{"id":797,"date":"2008-11-06T13:10:19","date_gmt":"2008-11-06T17:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/?p=797"},"modified":"2008-11-06T13:10:19","modified_gmt":"2008-11-06T17:10:19","slug":"the-unfinished-swan-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/2008\/11\/06\/the-unfinished-swan-effect\/","title":{"rendered":"The Unfinished Swan Effect"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently came across a clip of a videogame demo called The Unfinished Swan, a first person maze game where the player must navigate through levels of whitewashed walls by shooting black paintballs. (it\u2019s kind of hard to explain, but here\u2019s the link: <\/span>http:\/\/www.kottke.org\/08\/10\/the-unfinished-swan<\/span><\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>I thought that this was a pretty good analogy of what I\u2019ve felt like we\u2019ve been doing a lot of this semester; paintballing my way through a lot of these textual media pieces, not really sure what to do or where to go. And I think what I\u2019ve struggled with the most is having the patience to take the time to explore the different new media works, and giving them the amount of time necessary for each to be fully appreciated.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I think the main difficulty with most textual media pieces is that I don\u2019t know where to start. The rules to new media aren\u2019t set in stone the same way that they are for more conventional works of literature, such as a novel. When looking at a work of new media, if the question is: \u201cWhat is it about?\u201d the approach to the answer is much different then if it were asked about a novel. <\/span><\/p>\n

In a novel, the answer can be found by reading the text printed on the pages of the book. It\u2019s not necessarily a matter of novels\u2019 content being easier to decipher, but a challenging novel is still a novel (and the conventions of the novel will generally guide the reader on the path toward understanding). What is it about? \u2013I\u2019m not sure, but I know where to look, and what to look for.<\/span><\/p>\n

For a piece of new media, like the Bomar Gene\u2014where there are no set standards or rules\u2014the first challenge if figuring out how to find the answer (the actual finding of the answer does not come until after). The real difficulty lies not in the medium (its navigation, features, limitations, etc.), but not knowing the rules; what to look for, what to focus on. It\u2019s much easier to invest time with an aspect that will yield results (text on the pages of novels), then to take time exploring a completely new frontier. This is because there is a lot more risk involved; readers run the risk of investing time in a potentially fruitless effort. There is the fear that the \u201cwrong\u201d aspects will be focused on, and his or her time has been wasted. This is the same reason that some people feel so strongly opposed to modern art, and why critics exist in society. <\/span><\/p>\n

At the same time, this new frontier characteristic and the \u201cUnfinished Swan Effect\u201d add some of the appeal to pieces of new media. I think most would argue that part of the initial fun is figuring out the rules before figuring out the meaning, but how do the two balance each other out? If pieces of new media become \u201cconventionalized\u201d would they then lose an important part of their appeal? For instance, if someone wrote Cliff Notes on The Bomar Gene\u2014the meaning, how to find it, etc.\u2014how would it be changed? If the mystery behind it was diffused, would it become more appreciated or less? Above all, is thinking about new media in this way obsolete? Does any of this \u201cold media\u201d analysis still even apply? I really don\u2019t know.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently came across a clip of a videogame demo called The Unfinished Swan, a first person maze game where the player must navigate through levels of whitewashed walls by shooting black paintballs. (it\u2019s kind of hard to explain, but here\u2019s the link: http:\/\/www.kottke.org\/08\/10\/the-unfinished-swan). \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I thought that this was a pretty good analogy of … Continue reading The Unfinished Swan Effect<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=797"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":799,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797\/revisions\/799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}