.  The click is already a recognized phoneme.  The songs of whales and other marine mammals have been recorded and graphed.  Another idea would be to create a system of applying consonants and vowels (or other symbols) to points on the graph that would translate into a language code.  

For me, Birds Singing Other Birds’ Songs is a more enjoyable engagement than many of the other works we have explored. I appreciate the fact that Mencia assigns control of the experience to the user.  The ability to select the entrance and exit of the birds with a stop and start button allows each user to experience the piece in her own way.  For me, this empowerment circumvents the frustration and agitation that result from a bombardment of overstimulation that cannot be regulated or controlled.  True to nature, Mencia does not force her users into sensory overload.  She presents the work and politely invites us to participate.  Whether you choose to focus on just one or two birds at a time or invite a cacophony of sounds to enter your sky, Birds Singing Other Birds’ Songs is an enjoyable experience, like a pleasant day outside. 

Just in case anyone is interested, this link is to a page of recorded marine mammal sounds http://www.whoi.edu/science/B/people/kamaral/Sound/MammalHits.html

Since reading our last two assignments in Electronic Literature, I have become more aware of the many ways our contemporary life is interconnected with computer technology.  Hayles talks about that interconnectedness related to the fact that “all communication…is mediated through some kind of digital code.”   That is true, and, in reality, almost every facet of our lives is intertwined with digital code. My new computerized toaster oven has to be programmed in three steps before it will toast or bake.  Gone are the days of just pushing a button or turning a dial. Walking on campus yesterday, I observed the people around me.  Many people I passed were either talking on a phone or listening to an iPod.  Daily, we acquiesce in our coexistence with technology and plug ourselves in.  Although I am not dependent on a cell phone, I do depend on my laptop.  It is my nerve center.  This is where I store and access some of the most important information in my life. Two years ago, I learned how critical my personal computer “nerve center” is to my well-being.  One week before finals and with all of my lecture notes on my hard drive, a power surge damaged my desktop.  I could turn my computer on but could not boot up.  Like a Siamese twin, as my computer lay comatose, I was panic-stricken for my own life.  (The story ends well.  My chivalrous computer geek neighbor was more than happy to flex his techno muscles for me and gallantly retrieved the most important documents from my hard drive.)   The encroachment of technology in our lives is not limited to the machines we choose to touch and hold.  Technology permeates our existence.  Computer chips are embedded in everything from our cars to our pets.

So, it makes sense that our interconnectedness with technology would become reflected in our art.  As we have seen this semester, the way technology is expressed in art is as diverse as the people who create it.  The relationship to the Dada cultural movement has already been made.  And clearly, some of the works we have explored are more abstract while others are more realistic.  As we learned in ARTH 101, the world of art includes expressions that can range from a crucifix in a jar of the artist’s urine to the Mona Lisa.  Not all expressions appeal to everyone.   I find myself drawn to works of art that in some way relate to or express my own life.  My Boyfriend Came Back from the War has been my favorite so far.

Our recent explorations in class of the “Oulipoems” and the list of the some-thousand most frequently used words reminded me of the Dadaist movement of the early twentieth century and their emphasis on “non-sensical” art. The art of the Dadaists meant nothing, and everything at the same time. It was a response to the senselessness of World War I, and their seemingly “meaningless” art was designed to capture the irrational chaos that war projected on society. 

One of the techniques of the Dadaists was to use found objects in their work. Artists removed ubiquitous objects from their utilitarian context and transformed them so as to place them in an aesthetic light, in effect, modifying the public’s perception of these everyday “cultural artifacts”. The effect of “context” and “subjective perspective” on art is mirrored in the aforementioned media texts. If one reads the series of most frequently used words in the context of its statistics, the list simply appears to be just that – a long list of numerical statistics accompanied by words. However, if one views the list in the context of a piece of electronic literature, some of the various word associations that one discovers at random begin to make sense. This, of course, relies on how one interprets the information provided to them. 

This is a perfect example of Hayles’ theory on the relationship between the machine and the body that we just discussed in our second media inquiry (or at least how I interpreted this interface between mind and machine). The collective network of the machine provides the user with this list, but it is ultimately up to the mind of the viewer to make sense and find meaning in the information provided to them on the screen. Without this interaction, the list is (once again) just a list.

