-- TIR-W Volume 9 no. 2
July 2008 Instruments and Playable Text: Stuart Moulthrop
Under Language: Stuart Moulthrop
Concerto for Narrative Data: Judy Malloy
activeReader: Elizabeth Knipe
So Random, PiTP: Shawn Rider
riverIslandQT: John Cayley
The Purpling: Nick Montfort
-- TIR-W Volume 9 no. 1
August 2007
Multi-Modal Coding: Jason Nelson, Donna Leishman, and Electronic Writing
Interviews: Jason Nelson, Donna Leishman
Biographical Background
Reception | Role of the Reader
Interface
Work Process
Electronic Literature Community
Future Work
Secrets
Space | State
Connect Digital | Material Games
Potentials of the Field
Essays:
The Artists on Each Other's Work
Talan Memmott's Commentary on Each Artist
Artworks:
Deviant
Leishman Site
Pandemic Rooms
Nelson Index
-- TIR-W, Volume 8 no. 3, September 2006
Interview with Dan Waber; Rita Raley
five by five; Dan Waber bio and Jason Pimble
TLT vs. LL; Ted Warnell
Interview with David Knoebel; Rita Raley
Heart Pole; David Knoebe
Interview with Aya Karpinska; Rita Raley
mar puro; Aya Karpinska
The Nihilanth: Immersivity in a First-Person Gaming Mod; Sandy Baldwin
New Word Order (Video);Sandy Baldwin
Word Museum;William Gillespie
Interview with John Cayley; Sandy Rita Raley
Torus (Video); John Cayley
-- TIR-W, Volume 8, no. 2, June/July 2006
Editor's Introduction: Reconfiguring Place and Space in New Media Writing;
Scott Rettberg
Workspace is Mediaspace is Cityscape: An Interview with Nick Montfort on Book and Volume; Jeremy Douglass
Written on the Body: An Interview with Shelley Jackson; Scott Rettberg
Behind Fa ade: An Interview with Andrew Stern and Michael Mateas; Brenda Bakker Harger
Avant-Gaming: An Interview with Jane McGonigal; Scott Rettberg
Book and Volume; Nick Montfort
Fa ade; Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern
-- TIR-W, Volume 8, no. 1, February/March 2006
Editor's Introduction; Ben Basan
Sound Art, Art, Music; Douglas Kahn
Speaking Volumes; Brandon Labelle
Firebirds | Firebirds Berlin | Tongues of Fire; Paul DeMarinis
A Brief Lecture on Author/ity; Alexis Bhagat
Harvester; Ed Osborn
Honi | Tacotsubo; ADACHI Tomomi
-- TIR-W, Volume 7, no. 2, November 2005
10:01; Lance Olsen & Tim Guthrie
Pieces of Herself; Juliet Davis
The Bomar Gene; Jason Nelson
News from Erewhon; Millie Niss & Martha Deed
-- TIR-W, Volume 7, no. 1, August 2005
Ask me for the moon; John Zuern
CONSCIOUSNESS, LITERATURE, AND SCIENCE FICTION; Kathleen Ann Goonan
Buyways: Billboards, Automobiles, and the American Landscape; Mike Chasar
An interview with Diana Slattery; Dene Grigar
-- TIR-W, Volume 6, 2004
New Work; Niss, Deed & Daniels
Two Reviews; Tevis Thompson and Mike Chasar
Remembering Donald Justice; Steven Cramer
An interview & new work; David Silver, Jay David Bolter and Diane Gromala
An interview with Amy Sara Carroll; Heidi Bean
-- TIR-W, Volume 5, 2003
Afterwards; Judy Malloy
Digital Nature: the Case Collection version 2.0; Tal Halpern, Patrick F. Walter
Hacktivism? I didn't know the term existed before I did it; An Interview with Brian Kim Stefans; Giselle Beiguelman
Pax & An Interview; Stuart Moulthrop and Noah Wardrip-Fruin
An Interview with Margaret Stratton; Leslie Roberts
New Work & Reviews; Heidi Bean, Seth Thompson, Deena Larsen, geniwate, Pamela Gay
An Interview with John Cayley; Brian Kim Stefans
3 Proposals for Bottle Imps; William Poundstone
Self Portrait(s) [as Other(s)] & an Interview; Talan Memmott and M.D. Coverley
New work and an interview; Joseph Tabbi and Anthony Enns
Judd Morrissey & Lori Talley: An Interview & Essay; Jessica Pressman
-- TIR-W, Volume 4, 2002
Selected new poems; Ana Marie Uribe
ORIENT; YOUNG HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES
Dervish Flowers; Nicolas Clausse and Brian Kim Stefans
New Digital Emblems; William Poundstone and Brian Kim Stefans
"Of Dolls and Monsters" An interview with Shelley Jackson; Rita Raley
Electronic Literature; Ravi Shankar, N. Kathrine Hayles, and Lisa Gitelman
Excerps from Mark Amerika's Oz Blog; Mark Amerika
Inflat-o-space; Jessica Irish
New Media Writing; Marc C. Marino, William Gillespie, and Dirk Stratton
Remembering My Life In/Of Words; Richard Kostelanetz
An Interview, an Essay, a New Media Project; Stephanie Strickland and Jaishree Odin
Our day with Jerry Springer; David Schneidermann
A loss is less and death is not so easy
Experiemental Literature was really the first kick: An interview with Scanner; Rebekah Farrugia
Crowds and Power; Jody Zellen and Thom Swiss
"Red, Black, White and Gray:" An Interview with Motomichi Nakamura;
YOUNG HAE CHANG HEaVY INDUSTRIES Bcc, Motomichi Makamura
-- TIR-W, Volume 3, 2001
Reach; Michael Joyce
Training Missions; Joe Amato
Everything after That; Martha Conway
Winter Break; Adrienne Eisen
-][select][test: co][deP][1][oetry]_; mez
The Impermanence Agent; Noah Wardrip-Fruin, a.c.chapman, Brion Moss, Duane Whitehurst
A Long Wild Smile; Jeff Parker
-- TIR-W, Volume 1, 1999 & Volume 2, 2000
Book of Job; Ted Warnell
The Universal Resource Locator; M.D. Coverly
Lexia to Perplexia; Talan Memmott
