Book (Ph.D. dissertation)

This dissertation presents theoretical and technical support for, and implementations of, narrative computational media works with the following characteristics: generative content, semantics-based interaction, reconfigurable narrative structure, and strong cognitive and socio-cultural grounding. A system that can dynamically compose media elements (such as procedural computer graphics, digital video, or text) to result in new media elements can be said to generate content. The GRIOT system, a result of this dissertation, provides an example of this. It has been used to implement computational poetry that generates new narrative poems with varying particular concepts, but fixed themes, upon each execution. This generativity is enabled by the Alloy system, which implements an algorithm that models key aspects of Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner's theory of conceptual blending. Alloy is the first implementation of Joseph Goguen's algebraic semiotics approach to blending. (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002; Goguen, 1998) This research also contributes to the theory of algebraic semiotics by developing a blending-based notion of style. Semantics- based interaction means here that (1) media elements are structured according to the meaning of their content, and (2) user interaction can affect content of a computational narrative in a way that produces new meanings that are constrained by the system's author. "Meaning" in this case indicates that the author has provided formal descriptions of domains and concepts pertinent to the media elements and subjective authorial intent. Meaning can also be reconfigured at the level of narrative discourse. The formal structure of a computational narrative can be dynamically restructured, either according to user interaction, or upon execution of the system as in the case of narrative generation. Strong cognitive and socio- cultural grounding here implies that meaning is considered to be contextual, dynamic, and embodied. The formalizations used derive from, and respect, cognitive linguistics theories with such notions of meaning. Furthermore, the notion of narrative here is not biased toward one particular cultural model. Using semantically based media elements as a foundation, a cultural producer can implement a range of culturally specific or experimental narrative structures.

Amidst the various forms of electronic literature stands a class of interactive programs that simulates human conversation. A chatbot, or chatterbot, is a program with which users can “speak,” typically by exchanging text through an instant-messaging style interface. Chatbots have been therapists, Web site hosts, language instructors, and even performers in interactive narratives. Over the past ten years, they have proliferated across the Internet, despite being based on a technology that predates the Web by thirty years. In my readings, these chatbots are synedochic of the process by which networked identities form on the Internet within the power dynamics of hegemonic masculinity. Chatbots, in this light, model the collaborative performance humans enact on electronically-mediated networks.

These computer programs stand as the nexus of various roads of inquiry and present a useful model for gender construction and racial formation enacted over electronically-mediated networks. Chatbots are actor-networks, bringing together programmers, artists, and machines to develop interactive entities. To match their interdisciplinarity, this dissertation brings together humanities, scientific, and sociological approaches to analyze chatbots in their broader historical and cultural context. Particularly, I blend textual analysis, cultural studies, and survey research. Central to the work is a survey of the makers and users of chatbots. Once a sense of the makeup of the community has been determined, subsequent chapters apply race, gender, and labor theories to the interpretation of specific chatbots in action. These interpretations are preceded by a look at Alan Turing, whose provocations about imitating humanity and performing gender set the tone for the debates that surround chatbots.

The chatbots in this dissertation are used for websites, interactive fiction, interactive drama, adult entertainment, and educational contexts. From ELIZA to A.L.I.C.E., these chatbots span the history of chatbots, ending contemporary applications, such as Tactical Iraqi, Façade, and my ownBarthes’ Bachelorette. In this context, this dissertation enters debates about narratology and ludology, offering directed poetics and systemic exploration in its place. The dissertation also considers other relevant cultural objects, such as the Chess-Playing Turk and cinematic cyborgs appearing in Simone , Thomas est Amoureux ( Thomas in Love), and Blade Runner.

(Source: Author's abstract)