Electronic Literature, pp. 131-145, 155-157
Does anyone know what the author is trying to articulate here? On the first page of the reading, “This chapter elucidates further a framework in which digital literature can be understood as creating recursive feedback loops among embodied practice, tacit knowledge and explicit articulation.” A good point is mentioned on page 132—when you think about it, nearly all of human communication at least in modern societies is translated into a digital form, with the exception of face-to-face talk. On 135-136, it appears the recursive feedback loop in electronic literature is human to computer and computer to human interaction with the text that is displayed on the screen. The author’s two main points are given on p136, “verbal narratives are simultaneously conveyed and disrupted by code” and the second, “distributed cognition implies distributed agency.” Tachistoscope, from the reading is based on an experiment from the early 20th century; it tries to flash many images at once at the user and not being able to acquire meaning in each image— it is suggested that we still receive subliminal messages through such a process. The key aspect from the reading about Sundays in the Park (p145), it “brings to conscious attention the link between vocalization and linguistic richness.” On page 156, Stefan’s randomizing algorithm is noted for picking apart pieces of texts and creating a poem—unless the algorithm was designed to create that, a poem—wouldn’t human intervention still be required to see if the poem made sense to a human as artificial intelligence (AI) is not advanced enough yet to do this for us?

William Poundstone, Project for Tachistoscope (also on E-Lit CD)
The sprites around the middle-Start button-area are nice to help explain the concepts behind the work itself. While subliminally, I may be exposed to the items I cannot comprehend— between the music, changing colors of the expanding and contracting circle and later imagery makes the work a bit difficult to understand. However, in the reading it does note the analogy between certain images and what they are supposed to represent, so that was helpful somewhat when looking into this work. I thought the statistic in the Subliminal Con was interesting in that “Drink Coca-Cola” increased 18.1% and a similar ad for popcorn increased sales by 57.5%– this is interesting because in the presidential election four years ago when it flashed “Democrats” as “Rats” on the screen, that backfired on the republican base. Perhaps these ads work best when one cannot pause and watch the medium frame-by-frame?

Millie Niss and Martha Deed, Oulipoems (also on E-Lit CD)
In the beginning, it states that “oulipo” is created by a combination of math and poetry generated by rules or constraints. Is that the audio is supposed to represent—in the entry page? I appreciate the existence of an introduction in this piece as the explanations for subliminal messages in the last; it offers insight into how it works and what one should expect when interacting with a particular work. Overall the structure and outline of this work reminded me of The Bomar Gene in that there are separate doors one can walk through and in each door or selection, one is presented with a different work. Whether it is a game, matching or putting a paragraph together, it seemed highly reminiscent of The Bomar Gene. Just like the Bomar Gene, sometimes its best to turn the audio off to better-understand the work at hand.

At some point every day, for as long as I can remember, I’ve sat down on the keyboard and my fingers started moving. My father is a piano player, I’ve never been able to play, but I always think of the keyboard as my instrument. What he does through sound, I do through words. I was never talented at music. Or rather, I was never motivated enough to figure out if I had any talent. I hated practicing. I still do. I hate sitting in front of a music page, or a computer screen, and knowing that what I’m about to do isn’t perfect. I’ve never been comfortable with flaws in my own work. They offend me.

The five second drum loop that plays throughout “Bust Down the Doors” suggest chaos. The contrast between the loud beats and the softer, faster drums behind it create a sense of movement before the text can be seen on the screen. Once the text starts moving, the music matches it, and the work together to aid the movement that goes on throughout the story. Each piece of the story that appears on the screen tells a different portion of the story, so that when the text moves, the actual story and the music moves along with it.

By the time the first iterations of “Doors” plays through, the body and machine of the story are set. The story of “Doors” is its body, and that will never change. The machine of it is its delivery and mechanism. In this case, “Doors” uses the computer as a medium that allows us to perceive the story through sight and sound. The drums, the amount of time between each flicker of the screen, and the visual presentation of the words all stay the same in each iteration.

The face of the story, however, is different each time. In the first iteration, the person in the story is “you,” or the reader. This has the effect of making the face our face, the story our story, and it makes the text as a whole more relevant to us by doing so. By using the second person point of view, we become the ones who experience the story. And the characters in it are actually watching us move, cheering when we die. It effectively flips the common perception of a story on its head, making us become its characters and story, while making the story’s characters the ones to whom the story is told.

