FEB 4 - DIGITAL IDENTITY

Jay Bolter & Richard Grusin. 1999. “Part Three: Self: Remediated; Virtual; Networked,” in Remediation: Understanding New Media. MIT Press, pp. 230-265.

http://monoskop.org/images/a/ae/Bolter_Jay_David_Grusin_Richard_Remediation_Understanding_New_Media_low_quality.pdf

The Remediated Self

- Cavell goes on to point out, the strategy for achieving this unmed~ relationship shifted with romanticism from an emphasis on the world as object (mimesis) to the viewer as subject (expression): "To speak our subjectivity as the route back to our conviction in reality is to speak of romanticism" (22)" - (234)

- She is defined as a succession of relationships with various applications or media. She oscillates between media-moves from window to window, from application to application-and her identity is constituted by those oscillations. (236)

- The body itself functions as a medium: through traditional means such as choice of clothing and jewelry, as well as more radical ones such as cosmetic surgery, bodybuilding, and body piercing. (237)

- New media are thus fully involved in the contemporary st gle to define the self as both embodied and mediated by the body. the one hand, they contribute new strategies of transparency that would seem to reinforce the dissecting male gaze.... on the other hand, through strategies of hypemediacy, new media refashion the normative gaze and its implied views of male and female identity (240)

The Virtual Self

- New media offer new opportunities for self-definition, for now we can identify with the vivid graphics and digitized videos of computer games as well as the swooping perspective of virtual reality systems and digitally generated film and television logos. (231)

- In a virtual environment, we have the free alter our selves by altering our point of view and to empathize others by occupying their point of view - being immersed (232)

- Unlike the user of virtual reality, the networked self shuts herself off from physical space by putting on a head-mounted display, the networked self may lead simultaneous lives in cyberspace and in her physical office. (232)

- Stanley Cavell (1979) has noted how the desire for expression came out of the desire for the real: "What [traditional] painting wanted, in wanting a connection with reality, was a sense of presentness - not exactly a conviction of the world's presence to us, but of presence to it. At some point the unhinging of our consciousness f the world interposed our subjectivity between us and our present to the world." (234)

> Immediacy
> Hypermedia applications

Lecture notes:

- Media reflecting yourself

- Whenever our identity is mediated, it's always re-mediated

- Re-mediation: always evolving media, fluidity of identity through media

- Digital identity

- Consumer &Public (citizenship) identities

- Interactive options aren't neutral

JAN 28 - ELECTRONIC LITERATURE

Pressman, Jessica. "Navigating Electronic Literature," in Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary. 

http://newhorizons.eliterature.org/essay.php@id=14.html

- Electronic literature is unstable: "it emerges as a processural performance across codes and circuitry within the computer and in response to interactions from the reader"

- Navigation: how readers move through electronic literature but how they read digital works.

- Hypertext:

• Non-linear: branching narrative by clicking on hyperlinks to access new lexias, or chunks of text.
• Gives readers more agency and partial authorship

- Interactive fiction: often calls upon the reader to manually input text in response to a query or narrative turn

- Signification: semantic value

- Reader brings interpretation

- Trilogic: interacting through multiple modes and voices

- Impulse to add complexity to a story is something that's been happening since post WW2

JAN 21 - DIGITAL AESTHETICS

Grau, Oliver. 2003. "Intermedia Stages of Virtual Reality in the Twentieth Century: Art as Inspiration of Evolving Media,” in Virtual Art from Illusion to Immersion. MIT Press, pp. 140-191.

https://moodle.yorku.ca/moodle/pluginfile.php/1112161/mod_resource/content/1/Grau.pdf

Using stereoscope to create panoramas (141)
"Uses our physiological ability to perceive depth of field: Two eyeglasses arranged as far apart as the eyes, the binocular parallax, allow the combination of two images taken from viewpoints a small distance apart... gives the observer the impression of space and depth" 

Disembodiment (142-3)
The synthesis of natural environment and mental impression puts the observer in a bird's-eye view position that overcomes the laws of gravity in the image space

"Spherical expansion" (144)
"New vertical, oblique, and polydimensional elements" that are set in motion electromechanically

Spazioscenico polidmensionale futurista (145)
Blending observer and mechanodynamic image space

Idea of perception and what is real (151)

Film as a medium (153)
""Attempts...to advance beyond two-dimensional screen projection in order to intensify its suggestive effect on the audience'

Cybernetics (161)
Science of conveying messages between humans and machines

Friedberg, Anne. 2009. "The Multiple" in The Virtual Window: Alberti to Microsoft. MIT Press. pp. 191 - 239

http://quod.lib.umich.edu.ezproxy.library.yorku.ca/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=acls;idno=heb08244

Cubism (192): Shifts in "perspective" are sequential unlike film and television

Montagist (192): The armchair televisual viewer

Visual windows (193): Digital imaging allows for multiple window screens and construction of seamless substitutions and simulation effects

Graphic User Interface (GUI) (193): Transformed the computer screen from a surface with glowing symbols and text to one which displayed icons and, later, digital images.

