Paul Czege explains that he aimed for My Life with Master to be an engine for story creation rather than just another variation on the traditional role-playing game system.
The source is the essay-review on www.electronicbookreview.com written by Paul Czege.
"Telling stories about your experiences is a process of selecting, organizing, and presenting a relevant subset of the superset of all possible information you could include in the story."
"I began to play, widely, regularly, and experimentally, mostly free and self-published games. And from this I began to understand how powerful role-playing experiences that produce story with less noise could be delivered by game rules that consciously mediate play as an endeavor of collaborative authorship."
All quotes were directly pulled out of the essay.
This digital artwork by Amira Hanafi was commissioned by the Centre for Applied Human Rights at the University of York, as part of the Navigating Risk, Managing Security, and Receiving Support research project.
It was made in response to research conducted in five countries (Colombia, Egypt, Indonesia, Kenya, and Mexico), where researchers spoke with human rights defenders around issues of security, wellbeing, and perceptions of ‘human rights defenders’ in their countries.
Reading through these transcribed and anonymized interviews, I was struck by the range and depth of emotions expressed. The speakers’ experiences resonated with me in their resemblance to the emotions I feel as a practicing artist in Egypt. This website translates my reading of these interviews into visual patterns, through a system of classifying sentences by emotions expressed and evoked.
The title of this work (we are fragmented) is taken from the words of one of the human rights defenders who participated in the research.
After reading through the interviews that were shared with me, I created a classification system to coincide with the range of emotions I read in the text. I based my classification system on a few popular classification systems. It contains a set of 6 parent emotions, each with 6 subcategories, for a total of 36 classifications.
Reading the interviews again, I recorded my emotional experience by classifying sentences to which I had an emotional reaction, or in which the speaker explicitly expressed an emotion. It was a highly subjective exercise. Ultimately, this website offers personal maps of my reading of the research material, processed through language and emotion.
Alongside my visual interpretation of the research, you can directly access the source material for each classification on this site. Click on any colored circle, and you will see the direct quote from the individual defender on which that classification is based. I hope for this work to give an alternate way of reading through the research shared with me by Juliana Mensah and Alice Nah.
Mind the gap between digital journalism and eletronic literature. In the digital age, how to write about the search for love? Using fiction or non fiction? The question is that a new epistolary literature is being written in cell phones, e-mails, apps and dating sites. How different is it in comparison with the old love letters people used to write to their soulmates? In a mix of netnography, journalism and digital storytelling, me and other 25 brazilian researchers infiltrated ourselves into this universe for the last five years. The idea was not to publish a tradicional print work for newspapers or a linear story. We created avatars, made hiperlinked articles describing each site or app we visited and also wrote field journals about our experience. It is an experience of multimedia storytelling whose original question, the search of a soulmate using the internet to extend our chances in the virtual world, work as a metaphor for the journalism chances to find unprecedented paths exploring new narrative strategies in digital media. It also highlingts a change in the reader's position, who doesn't want to wait anymore to watch the development of the stories by the authors and want to find his own path, make new relationships or join new social groups. And, with this, construct new stories.
‘Lure’ is a poem composed in 360 degrees for and about the virtual reality of the Oculus Rift. In ‘Lure’ the problem concerning the phenomenon seduction is expressed. The immersive experience is shaped into a journey, which has a forceful character. A lovable female voice subjects the attention of the spectator to its own regime and drags it into a sensual experience until it slowly turns into something more sinister. In the end there is one escape left: true reality.
(Source: lure-vr.nl)
Lokroep is een multimediaal 360 graden virtual reality gedicht speciaal gemaakt voor de Oculus Rift. In nauwe samenwerking met dichter Micha Hamel ontwierp visueel kunstenaar Demian Albers een driedimensionale omgeving die een poëtische uitweiding is van de op de hoofdtelefoon klinkende tekst. In deze vijf minuten durende ‘onderdompeling’, worden taal en beeld op een speelse manier onder elkaars invloedssferen gebracht, met elkaar gefronteerd dan wel met elkaar uitgewisseld. Met deze theatraliserende operaties in het digitale domein willen de makers de toeschouwer een intensieve en betekenisvolle ervaring bieden die het pure lezen of het pure kijken niet vervangt, maar die een eigen, interdisciplinaire ervaring oplevert waarin de mogelijkheden van dit nieuwe medium geëxploreerd alsook ten volle gehonoreerd worden.
(Source: Apvis.nl)
It is overly simplistic to state that my digital poems come entirely from building/discovering interfaces. Any artist’s creative practice is a merging/melding mix of fluid events and inspirations. But with all my digital poems there is one commonality, the emphasis on interface. Rarely do I even reuse interfaces, and when I do it is only as one section of a larger work. This continual drive to create new ways to rethink the structure, organization and interactive functionality of my digital poems comes from a variety of internal influences. Most importantly is how these interfaces are not just vessels for content, they are poems in themselves. In the same way digital poetry might be best defined by the experience, rather than a description. Or similar to a digital poet and their works being described by the events and stories surrounding the creation and building process, an interface is the life, the body, and a poetic construction in itself. And through the artist performance I will explore/perform numerous of my interfaces, discussing/reading from them, eluding to how they were made, their inspirations and my thoughts on how they could be reused by other poets. But how is this a performance? This will not just be your typical reading and/or artist talks. While nearly all my digital poetry/fiction performances are highly theatric and, dare I say, engaging, I want to involve the audience more than I have in the past. Therefore, I will be shifting from interface to interface based on the audience’s commands. On the screen will be a series of titled links, around 20 total. The audience will choose which the title I read from. They can change those numbers at any time, and as often as they want. Choosing the links will happen via an ipad, being passed around the audience. The camera from the tablet will also be projected on the large screen in a small corner box. Then as the audience member changes the work, I will start reading it. And much like many of my works, the performance will be highly interactive, engaging, strange and a bit chaotic, driven, in part, by the audience’s commands. (Source: ELO 2015 Conference Catalog)
The first time I clapped eyes on a hypertext, I immediately thought of Roland Barthes' essay, "The Death of the Author." In the age of interactive fiction, the author is not simply dead, I decided; s/he's been quicklimed.