Each iteration of the story changes this face, or point of view. While the rest of the text stays the same, changing the face of the story completely changes its meaning. In two of its versions, the face of the story changes from “he” to “she,” and the different connotations that these two different points of view say much about our cultural and idiosyncratic perceptions of gender. All of the versions of the story point to the different implications that a point of view can convey. In one version, the point of view changes to the first person, and it’s interesting to see how much the reader relates to both.

By the time “Doors” comes to its end, the face becomes a distorted collage of each face that it had conveyed previously. Line by line, it switches points of view seemingly at random. Although the body of the story stays exactly the same as always, the distortion of its face makes the story unreadable in the short times that we have to read each line. We need to mentally adjust to the changing of the face much more than we would to a change in the actual body or music. In “Doors” we perceive a story through its face. The body and machine are simply mechanisms for a discussion of the transformational properties that point of view has on a story.

I remember pumping my legs as hard as could, the pedals giving me resistance as the tires worked their way through the soft dirt. I knew as I hit the jump that I didn’t have enough speed the clear the gap. I closed my eyes and just prepared for the inevitable impact that was sure to come. I felt my front tire hit the landing ramp and body being tossed over the handlebars. I turned my head slightly and felt my head smack into the now not so soft dirt. I laid there in the ground for minute feeling the pain building slowly through my body, each nerve beginning to be lit by flames. I then felt liquid running down my face. I can’t start to cry, I thought, people are watching. I felt a need to hold back these tears that were running down my face to prove I was strong. But they weren’t tears. The liquid was too thick and warm to be tears. I lifted my face up and rubbed my eyes. I looked at my hands and saw a thick paste of blood and dirt in my hands. The side of my head had a hit a rock and split my scalp open. I needed to stitches to stop the bleeding. To this day whenever I get my haircut there is a small part of my head that doesn’t grow hair. People usually poke fun because they think its do to a bad barber getting a little to close with the clippers. It’s always a nice conversation piece and a good reminder to always wear a helmet.

Electronic Literature:

The first few times I read this it was in relation to the second media investigation so I did not pay too much attention to Nippon itself but rather the context of the text itself. Having taken a course on Milton, on page 122, I found it extremely “copy-like” to that of the story of Adam and Eve. Eve looks in the lake and falls in love with herself and in that story it goes on for several additional “books.” It is interesting to see where an author has possibly gotten his or her ideas and puts it into a particular perspective.

Nippon:

Right off the bat I noticed something familiar that ties into YMCHI’s other works, the 10, NINE, 8 number count down; however in this instance some of the numbers are spelled as words where as in BUST DOWN THE DOORS! they are all numbers. Also in this piece, it counts all the way down to one where as in the Doors piece, it always stops at three, I am not sure what this signifies in the overall sense of both works but I think its worth noting.

The work itself is presented in dual languages, on the top, I would assume its Korean and English at the bottom, the two primary colors are white and red vs. the black and white in the Doors piece. In the initial “highlighting/inversion” there is also some green and black but it appears only briefly. The music is much more lively, almost like what you would hear at a dance or some sort of play. The red and white color evokes a different emotion, I cannot pinpoint it but it seems to go well with the text. Even though I cannot read the Korean, I must say some of the text seems to “dance” or “appear” to the beat of the musical notes in some instances. After a few moments, the synchronicity between the top and bottom is lost and if one could read both languages, it may become difficult to follow. For example, usually with subtitles in a movie it follows very closely to what is verbally said. However, having to follow two subtitles in separate languages may be cumbersome, one would assume that the same thing is being said in both languages but without knowing Korean, I cannot investigate this any further.

The story itself that it tells is very interesting, it seems like its about someone giving advice to a woman telling her to “sex things up a bit” and that she is the reason that a married man leaves his house. Then they share a cigarette and they get romantic at a dinner(?) table while others are watching. The text itself generally refreshes MUCH faster than the Doors piece and one must not take there eyes off the piece for a meer second or they may miss something. Overall, it seems like a romance between a married man and a mistress and the author is giving advice to the woman, I may be totally off base here but that is what it appears like to me. The final note I will mention is the ominous ZERO “0” in-place of all O’s in this and the Doors piece, what does that signify? Does it have meaning?