Postperspectival (194): No longer framed in a single image with fixed centrality

Postcinematic (194): No longer projected onto a screen surface as were the camera obscura or magic lantern

Post-televisual (194): no longer unidirectional in the model of sender and receiver

NOV 19 - SERIOUS GAMES

Gee, Paul James. 2008. “Video Games and Embodiment”, in Games and Culture, vol 3, number 2-3, pp. 253-263. 

http://www.bendevane.com/VTA2012/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Gee-Videogames-and-Embodiment.pdf

Key Words

Embodiment: (258)

- Virtual characters, virtual bodies

- Players inhibit this virtual body in a virtual world

Simulation:

• "Both writing and computers allow us to externalize some of the functions of the mind." (254)
• Simulation from the mind using our experiences (255)
• Example: "Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. The player must place ramps, trees, grass, poles, and other things in space in such a way that he or she or other players can manipulate their virtual characters to skateboard the park in a fun and challenging way. So imagine the mind works in a similar way." (255)
• "What we do, rather, is build different simulations on the spot for different specific contexts we are in and purposes we have" (256)

Projective Stance: 258

• Pretty much embodiment

Key Concepts
“way in which modern video games can illuminate the nature of human thinking and problem solving as situated and embodied” (Gee Abstract)
a) why, over the last several years, many people have become interested in video games as a site  to study human thinking, problem solving, and learning
b) “projective stance,” a type of embodied thinking characteristic of many (but not all) video games, as well as a form of thinking that is also, but more subtly, pervasive in everyday life and social interaction as well

Key Ideas
on why simulation is valuable:

“we can, of course, run simulations that reflect perspectives and values we ourselves do not believe in or even value by running a simulation from the perspective of someone else.  This is how to understand people and text we do not like.” (Gee 257)

“the world offers us raw materials for our simulations, and our simulations cause us to act in the real world in ways that change it to better resemble or model simulations.” (Gee, bottom of 257)

how projective stance influences the player:

“So, in playing a game, we players are both imposed on by the character we play (ie, we must take on the character’s roles) and impose ourselves on that character (ie, we make the character take on our goals).” (Gee 260)

Projective Stance relating to a video game: example of projective stance of “Thief Deadly Shadows” (Gee 258)

Definition of the projective stance in application to the real world: (Gee, bottom of page 261)

2) Moodle PowerPoint from Nov 19^th: Serious Games

Slide 3: Definitions

Game: "a physical or mental contest, played according to specific rules, with the goal of amusing or rewarding the participant."

Video Game: "a mental contest, played with a computer according to certain rules for amusement, recreation, or winning a stake."

Serious Game: "a mental contest, played with a computer in accordance with specific rules that uses entertainment to further government or corporate training, education, health, public policy, and strategic communication objectives."

Mike Zyda  "From Visual Simulation to Virtual Reality to Games". 2005

Slide 4: uses of serious games

•e-Learning

•Training

•Simulation

•Teambuilding

•Collaboration

•Social Networking

•Advertising

•Investigating

•Business Modeling

Slide 5: who uses serious games

•Military Defense

•Education

•Business

•Scientific Exploration

•Healthcare

•Emergency Management

•City Planning

•Engineering

•Religion

•Politics

•Tourism and Cultural Heritage

•Virtual Conferencing

Class Activity References

a) Second Life

b) In-class educational games

Extra Sources

Youtube clip of James Paul Gee on Situated and Embodied Learning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNfPdaKYOPI#t=26

NOV 12 - INTERACTIVE SCIENCE MUSEUMS (SECOND LIFE)

Barry, Andrew, "On Interactivity"

https://moodle.yorku.ca/moodle/pluginfile.php/1166966/mod_resource/content/1/On%20Interactivity%20A.%20BARRY.pdf

Chapter develops three themes in forms of interactivity

1)   contemporary political resonances in interaction

-       Concerns public participation, empowerment and accountability pg98

2)   issue of interactivity as a theoretical concept

-       With the contemporary museum, the technology of interactivity can be intended, if not necessarily to obliterate, at least to reconfigure the distinction between the human visitor and the non-human exhibit pg 99

3)   The political anatomy of the museum visitor – interactivity of the body

Today the visitors of the museum or the science center is often encouraged to interact or to play with the exhibit, the subject is valued. pg100