The Birth of Detachment; Jennifer Ley
The 12hr-ISBN-JPEG Project; Brad Brace
City of Bits; Thomas Swiss
Divine Mind Fragment Theater; Jim Andrews
Pronunciation: 'fut, or: A Tool and it's Means; c. allan dinsmore
Simple Harmonic Motion Or, Josephine Baker in the Time Capsule; Diane Greco
Reality Dreams, Scroll One; Joel Weishaus
Broken; Alan Sondheim and Barry Smylie
Mitosis; Kevin Fanning
The dear mr thomas letters; Kevin Fanning
A Fable of Words; Jeffery M. Bochman
Donna Leishman |
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Jason Nelson |
Donna, can you comment on how your work is or is not like a game?
Two opposing characteristics are that it works on a hiding / revealing premise (a game quality), yet suggests a narrative telling by the structuring of the islands of linear animation. The project can also be seen to use repetition as a metaphor, e.g. the circular looping within the pop-in windows depicting Christian's acts of possession (metaphors tend to be used in Art projects). The two main aspects share a similar drive towards achieving a goal: an end, narratively, or a conclusion, gaming-ly. Interestingly, a discussion already exists as to whether quantifiable outcomes, achieving the goals or endings, are a prerequisite of being understood as a game.
Games designer Eric Zimmerman recently stated, "A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome." In contrast, Greg Costikyan believes in open-ended outcomes. Sitting in the middle is Jesper Juul with his "Classic Game Model." Juul, by using a demarcated timeline, suggests that contemporary rule-based systems can be something other than the classic model where a variable and quantifiable outcome is cited. Within Deviant, the endpoint serves to reposition the participant back towards confusion. As seen from a gaming viewpoint, the conclusion to the project does not offer participants an understanding of their role, of what the project's ultimate goals are. It does clarify its narrative source, explaining what has been visually experienced. It does something "other" than offer a narrative or gaming ending.
This newness or refusal to be categorized led some of the expert readers to attempt a general description of the project: exploratory narrative (George Fifield), visual narrative (Jill Walker), interactive experiment in moving visual art (Mark Amerika), and interface/game/interactive environment (Cynthia Lawson).
Personally I find the contemporary understanding of what a (video) game is doesn't fit the behavior of my work, and the definition of what a game is and does is ready to be expanded. However I think my work "plays games" with the user in terms of its playful trixy coquettishness.
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Interview Questions
Essays
Launch the Artworks
Biographical Information
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Jason, can you comment on how your work is or is not like a game?
Many of my works are derived directly from game code. This Is How You Will Die uses the skeleton of an online slot machine to display its interactive narrative. Ending: Chemistry, a largely ignored work, never published, was created around a card game. And there are other works, like The Bomar Gene, that have game code within them, but where it is not a primary aspect. However the most common understanding of what a game is doesn't really apply to much digital work. Nor do I think it should.
Most games have specific goals and consequences, competitions and scores. But with my work, I might have consequences in the vein of responses to user actions, but I find the notions of competition and score to be largely societal conceptions, false premises for cultural conquest.
But if by game you mean play, Dear Gawd yes. I love play. If any artwork inspires play, whether on the screen or in the head's electric mass, then the creation pours awe from serving spoons, square plates, deeply filled with melted plastic and arbor day swimmers. Trees die in salt water floods, and ducks dive for the smaller, slower fish, warm feathers float longer in the cold.
From Superstitious Alliances
Lately I've been playing with first person shooter game engines. I've been taking the open source code and fondling the folders for the images and sounds. And once I've identified the purpose of certain images, I create transparent jpegs of the same name or insert animated gifs of landscapes in the place of character movement files. Although my results so far haven't been very successful, the hope is the game will eventually look nothing like and play nothing like the original or any game.
There is no way I can compete with large multi million dollar animation and coding budgets. So why not corrupt the game format entirely. To offer the hint that a user/reader/player is within a game environment, but birth their 3-dimensional experience to not resemble anything in the physical world.
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© The University of Iowa, 2004-2008
All works are copyright the individual artist |