This is one hypertext that I thoroughly and truthfully enjoyed in the midst of many hypertexts which have evoked little, if any, emotional or insightful recognitions for me. It was so powerful and meaningful to me to read a woman that is so thoughtful about her body. It is interesting how she recounts specific memories about the parts of her body that I myself have experienced yet would have hardly have considered them as memories, or even experiences for that matter, until i read sections of her hypertext. I don’t think I ever even really thought about it as it happened, but as she tells the story of her arm hair standing up against the friction of the seats at school I can distinctly remember the yellowed crayola colored chairs of elementary school and the shocks the friction sent through my arm hairs.

I can see through her memories that there is a confidence in her being and the way she views herself that is near impossible to find in a woman. when she talks about the hair on her legs she tells the audience how she liked the hair on her legs and didn’t care about her friends reprimanding looks at her hairy legs. As a girl approaching or even beginning adolensence, she portrays a confidence, nonchalance, and sense of free spirit that practically no girl raised in a public school would exemplify. I remember as a lifeguard, just through being finished with puberty, seeing little girls running around with golden fuzz on their legs and thinking how cute it was and why I had become so mortified at something so, well just cute.

This woman shares experiences that almost all women, and most men can relate to having experienced. She writes about these body parts and memories in a unique and thoughtful way. Her eloquent writing skills portray a sense of cherished-ness about such simple aspects, beautifying things such as sexual exploration, feet, hair, etc, that society teaches us to feel ashamed or embarrassed about.

The format of the hypertext adds to this sense of unique ness and cherish towards these memories and body parts. She lends each aspect of her body its own individual section with its own thoughts and memories. She connects them by allowing her audience to click on key words that lead to other memories. This adds a sense of unity to the piece and relates the tone of each individual page, to her work as a whole.

My hair used to be so long that I could sit on it. My mother’s hair was just as long as mine–it was something that we shared. Hers was blonde, and she called mine “chestnut.” She washed hers everyday and combed it into a beautiful, straight, and flowing cascade down her back. For days, I would go without brushing my own hair, and it would weave itself into a red and gold highlighted mess, which I refused to take care of. My mother and au pair would insist that I brush it, but I resisted, kicking and letting tears spill down my cheeks whenever someone tried to drag a brush through the matted knots of my hair.

But, when I was four years old, my grandmother, a no-nonsense and distinctly pragmatic and practical woman, insisted that my hair finally be cut. My mother and I were visiting her in my grandparents’ house in Faribault, Minnesota. It was snowing outside. She had, time after time, insisted upon brushing my hair whenever she had visited our family in D.C. I sat silently, crying, knowing I could not kick and scream with her the way I did with my mother or au pair. I was to be silent, compliant–obedient to her tugging and pulling away at the roots of my hair, making me feel as though my scalp was on fire. Tears streamed silently down my cheeks onto my pajama shirt.

We drove through the snow to the stark, undecorated hair salon where I would have the curly tendrils of my hair cut into a bob. Afterwards, my hair would grow straight, with only minor variations that could be misconstrued as curls or unruly waves. Its beauty was suspended–perhaps even gone.

The color of the walls in the salon was an ugly mustard. I remember quietly hating that color–but saying nothing. I smiled as we piled back into my grandmother’s station wagon, pretending that I did not want to cry, sob, collapse into an Ophelian heap.

To me, my hair is an essential part of my being. Besides that one time when my grandmother insisted that it be cut, my hair has always been long;an extension of myself. I hide behind it, I toy with it, I curl my fingers around it to be coy, I absently distract myself by playing with it…it is as though it is a living and breathing part of my body, just like a lung or an artery. It identifies me…my long hair is sacred, it is romantic, it is high-maintenance, it is beautiful, it is luxurious, it is girlish.

I wonder if there will be a day when I cut it all off, like some women I have known who once had long hair. “I feel free now, like I can’t hide,” a friend of mine said to me, after cutting her shoulder-length hair and getting a pixie cut. I could not, for the life of me, believe or understand what she had said to me. I only understood the separation between us in that single moment.