The modern science museum originally developed in the nineteenth century as a place where the successes of the Imperial state could be displayed and where “European productive prowess was typically explained as a justification for empire” people where given resources and contexts to self educate and regulate pg100

Define interactivity and outlines two functions pg 101

1. Range of technical functions - cost control, visitor research, quality assurance, marketing and customer relation (see handout to see how interactive can lure in sponsors)
2. Functions in broader thinking of Left or Right - imposes sovereignty

The radical message of the Explanitorium was one of democratic empowerment. Pg 102

• In practical terms, the exploritarium “let the visitor be the laboratory subjects of their own perceptual experiments, the are trying to encourage the visitor to experience the process of discovery and thus to become an experimenter, shift to interactivity pg 103

Problems, some exhibits, it was said can be interpreted in ways which lead the museum visitors to false conclusions pg 105

Example of experimental gallery Pg106- 107 

Spatial affordance of the interactive affordance – last paragraph pg 106

2 levels of criticism that can be made of the development of interactivity in the contemporary science museum pg11

1. a series of questions have been asked about the use and effectiveness of interactive, not least by museum professionals and interactive designers themes. Interactivities are sometimes simply amusements or distractions or experimental games for the well educated  pg111
2. it is important to interrogate the forms of political reasoning which have justified this remarkable level of investment in interactivity. Pg 112.

NOV 5 - DIGITIZING THE MUSEUM

Benjamin, Walter. 1936. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm

Key phrase:

The desire of contemporary masses to bring things “closer” spiritually and humanly, which is just as ardent as their bent toward overcoming the uniqueness of every reality by accepting its reproduction. (Paragraph 2)

Authenticity - Paragraph 2

- "The presence of the original"

- Technical: "process reproduction is more independent of the original than manual reproduction"

- Reproducibility: "Technical reproduction can put the copy of the original into situations which would be out of reach for the original itself"

- 

Aura - Paragraph 4

- Aura of the work of art

- "The technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition"

- Most powerful agent is film

Henning, Michelle. 2006. “Chapter 3: Media,” in Museums, Media and Cultural Theory. Open University Press, pp. 70-98.

http://site.ebrary.com.ezproxy.library.yorku.ca/lib/oculyork/detail.action?docID=10409199

Media's effect on the aura (page 71)

"Modern media are characterized by their ability to detach objects, scenes and people, from their fixed place in time and space, and to allow them – or their forensic traces – to circulate as multiples and reproductions. Museums traditionally prioritize objects, and tend toward permanence, toward the monumental and the unique rather than ephemeral reproductions."

"The medium is the message" - Marshall McLuhan (page 72)

- Material bias

- "The significance of any new medium was not the uses to which it was put or the content but the ‘change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs’"

- 'Content' of medium

OCT 22 - PUBLIC SCREENS (GUEST SPEAKER)

Dave Colangelo – Powerpoint Slides – Key Concepts

Interfacing, Accessing, and Performing the Archive in Public 

Interface: (re)spatializing the archive (OTOPOD – one place, one time, one device), reintroducing scarcity/sanctity, it is boundary between yourself and a machine, new modes of “recentering audiences” (Colangelo, York University, 17)

Access: Making the archives accessible

(Colangelo, York University, 18)

Performance: The performance of information, it is the event of producing both a history and future archive.

 (Colangelo, York University 19)

Site-Specific Screening and the Projection of Archives:
Robert Lepage's Le Moulin aimages
Bruno Lessard

Bruno Lessard’s Moulin Reading Key Concepts:

I. Introduction

Key Concepts:

Paul Ricoeur’s Definition of the archive (Lessard 73)

-    "The moment of the archive is the moment of the entry into writing of the historiographical operation. Testimony is by origin oral. It is listened to, heard. The archive is written. It is read, consulted. In archives, the professional historian is a reader."

Foucault (Lessard 73-74)

-        According to Foucault, You must memorize the monuments of the past, transform them into documents and lend speech to those traces which in themselves are often nonverbal, history is what transforms documents into monuments

LeGoff (Lessard 73-74)

-        According to Le Goff we need to dismantle, to destroy this montage, to de-structure this construction and analyze the conditions in which were produced these documents-monuments

II. '''le me souviens': La Querelle des Modernes et des Postmodernes"
(Problems with the history)

1. Theoretical perspective: claims to be neutral, but actually erases ideological orientation & de-problematizes events in history (Lessard 75)

- No content; “not a word of explanation”

- De-problematized in the minds of those who create and in those who watch

2. Collective appropriation of images by the public (Lessard 75)

Where are the images from? How were they created? Who decided to use these images?

