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>> Home / Archives for Media theory

Hamlet on the Holodeck

July 11, 2009 by Roy Johnson

reflections on hypertext and story-telling

Janet Murray has an intellectual background which will be common to many who have passed through higher education since the 1960s. She is rooted in her training in the humanities (English Literature) – but she has been touched by developments in computer science, and wishes to combine the two disciplines. She holds simultaneously a deep reverence for post-Renaissance book-based traditional learning and an appreciation that digitised texts, non-sequential narratives, and multimedia effects might produce new artistic forms. Hamlet on the Holodeck is an exploration of what has been done to develop these new forms – and what might be done in the future. It is a study which has become a central text in the required reading on hypertext. As a teacher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – the home of research and development in multimedia – she knows the field well.

Hamlet on the HolodeckHer examination starts with a survey of science fiction and various modern narratives which explore the possibilities of parallel universes or alternative realities – including 3-D movies and virtual reality simulators. She describes the existing technology with enthusiasm – although in each case she ends up in the realm of ‘Imagine if this could be put to use in …’ rather than what has been done. But this is understandable. After all, we are considering an extremely new technology. When printing was first invented, books were produced which imitated written manuscripts, just as in our own age cinema and radio first imitated the live theatre. Maybe the new digital narrative forms have not yet emerged.

She discusses videogames, virtual dungeons (MUDs and MOOs) and literary hypertexts, including the best known – Michael Joyce’s Afternoon and Stuart Moulthrop’s Victory Garden. She also considers the advantages and weaknesses of Web-based narrative experiments. These include the complex worlds which are generated around TV soap operas for instance – which have archives of back footage linked to fan-generated materials.

The main problem is that she doesn’t really confront the most fundamental philosophical principle of fictional narratives. This is that consumers usually want and appreciate a series of events which has been artfully conceived and structured by somebody else. Such narratives represent, in no matter how diffuse a form, a distinctive point of view or perspective on the world.

There is much discussion of journeys through mazes, fantasy quests, dragon-slaying, and all the usual clichés of games with names such as Pong, Zork, and Doom. However, when it comes to predicting what the new forms might be, these tend to be simply different ways of telling the same story – multiple viewpoints – a strategy which has been adopted in most art forms, and which is not intrinsically connected to computers or hypertext. Her arguments and exposition seem more fruitful when she is discussing the rapidly merging world of the Web and television.

Her examination of current multimedia productions is wide-ranging and thorough, although there are one or two assumptions about what is likely to develop which seem open to question. The first is that computers will somehow participate in the generation of basic narratives. The second is that readers will be invited to participate in the story. The third is that a video games or MUDs are likely to be the most likely form to be developed. These are certainly interesting possibilities, but whether they are necessary elements of the new forms or not, only convincing evidence will tell.

However, these are reservations of a rather theoretical nature. At a practical level, anyone interested in the future possibilities of story-telling using computer technology should read this book. Its comprehensive survey of current practice is an inspiring starting point for what might be achieved in the digital future.

© Roy Johnson 2001

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Janet H. Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999, pp.324, ISBN: 0262631873


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Filed Under: Media, Theory Tagged With: Hamlet on the Holodeck, Hypertext, Media theory, Narrative, New media, Theory

Pause and Effect: the art of interactive narrative

July 9, 2009 by Roy Johnson

techniques of telling stories in visual media

Pause and Effect examines the intersection of storytelling, visual arts, new media, and interactivity. It’s a mixture of a little theorising with plenty of practical examples. Mark Meadows starts reasonably well with some interesting reflections on narrative and perspective, and then plunges valiantly into the realm of literary narratives. But before giving himself time to consider them seriously, he’s off into Excel spreadsheets and interactive games. It’s a very elegantly designed book. Almost every page is illustrated with diagrams, screenshots, and paintings.

Click for details at AmazonHe ventures bravely into first, second, and third person narratives, plus point of view. Famous names come thick and fast – Homer, Aristotle, Dostoyevski, Giotto, James Joyce. We get reflections on novels, TV programs, video games, and Spiderman comics. But it’s hard to find a coherent argument. Most of what he has to say is descriptive rather than analytical.

This is a shame, because theoretical reflections on new media design would be very welcome – but here there is the sense of someone struggling with issues which even literary theorists have sorted out long ago.

He does look at some interesting examples of narrative art – religious paintings and tablets. But when you think about it, the traditional narrative painting is ‘cheating’ in terms of conveying a new story. Viewers of ‘The Annunciation’ already know the sequence of events when they see the depiction of them in two dimensions.

There are some interviews with designers of multimedia and interactive events, plus case studies which feature contemporary games designers. He also covers interesting reports of experiments which seek to blend digital genres. Probably the best part of the book however is where he offers reflections on narrative and architecture, second-person point of view, and 3D virtual reality.

This is a publication which will appeal to people who want to pursue ideas about narrative theory. Web designers and new media buffs will certainly pick up some new lines of investigation to think about.