Only recently has our perception of the computer, now a familiar and ubiquitous element of everyday life, changed from seeing it as a mere tool to regarding it as a medium for creative expression. Computer technologies such as multimedia and hypertext applications have sparked an active critical debate not only about the future of the book format, ("the late age of print" {Bolter} is only one term used to describe the shift away from traditional print media to new forms of electronic communication) but also about the future of literature. Hypertext Fiction is the most prominent of proposed electronic literary forms and strong claims have been made about it: it will radically alter concepts of text, author and reader, enable forms of non-linear writing closer to the associative working of the mind, and make possible reader interaction with the text on a level impossible in printed text. So far the debate that has attempted to put hypertext fiction into a historical perspective has linked it to two developments. Firstly the developments in computer technology that made hypertext not only possible but also widely accessible and secondly a tradition of postmodern theory, where characteristics attributed to hypertext echo concepts of fragmentation, multiplicity and instability that theorists like Barthes and Derrida have formulated previously and that have led to the notion of hypertext as an "authentic, yet functional postmodern form" {Roberts} A third element that is not generally subject to critical evaluation is the practice of (post)modern writing in which a number of authors consciously break with the linearity of print conventions in favour for a more fragmented narrative and presentation as well as actively inviting the reader's participation in what Barthes calls "writerly" text. There are two reasons why these "proto-hypertexts" have been widely ignored or dismissed: Hypertext is still widely define as exclusive to the electronic realm and is furthermore generally perceived in oppositional pairs in contrast to print, i.e. non-linear vs. linear and interactive vs. passive, which conceptually does not leave room for a study of an "evolution" out of existing forms of writing practice. By examining hypertext fiction in a context of print experiments (Cortazar, Borges, B.S. Johnson, Andreas Okopenko, Raymond Queneau, Miroslav Pavic, Italo Calvino) and also in a context of other forms of digital literary experimentation (collaborative projects and computer-generated writing), this thesis aims to, on a diachronic level, reincorporate hypertext fiction into an evolutionary (though radical) literary tradition and examines the manner in which concepts which originated in this tradition have been taken over often very literally and without much redefinition. On the a-historical, synchronic level, this study explores some of the possible formats for literature in the new electronic textual media: hypertext fiction, collaborative writing projects, computer-generated writing and the different challenges these present to our understanding of literature. After an introduction in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 and 3 discuss two of the keywords of hypertext theory, its "grand narratives' (non-linearity and interactivity) and the appropriation of the terminology to hypertext theory and to hypertext fiction. Chapter 4 and 5 will look at alternative, though related, approaches to electronic fiction: Chapter 4 will examine aspects of collaborative writing in both a print and a digital environment while computer-generated writing stands at the centre of Chapter 5.

(Source: Author's abstract)

Repetition and Recombination: Reading Network Fiction is the first full-length study devoted to network fiction. Network fictions are narrative texts in digitallynetworked environments that make use of hypertext technology in order to create emergent and recombinatory narratives (unlike interactive, or "arborescent," fictions that employ mutually exclusive plotlines). They represent a coalescence of works that predate and postdate the World Wide Web but share an aesthetic drive that exploits the networking potential of digital composition and foregrounds a distinctive quality of narrative recurrence and return. The thesis consists of (1) a critical and theoretical component that returns to printbased narratology in light of digital literature; (2) analyses of network fictions from the first-wave of digital literature published as stand-alone software applications; and (3) analyses of second-wave network fictions published on the World Wide Web. The analyses each focus on the interplay of the material, formal, and semantic elements of network narrative, an jnterplay that is framed by the dynamics of repetition. Furthermore, the thesis illustrates how concepts of orientation, immersion, constraint, and mobility, which have long informed the experience of reading narrative fiction, take on new meaning in digital environments. The primary contribution of the thesis is to an aesthetic and narratological understanding of this nascent form of digital literature. However, cybertext theory, systems theory, postfeminist theory, and post-structuralist and deconstructionist theory (when dissociated from early hypertext theory that claimed to literalize, embody, or fulfill it) all inform its critical understanding. The movement in the arts away from representation and toward simulation, away from the dynamics of reading and interpretation and toward the dynamics of interaction and play has led to exaggerated or alarmist claims for the endangerment of the literary arts. At the same time, some have simply doubted that the conceptual and discursive intricacy of print fiction can migrate to the screen, where performativity and immediacy are privileged. Against these claims, the thesis attests to the verbal complexity and conceptual depth of a body of writing created for the surface of the screen.

(Source: Author's abstract)

This thesis takes the position that current analyses of digitally mediated interactive experiences that include narrative elements often lack adequate consideration of the technical and historical contexts of their production.

From this position, this thesis asks the question: how is the reader/player/user's participation in interactive narrative experiences (such as hypertext fiction, interactive fiction, computer games, and electronic art) influenced by the technical and historical limitations of the interface?

In order to investigate this question, this thesis develops a single methodology from relevant media and narrative theory, in order to facilitate a comparative analysis of well known exemplars from distinct categories of digitally mediated experiences. These exemplars are the interactive fiction Adventure, the interactive art work Osmose, the hypertext fiction Afternoon, a story, and the computer/video games Myst, Doom, Half Life and Everquest.

The main argument of this thesis is that the technical limits of new media experiences cause significant ‘gaps’ in the reader’s experience of them, and that the cause of these gaps is the lack of a dedicated technology for new media, which instead ‘borrows’ technology from other fields. These gaps are overcome by a greater dependence upon the reader’s cognitive abilities than other media forms. This greater dependence can be described as a ‘performance’ by the reader/player/user, utilising Eco’s definition of an ‘open’ work (Eco 21).