3. Historical reconstruction (Lessard 76)

- Problem in retelling history from a “neutral” perspective; trying to avoid the cliches

- “New visual texts”: available for everyone to write their own historical narrative

> Spectators: Depends on the number of images they can actually identify

> Observers: Open-ended historical representation

4. Historical content vs. spectacle (Lessard 76)

- Spectacle: The display lacks soul - only remembers powerful images but forgets the rest afterwards

- Historical content: whitewashed to prevent controversy

III. (Re)Animating History: Site Specificity and Relationality

Key concepts:

• Meyer’s Two types of sites (Lessard 78-79)

-        Literal site: “an actual location, a singular place”

-        Functional site” “may or may not incorporate a physical place”

-        Moulin is between functional and literal, it is informational, a subcategory of the functional site, since it combines both a visual artistic representation of something with an actual physical place

• Vaugeois vs Dube (Lessard 78)

-        Vaugeois has a bias toward the written document; Dube has a strong focus on open-endedness

OCT 15 - DATABASE & NARRATIVE

Manovich, Lev. 2009. Cultural Analytics: Visualizing Cultural Patterns in the Era of “More Media” 

http://manovich.net/content/04-projects/061-cultural-analytics-visualizing-cultural-patterns/60_article_2009.pdf

 Cultural analytics is a new way to study, teach and publicly present cultural artifacts, dynamics and flows

 User-Generated Content – Internet content generated by a non-professional user

 Real-Time Cultural Flow is a new direction of study thatexplores the development of visual systems that would allow us to follow global cultures in real-time (ie. Real-time traffic displays – not cars on a highway but real-time cultural flows around the world)

 A situational awareness for cultural analysts is a wall-sized display divided into multiple windows, each showing different real-time and historical data about cultural, social, and economic news and trends

 Simulation is a wall-sized display playing an animation of what looks like an earthquake produced on a super-computer of important cultural events over time and space

 A long tail is a wall-sized computer graphic showing cultural production that allows you to zoom to see each individual product together with rich data about it

SEE GROUP'S NOTES:

https://moodle.yorku.ca/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=299352

OCT 8 - FOUR AFFORDANCES

Janet Murray's 4 Affordances

20:39 - 29:40

1. Spatial: mapping information, space/design, move through the space
2. Encyclopedic: Mount of information/data, capacity
3. Procedural: rules coded in computer, what can be done
4. Participatory: people participate to engage with data

Immersion: ability to move through the information, encyclopedic + spatial

• The more immersed you are, the more you want to do
• They create stuff that respond to user’s usability

Agency: Procedural + participatory

Interactivity: doesn’t mean anything anymore

• Making user feel that what they want need to do is doable

VINCENT VAN GOGH ARCHIVE (EXAMPLE)

Spatial: mapping information, move through the space

a.     Categorizing Van Gogh’s works by categories

b.     Chronologically ordered

c.      Search bar – we can move through his works by typing in specific keywords

d.     Tabs – translation, notes, JPEG of letters, artworks

e.     Constricting

Encyclopedic: Mount of information/data

a.     Compiling his works into one space

Procedural: rules coded in computer, what can be done

a.     Categories

b.     Provides specific pages for context & references

c.      Panels: Original text, translation, notes, artworks

Participatory: people participate to engage with data

a.     Hyperlinks & search bars enforce engagement with the database to search for what they needed

NOTES

- Paradigm of knowledge that you can look through

- Graphic designers taught around usability

- How people use it is as important as the database itself

- One thing has different aspects to it – avoid oversimplifying

#2

Manovich, Lev. “Database as a Symbolic Form” in Convergence June 1999 vol. 5 no.2 pp. 80-99

http://www.gravitytrap.com/classes/readings/manovich-lev_rev2.pdf

Narrative = p. 80, definition p.90 example:

• Temporal, linear sequence
• Cause and effect
• Dominant effect

Database = p.80, definition, p.81 definition, top of p.82, example p.87 explanation

• Mental in narrative
• Database is the computer and you're engaging/doing

Algorithm = p.83 paragraph 3 definition + example, p.85 example

• Computer games (example)
• Experienced as narrative
• Uses simple algorithm: each level's goal is to collect treasure til the end

The Man With The Camera (example)

• Linear print out of diaries
• Shots with special effects
• Seduce viewers into his way of thinking
• Constructivism, open narrative
• Interactive

Syntagmatic and paradigmatic = p.89, explanation, example

• Syntag: combination of signs, sentiments - runs through time
• Paradigm: Categories, culturally definied, structuring culture, "common sense"
• Semiotics: the study of signs