© Roy Johnson 2003

interactive narrative   Buy the book at Amazon UK

interactive narrative   Buy the book at Amazon US


Mark Stephen Meadows, Pause and Effect: the art of interactive narrative, Indianapolis (IN): New Riders, 2003, pp.257, ISBN: 0735711712


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Filed Under: Media, Theory Tagged With: Hypertext, Media, Media theory, Narrative, Theory

Screen

June 26, 2009 by Roy Johnson

essays on graphic design, new media, and visual culture

Jessica Helfand is a critic of digital media and design matters. This collection of essays Screen first appeared in Eye, The New Republic, and Print Magazine. They deal with issues of visual design, digital culture, film, and media in general – including television, radio, and the Web. They are commendably short pieces, and it has to be said that they are elegantly written. Her formula is to take a single observation as a starting point, then spin it around with lots of cultural references to make gnomic statements about the state of culture in society.

ScreenThe problem is that they are basically personal opinions, and she very rarely examines concrete examples in any detail. This approach leads her into the marshy swamps of false generalisation. On our sense of space in a digital age, she claims:

The computer is our connection to the world. It is an information source, an entertainment device, a communications portal, a production tool … But we are also its prisoners: trapped in a medium in which visual expression must filter through a protocol of uncompromising programming scripts

Yes, it’s true that using computers requires mastery of complex techniques – but we are not its prisoners, because our sense of space is formed by many sources beyond the computer screen.

It’s obvious that she is well informed on digital technology. She discusses issues of web design, navigation buttons, splash screens, and the cultural significance of ‘rollovers’. Yet she confuses navigation with content, and even thinks that email has a homogenising effect:

In the land of email we all ‘sound’ alike: everyone writes in system fonts … Software protocols require that we title our mail, a leftover model from the days of interoffice correspondence, which makes even the most casual letter sound like a corporate memo.

That is simply not true. Anybody who receives more than a couple of dozen emails a day knows that most people generate their own ‘voice’ using this medium. And the titles of some of the messages I receive would certainly never make the ‘corporate memo’ file.

The fact is that there’s lot of techno-scepticism here. Underneath the glossy media guru carapace, she is actually digitally uncertain. Yet she’s not averse to patting herself on the back; she drops lots of Post-Modernist names, and at its most acute, her writing comes dangerously close to something from Pseud’s Corner. Encountering a consumer quiz on chicken nuggets, she reports

while I would like to report that my thoughts … drifted to Martin Heidegger or Giles Deleuze, to existentialism or metaphysics or even postmodernism, alas, they did not.

Fortunately, the collection is rescued by two excellent essays on the designer Paul Rand, where her analyses are much more meaningful because they are focused on concrete examples. The first is an analysis of his work as a commercial designer, and the second an interesting account of his methods as a teacher at Yale.

These two essays are first rate pieces of work. It’s a shame that the rest of the collection doesn’t match up. But having said that, the book comes larded with praise by other designers, and copies at my local bookshop have been flying off the shelves – so you will need to judge for yourself.

© Roy Johnson 2001

screen   Buy the book at Amazon UK

screen   Buy the book at Amazon US


Jessica Helfand, Screen: Essays on Graphic Design, New Media, and Visual Culture, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2001, pp.175, ISBN: 1568983107


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Filed Under: Graphic design, Media, Theory Tagged With: Design, Media, Media theory, New media, Screen, Theory

Understanding Comics

July 8, 2009 by Roy Johnson

the techniques, philosophy, and interpretation of comics

Whenever there is a discussion or an exchange of messages concerning comics or visual narratives, one name crops up again and again – Scott McCloud. Understanding Comics is his now classic work on the comic designer’s art. It’s presented in the form of a comic itself – but don’t let that fool you. He could just as easily given his book the sub-title ‘The Philosophy of Graphic Narratives’. He starts with a chapter defining what comics are (sequential visual art) and shows something of their history, going back as far as Egyptian wall paintings in 1300 BC.

Understanding ComicsIf at first this seems rather obvious or over-simplified, two or three pages into chapter two, he is discussing the theory of visual perception and the nature of iconic language. Next comes the sequencing of action and the decision of what goes into (and what can be left out of) each visual panel of a comic. There’s a very interesting comparison of American and Japanese techniques in which he argues that some of the special effects of the Manga comics arise from different traditions of perception in the East.

He explains the depiction of time and motion via the panel or frame. In fact after doing the same thing for emotion by the use of symbols, he extends his argument to claim that we are in an age where a whole new visual language is in the process of being invented.

The traditional modes of dealing with narrative via showing and telling are demonstrated by the same story being related via pictures and words, then re-combined to show the comic creator’s skill in offsetting one medium against the other to avoid tautology and maximise expressive density.

This is a book which will entrance any comic lovers or anybody who has an interest in media studies or how ideas and stories are transmitted.

Quite a lot of these issues of graphics, narrative, point of view, and are now an active part of online, web-based information. I’m sure he will be aware of that, and I’m sure he will take it into account in any future editions.

He ends with what is obviously a heartfelt plea that comics should be taken seriously as a cultural genre, and he extends this to claim that they haven’t yet even scratched the surface of what they are capable of expressing.

© Roy Johnson 2000

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Scott McCLoud, Understanding Comics, New York: HarperCollins, 1994, pp.217, ISBN 006097625X


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Filed Under: Art, Graphic design, Media Tagged With: Comics, Design, Graphic design, Media, Media theory, Narratives, Theory, Understanding Comics

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