How should we explain to someone what a game is?
I imagine that we should describe games to him, and we might add:
"This and similar things are called 'games'." Ad do we know anymore about it ourselves? It is only other people whom we cannot tell exactly what a game is?
But this is not ignorance. We do not know the bounderies because none have been drawn.
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosphical Investigations, aph. 69.
Bournemouth University
Bournemouth
United Kingdom
The New Media Writing Prize awards evening took place at Bournemouth University on January 17th 2018. Vanita Patel, BA English Student at Bournemouth University, captured the event for us.On January 17th, Bournemouth University hosted the 8th annual awards ceremony for the New Media Writing Prize. This year’s attendees were lucky to have the opportunity to listen to Adrian Smith, Amuzo Director and one of the creators of the original Tomb Raider games. The evening also consisted of a presentation with the competition’s shortlisted entries and winners as well as giving an insight on some of the judges own personal opinions on what new media narratives meant to them. The event was organised by Jim Pope and was graciously sponsored by if:book boss, Chris Meade, Unicorn Training CEO Peter Phillips and Gorkana’s Philip Smith and Cheryl Douglas.
Adrian Smith talked about his experience with interactive narratives whilst creating Tomb Raider in 1996. Using the New Media Writing Prize’s key elements: Innovation, Interactive and Immersive as a starting point for his presentation, Smith gave an interesting talk about the creation of the iconic gaming franchise. It was clear that during the creation of Tomb Raider, the most important element of it was what the heart of the game should be. Whether it was being able to let the player explore the world, making the game accessible to all, or to produce achievable goals and challenges, Tomb Raider provides many options for whatever type of gamer you are.
(Source: Article from www.theliteraryplatform.com : ‘The Cartographer’s Confession’ wins the New Media Writing Prize 2017, http://theliteraryplatform.com/magazine/2018/01/cartographers-confessio… )
Bournemouth University and if: book UK announced the shortlist for the 2017 New Media Writing Prize. The shortlisted works for 2017 were:
Main Prize Winner and Shortlist 2017:
The Main Prize was awarded to James Attlee: The Cartographer’s Confession
The Student prize was awarded to Natasha Nunn: Mary Rose http://mary-rose.ca
Gorkana Award for Journalism 2017 awarded to Magdelena Chodownik, Akradiusz Sotdon, and Piotr Kliks: Lunik IX https://outride.rs/en/?p=31579
Lunik IX awarded to Magdelena Chodownik, Akradiusz Sotdon, and Piotr Kliks: http://outride.rs/en/lunik-ix/
(Source: New Media Prize 2017)
From Samantha Gorman's artist statement for The Book of Kells: "Deconstruction is a weaving of historical study, literary theory, travel narrative, meditative prose, mystical contemplation, and academic inquiry. All elements are united by research and reflection on The Book of Kells, an illuminated Latin version of the Bible circa 800 AD, and the techniques that produced it. The prose of Deconstruction is informed by my travel and close survey of The Book of Kells at Trinity College Dublin. Additionally, Deconstruction touches upon the evolution of how writing is disseminated from manuscript culture to Gutenberg and the Internet, as well as how these media are implicated in the increasing liberation of the reader, both in terms of social access and the reading practice itself ... Reflecting on the original manuscript's hypertextual melding of text and image, the icons of The Book prompt the texts of Deconstruction: lexias emerge from and are symbolized by designs on the manuscript's folios. Overall, the work is a study on the original manuscript within the scriptorium of electronic media and methods."
Source: https://www.cddc.vt.edu/journals/newriver/13Fall/editor.html
This paper will discuss a range of concepts relating to populism in digital media. The vernacular appears to literary scholars as a shift towards democracy (tilting the ideal of readership and the consciousness of the reader towards the Reformation and the Enlightenment). Along with this practical historical shift (facilitating the rise of nations and nationality), the pivot to the popular permitted an expansion of poetic and subjective possibilities in the literary arts. In the US, a second “revolution” of the vernacular takes place in the post-colonial context in rejection of perceived European norms--often with Black expression serving as a space of cultural imagination—both in the literary arts and in mass culture. This shift marked the expansion of American hegemony, beginning with Manifest Destiny and towards Neoliberalism. The result is a complicated genealogy of popular language. What can this tell us about popular culture in a post-digital age?
Linda Brigham offers a Deleuzean take on Independence Day.
Joseph Tabbi reviews the essay collection Simulacrum America.
Carsten Schinko on Niklas Luhmann’s Analogue Loyalty.
Matt Kirschenbaum reviews Remediation by Richard Grusin and Jay David Bolter.
Remediation is an important book. Its co-authors, Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, seem self-conscious of this from the outset. The book’s subtitle, for example, suggests their intent to contend for the mantle of Marshall McLuhan, who all but invented media studies with Understanding Media (1964), published twenty years prior to the mass-market release of the Apple Macintosh and thirty years prior to the popular advent of the World Wide Web. There has also, I think, been advance anticipation for Remediation among the still relatively small coterie of scholars engaged in serious cultural studies of computing and information technology. Bolter and Grusin both teach in Georgia Tech’s School of Language, Communication, and Culture, the academic department which perhaps more than any other has attempted a wholesale make-over of its institutional identity in order to create an interdisciplinary focal point for the critical study of new media.
In one half of a pair of critical reviews looking at recent titles in animal studies, Karl Steel examines Nicole Shukin’s Animal Capital (Shukin reviews Steel in the other half). In particular, Steel looks at Shukin’s biopolitical framework, and considers how that framework challenges not only our conception of what constitutes the animal, but also–and more to the bone–our conception of the capacity of fields like animal studies.
(source: http://electronicbookreview.com/thread/criticalecologies/animal_capital)
Christine Bucher, reviewing Beatriz Columnina, considers the narrative and photographic dimensions of interiors designed by Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier.
(Source: ebr)