This thesis further argues that the ‘mimetic’ and ‘immersive’ ambitions of current new media practice can increases these gaps, rather than overcoming them. The thesis also presents the case that these ‘gaps’ are often not caused by technical limits in the present, but are oversights by the author/designers that have arisen as the product of a craft culture that has been subject to significant technical limitations in the past. Compromises that originally existed to overcome technical limits have become conventions of the reader/player/user’s interactive literacy, even though these conventions impinge on the experience, and are no longer necessary because of subsequent technical advances. As a result, current new media users and designers now think of these limitations as natural.

This thesis concludes the argument by redefining ‘immersion’ as the investment the reader makes to overcome the gaps in an experience, and suggests that this investment is an important aspect of their performance of the work.

(Source: Author's abstract)

The dissertation’s main point of departure is the clash between explicit and implicit presuppositions, conceptualisations and generalisations in print-oriented literary theoretical paradigms and a plenitude of empirically verifiable anomalies and counter-examples to them found in digital and ergodic works of literature. The behaviour of these counter-examples is explained by cybertext theory that addresses the often neglected issue of the variety of literary media. Both the empirical counter-examples and the empirically verifiable differences in the behaviour of literary media allow us to expand and modify literary theories to suit not just one traditionally privileged media position but all of them. Therefore, in the first half of the dissertation, literary theory and narratology are viewed and modified from the perspective of slightly revised cybertext theory. In this process theories of ergodic and non-ergodic literature are integrated more closely and several so far non-theorized ways of manipulating narrative time, regulating narrative information, and generating narrative instances are located and theorized. In the second half of the dissertation, the role of cybertext theory and the position of ergodic literature are reversed as they are viewed from the perspectives provided by ludology and game ontology. This is necessary to better situate ergodic literature in the continuum of other ergodic phenomena and between interpretative and dominantly configurative practices. To this end a provisional and formal paradigm of ludology is first constructed and synthesized from previous ludological research and then applied to newer forms and genres of ergodic literature such as textual instruments.

(Source: University of Jyväskylä)

Thesis for the degree doctor artium. EXCERPT FROM INTRODUCTION: This dissertation aims to address – and answer – some of the questions surrounding the ways in which the interface of the digital computer (also known as the GUI) is impacting how we experience – read – GUI narrative fictions. In my view, questions such as these are of utmost importance if we are to appropriately understand how digital technology is affecting central realms of human existence, such as our experiences of the fictions that are created and displayed in an ever increasing variety of media materialities and technological platforms. The main research questions to be dealt with in the following revolve around processes typically taking place when we read, watch, listen, experience, interpret, are engaged in, and interact with, digital hypermedia narrative fictions – what I, for the sake of simplicity, call GUI fictions. In short, how do we read GUI fictions? How, and why, is this reading different from our reading of narrative fiction in print, or of reading narrative fictions on other screens, such as on TV or in a movie theater? To address and answer these questions, I employ a combination of philosophical and theoretical perspectives which all, on different levels and in different ways, address issues related to how we experience and interact with technologies and their different interfaces, and, more precisely, how we experience narrative fictions embedded in these technologies, with an emphasis on the technology of the GUI. My approaches draw mainly upon phenomenology as it has been developed by Don Ihde and as it has been applied to film and media studies by (in particular) Vivian Sobchack; psychological theories of perception and cognition; cognitivism as advocated by film theorists David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson; and insights from more psychologically – even psycho-biologically – oriented approaches to film as found in contributions by, among others, Torben Grodal and Per Persson.

A general method for the generation of natural language narrative is described. It allows the expression, or narrative discourse, to vary independently of the underlying events and existents that are the narrative’s content. Specifically, this variation is accomplished in an interactive fiction (IF) system which replies to typed input by narrating what has happened in a simulated world. IF works have existed for about 30 years as forms of text-based computer simulation, instances of dialog systems, and examples of literary art. Theorists of narrative have carefully distinguished between the level of underlying content (corresponding to the simulated world in interactive fiction) and that of expression (corresponding to the textual exchange between computer arnd user) since the mid-1960s, when the field of narratology began to develop, but IF systems have not yet made use of this distinction. The current project contributes new techniques for automatic narration by building on work done in computational linguistics, specifically natural language generation, and in narratology. First, types of narrative variation that are possible in IF are identified and formalized in a way that is suitable for a natural language generation system. An architecture for an IF system is then described and implemented; the result allows multiple works of interactive fiction to be realized and, using a general plan for narrating, allows them to be narrated in different ways during interaction. The system’s ability to generate text is considered in a pilot evaluation. Plans for future work are also discussed. They include publicly released systems for IF development and narratology education, adding a planning capability that uses actors’ individual perspectives, and adapting automatic narration to different sorts of interactive systems.

(Source: Author's abstract)