Although hypertext has been in existence since the Sixties, only within the past year or so has it emerged as a viable entity for the average microcomputer user.
"traces" is a locative media work delivered on mobile phone via video, audio and MP3, exploring the relationships of people, memory and place. In it, the environments we move through- the streets, buildings; the parks and bridges and alleyways of Sydney’s CBD - reveal themselves as sites rich with meaning, traced over with both personal and shared narrative.
In “traces” 5-7 people will disclose 5-7 true stories, recounting a vivid, intense personal experience that has occurred in a specific place in Sydney. A postcard showing an “alternate” map of Sydney with the 5-7 specific sites marked on it will tie the experiences to the actual locations. This will also allow audiences to choose between accessing the material immediately while in the exhibition space, stepping outside or walking/ travelling to the actual location to experience the stories. Audiences will also be able to submit their responses to the stories or their own vivid location based experiences via SMS to a specific phone number or moblog, revealing a city alive with memory and personal meaning. The moblog of public responses could also be exhibited as part of the overall work within d_Art05. The initial 5-7 narrative “traces” have been selected as experiences representing intimate, personal recollections as well as those forming parts of Sydney’s shared cultural memory. Initial selected sites include the Opera House, Harbour Bridge, Luna Park, Chinatown, Kings Cross and Bondi. In the next few weeks I will also attempt to identify other stories and locations close to the Opera House.
"traces" will use Bluetooth technology to transfer the video or sound files to audiences. Potentially MP3 files of the audio information can also be transferred to iPod users as an alternate mode of experiencing the work.
Urban Fragments is an interactive website that functions as a repository for ideas about the city and how the urban experience can be translated into an online experience. From the opening users can peruse numerous avenues each accessible through a different vertical fragment pictured on the home page. Animations, processing sketches and images are gathered together within the site and open in individual pop up windows creating random juxtapositions and eventually chaos on the screen.
As an educator as well as Director of Digital Media Studies at the University of Detroit Mercy, my pedagogical and personal interests lie in how to use media to incorporate inter-disciplinary studies; to use sound, images as well as visual and narrative compositions to communicate multi-dimensional ideas, passions and concepts. In relation to this inter-disciplinary approach, I incorporate the concept of "mixing" to weave together space, design, technology, story-telling and critical discourse. One of the concepts I try to reinforce is that 'space' includes the psychological as well as the physical. In addition, I teach digital media students that "design" is the intentional approach to choreograph the experiential and that digital technology is a tool for exploring these ideas. Accepting this, I challenge the students to consider: how does the user/viewer experience and process the interaction between digital media and the "narrative" of the everyday? Two of the texts I am currently interested in utilizing in the process of creating digital media artifacts are: Paul Miller, AKA DJ Spooky's manifesto "Rhythm Science" and Henry Jenkins' "Convergence Culture." One of the concepts Paul Miller addresses is that technology has become a paradigm for individual identity as well as an interface of the everyday events that tell our stories. Henry Jenkins offers critical insight into the multi-levels and interdisciplinary force behind current digital culture as well as the woven process by which technology converges with a sense of self and culture in the digital world. Using these texts as the framework for teaching some of the UDM Digital Media Studies courses, students are assigned to create short videos that address ideas from the books. For example, one video project was to weave the concept of "mixing" the students' everyday experiences and perceptions with audio tracks from DJ Spooky's work—using the concept of "synaesthesia" to ultimately weave DJ Spooky's audio pieces, which are themselves, in a sense woven artifacts of historical and auto-biographical reference—with the students' own interpretation of urban life, space and cultural critique. Many of these videos are time-based collages—abstract in nature. Another assignment was for the students to use the tool of technology to assemble Shoebox Stories, short videos taking critical stances on urban issues as well as personal stories and histories of the local culture of Detroit.
(Source: Author's abstract, 2008 ELO Conference)
From April 1, 2000 to April 1 2001, David Jhave Johnston launched his career as a digital poet with a year of poetry experiments using Flash. Titled “Nomad Lingo,” he published several e-poems every month— producing a treasure trove of works that attest to his raw talent, whimsical style, and the ability to create a lyrical voice through lines that are both sensuous and theoretically engaging.
Some aspects he experiments with is how kinetic language and pacing can evoke different meanings and shape tone. For example, the flame-like words in “Watching Fire” is so much more relaxing than the frantic “Me Critters.” Similarly, the lines in “Ceaseless,” while fast-paced, are readable and put reader’s at ease, while “Flood” overwhelms the reader with its accelerating pace and movement. He also works with minimalist interactivity in “Irreconciliable” and “Tsunami” by making the letters and lines respond to mouseovers to reveal other texts.
(Source: Leonardo Flores)
