the design of virtual environments- the use of spatiality
posted by Katherine Parrish on 1/9/2001 12:52:46 PM
It may be that all human beings have the same perception of space at the biological level of perception. But certainly
every society uses its space differently, both technologically and artistically.
J David Bolter 1986 Turing's Man p80
posted by Katherine Parrish on 1/9/2001 12:50:24 PM
from: prototype for an online shareable video environment.
posted by Katherine Parrish on 11/22/2000 06:42:49 PM
martylogy , book 7
posted by Katherine Parrish on 10/5/2000 07:42:34 AM
What is essential in Nichol's attempt to remove himself as
author/ity from the text is his repeated claim that the poem is
unplotted, unplanned. The poem takes on a life of its own -- it
becomes form -- living form, and eventually, "the author is
omitted by his structure" (Bersani, 39): "There is some larger
mediation that seems obvious," Nichol writes. "An inference or
moral perhaps. I only know the poem unfolds in front of me, [...]
more in control than me. It's not that the poem has a mind of its
own but that poetry is its own mind, a particular state you come
to, achieve" ("You Too, Nicky," Bk 7). And, as the poet
recognizes, the real magic of poetry is "partly syntax, partly
mystery"; mystery is a constant presence despite what the poet
himself intended. The text of pleasure is an indispensable
structural component of (the text of) bliss, its prerequisite,
and is formed, in part, by a certain way of reading -- a poetics
of reading; as Nichol puts it, it is "an attitude of reading,"
something "you come to, achieve." Reading as a creative act, at
this level, undermines conventional readerly practices;
multivalency is a fact of bliss: "sure connectives gone/ [...]
you no longer count on/ reference/ poetry's/ its own form of
obscurity/ [...] the problem is/ how to read it." The distinction
between pleasure and bliss, the consistency of self and its loss,
is pronounced and kept intact in Book 7. The gaming or play which
erupts between the two causes "jouissance" -- the "source-re/ the
mystery of poetry/ that i am caught up in/ carried out on/ the
word/ of God/ of mouth/ of honour" (St Anzas V) -- '[Caught] up
in/ carried out on, be-/ yond.'
TOWARDS A POETICS OF JOUISSANCE
by Carl Peters
http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/ezines/witz/witz_4.1.html
posted by Katherine Parrish on 10/5/2000 07:36:59 AM
shannon, quoated in kay
posted by Katherine Parrish on 10/4/2000 06:13:59 PM
The Rockefeller patrons were not so enthusiastic. Weaver considered Cybernetics a "profound,
stimulating, and baffling book," the latter because the interrelationships it postulated remained
"largely in Professor Wiener's own remarkable head"; "as long as there are persons who can write
books like this," Weaver countered, "I will not lose my respect for central nervous systems, nor be
prepared to substitute, for them, machines." 70 After an "unsatisfactory conversation" with Wiener,
Robert Morison learned that, following the enormous success of Cybernetics, various publishers had
approached Wiener about writing a popular version. He hoped Wiener would drop the project; the
hurried popularized treatment of "the vexed subject of communication" was likely to draw much
criticism, he felt. 71
Kay, p44
posted by Katherine Parrish on 10/4/2000 06:02:50 PM
I suspect that a large amount of an animal or plant is redundant because it has to take
some trouble to get accurately reproduced, and there is a lot of noise around. A
mutation seems to be a bit of noise which gets incorporated into a message. If I could
see heredity in terms of message and noise I could get somewhere. 59
Haldane, as quoted in Kay, p. 42
posted by Katherine Parrish on 10/4/2000 06:00:06 PM
rosenberg
Consider the case of poems generated algorithmically, such as a work by Jean Pierre Balpe [4]. Formally, each poem has an appearance identical to a poem that might have been written "by hand"; because the algorithm is inaccessible, the only way to determine the aesthetic characteristics of the algorithm is by repeatedly sampling the poems. In this case we are somewhat removed from hypertext as it is usually construed: once the poems are generated there is no interactivity to them at all. But it would be a mistake to say there is no interactivity involved whatsoever in this work: it is the user who decides how many poems to generate, i.e. when to stop.
posted by Katherine Parrish on 9/28/2000 08:52:17 AM
rosenburg
Should the source code for literary cybertext be an aesthetic object? [13] gives a striking example of a cybertext where the algorithm is itself a poem. Such works are currently the exception.
posted by Katherine Parrish on 9/28/2000 08:51:16 AM
rosenberg
The master/slave analysis of the user/algorithm relationship is similar to but not quite the same thing as Aarseth's discussion of determinacy [2]. A user interface device could trigger random behavior under "control" of the user but without predictable outcome (e.g. Judy Malloy's Its name was Penelope [31]), and conversely an algorithmic text could be completely determinate yet leave the user in the role of slave to the algorithm as master.
IDENTITY OF THE ALGORITHM
posted by Katherine Parrish on 9/28/2000 08:51:01 AM
a random function in a narrative would relieve the reader of the need to make a conscious decision about where to go next. The act of making those ergodic choices when they are open to the user's control jolts one out of the experience of the narrative, calls attention to the fourth wall, as alienation techniques in drama. If "immersiveness' is a desirable quality in narrative, and Murray says it is, then could a random function not serve as a tool to help the reader yield some of the control that the author has been able to yield?
Yet, in poetry, where the random function is used more frequently, I don't go looking for an immersive experience. I am much more aware of the fact that I am reading a poem.
posted by Katherine Parrish on 9/28/2000 08:16:17 AM
so here we have a narrative, presented in random form, and it reads like poetry.
There is that superstitious sense of allowing fate to determine which line appears..
is that it? you give u control? control is such a bug bear for hypertext writers & I'm not usre I want to get into it. BUt it does seem to me that in allowing a random element, you truly yield control- but not to the reader- the reader must also yield control.
posted by Katherine Parrish on 9/28/2000 07:50:15 AM
So, last night, at the LinguaMoo chat, Janet Murray reacted rather violently, when I tentatively offered that randomness might be a feature of digital narrative.
I had been thinking a lot about randomness, because of how it is presented in Hartman's Virtual Muse- as a tool- as something that huamns are quite incapable of producing- as a foil againts which to posit our theories of meaning and coincidence-
through Hartman, I had become quite warm to the thought of randomness. Hence, I was quite taken aback when Murray quite literraly shouted at me in the Moo chat that Randomness was NOT part of the design of digital narrative. ewwww.. evil, bad randomness. That, as far as I can recall, randomness signified a movement away from order, and that digital narrative embraced order- a greater complexity of order to be sure, but order nonetheless.
Okay. I grant you that. Multi-linear does not mean chaos. We've stopped calling it non-linear- recognizing that this is not possible to experience in a text- for as soon as we make choices, we fix them in a line. But does randomness mean the death of order? and what is so sacred about this order that we must shout to defend it?
Can poetry better embrace randomness? is this a narrative thing, this reaction against randomness?
Thank you Ms. Murray, for giving me something to shape my presentation.- to give it order.
posted by Katherine Parrish on 9/28/2000 07:30:13 AM
http://www.chbooks.com/articles/sheard_echoes_without_saying.html
posted by Katherine Parrish on 9/25/2000 09:21:56 AM
Virtual Muse- Charles O. Hartman
Hartman echoes an idea i found in Wiezenbaum, and Papert.
These people do not use computers to do their thinking for them. Rather, they use computers as tools to help them understand:
"the computer was a way of exploring what I knew about Music.." hartman
posted by Katherine Parrish on 9/25/2000 06:25:48 AM