GIF Cinema: The Case of the Missing Girls

So I heard a story about some girls who I went to high school with who went missing, and I've been doing some research and there's some pretty freaky stuff going on. The case is unsolved and the only available evidence is a series of YouTube videos posted by the girls that have been taken down during the investigation, though some gifs remain. Here's the summary of events, let me know what you guys think about all this. Theories range from the usual kidnapping/murder to...



On February 12th, 2015, three girls from Salt Lake City, Utah went on a road trip through the American West, posting travel videos to a YouTube account with only 30 subscribers. The videos started out normal, footage of landscapes and driving in the car.

But the videos began to get a bit darker, a bit stranger. While the girls were posting to this account, it was later reported that they weren't posting on any other social media, replying to texts, or responding to calls. Their families thought they must not have service and thought nothing of it.

This is from a video posted February 17th. It's 10 seconds of driving in the dark.

On March 3rd, the girls had not returned from what was supposed to be a two week trip and had not responded to any calls or texts. Their families reported them missing to the police. No video had been posted since the February 17th video.

The last known sighting of the girls is at a gas station in Northern Arizona where they also last used their credit card. A gas station worker remembered seeing them, but reported nothing unusual. This was on February 17th, a few hours before they posted the 10 second video.

Later some CCTV footage from the same gas station was posted on YouTube, and this is where things get creepy...

The footage features what appears to be some sort of creature, or at least something not human, walking near the gas station. The footage is dated February 17th.

<iframe src="//giphy.com/embed/WWgeW0X1xw3Cg" width="480" height="270" frameBorder="0" class="giphy-embed" allowFullScreen></iframe><p><a href="https://giphy.com/gifs/WWgeW0X1xw3Cg">via GIPHY</a></p>

This alone might seem like a stretch, the surveillance footage is low quality and the source is a YouTube account with no other videos. The footage also later appeared in another YouTube video claiming that this happened at a gas station in Peru.

But then on March 11th, another video was posted to the girls' YouTube account. Again, it's been taken down but this is a gif saved from when it was up. It features one of the girls secretly taking video... and terrified.

She whispers in the whole video, saying "I'm so cold." and "We tried to be safe." There is loud crying in the background throughout and at some point the lights in the background go out and the video abruptly ends.

I'm so cold.

I'm so cold.

I'M SO COLD.



On March 28th, 2015, the girls' car was found in some brush outside Zion National Park in Southern Utah. The car seems to have been wiped, only one piece of DNA, a single hair from one of the girls, was found inside. The keys were left in the ignition and there was a full tank of gas in the car. Outside the car was a pile of mostly burnt clothing.

There are no leads, no suspects, and no sign of the girls.

I post this now because a final development in the case has occurred...

A new video has been posted on the YouTube account.

February 17th, 2017. Exactly two years after the posting of the 10 second night driving video.

In the video, the person filming, presumably one of the girls, follows a mysterious, warped shape moving through the woods. At some point an unearthly screeching sounds and the girl starts running and whimpering with the camera. The camera stops working and the video ends after 21 seconds.


So... what happened to these girls? What's in the woods in Southern Utah? Or Northern Arizona? Or wherever they may be? Several search parties have been conducted between Zion where the car was found and Sedona, Arizona. They found a bloodied blanket wrapped around a dead blackbird, but other than that, nothing that could be considered evidence of the missing girls.

Let's hear your theories.

Interactivity and Immersion

In Janet Murray's article on immersion, she doesn't just talk about storytelling mediums that are based on interactivity, she starts with the immersive quality of storytelling itself, and how that has manifested itself in artistic mediums throughout the centuries, from the novel to the computer game. One particular concept she touches on, is how stories can be objects of projection, like how infants find pleasure in teddy bears because of the associations they project onto that object. As she refers to this idea in psychology, I was reminded of other similar theories regarding immersion. Film theorist Daniel Dayan theorized that mainstream narrative films were produced in such away that an audience member was "sutured" to the screen as a way of regressing to the imaginary stage of development. Both theories suggest that there is a sweet spot that must be created by the artist in order to get optimum spectator immersion. If you go too far or don't go far enough, it becomes problematic. Dayan viewed the suture effect as undesirable, and that it was to be shattered by media that alienates, that rejects this immersion. Murray instead suggests a framework for immersion that is resistant to the side effects of anxiety, extreme pleasure, identity crises, and mental susceptibility. This framework aims at hitting that sweet spot. The other theory I thought about is referred to in the book I am reading for this class: How to Talk About Video Games by Ian Bogost. In it he refers to indie game developers who were inspired by the philosophy ideas of Milhayi Csikszentmihalyi regarding "flow." Flow refers to participating in an activity that matches well with our skill level, producing the optimum input/outputs and therefore a productive pleasure. The indie game developers thatgamecompany, took this philosophy in order to develop games that met that idea of "flow" or what we might call "being in the zone." This zone is immersion, full participation, connectivity, and projection of ourselves into another object. The game or medium becomes a second space where we have room to explore and experience fears, desires, anxieties, and emotions that we don't have the capacity to experience without some sort of external chambers. To put it in cliche terms, we lose ourselves to find ourselves.

Ian Bogost's How to Talk About Video Games

The title How to Talk About Videogames might give the wrong idea when you pick up video game critic Ian Bogost’s latest book. The “how to” part of the title implies a methodical approach on the best way to do something, but Bogost entirely rejects this method as he attempts to tackle the emerging field of video game critical theory. Literature, cinema, and art theory textbooks address frameworks, theories, and methodologies that authoritatively outline the best approaches to understanding their respective mediums. This is neither how to guide nor theoretical textbook, but rather a showcase or anthology of unidentified critical approaches in action. In his book, Bogost addresses the absurdity yet necessity of critiquing video games in his introduction “Nobody Asked for a Toaster Critic.” What follows is a selection of his own critical writings on everything from the existential anguish that is the Mario Kart blue shell to how the evolution of artistry rarely shows itself in the video game medium. Each essay could be argued to operate under particular theoretical frameworks which apply to cinema, literature, and visual art, such as formalism, auteur theory, phenomenology, etc., yet Bogost never labels his critical reviews as falling under such frameworks. By doing such, by this show-don’t-tell style of “how to,” Bogost matches written form with his own theory, which is that video game theory should fall somewhere between academic and practical and that games themselves similarly fall between cultural artifact and mundane appliance.

In his approaches to various types of games, Bogost gets at some key issues in new media which we have discussed in this class, such as the topic of authorship. Who is the author of something that is created by a multitude of people in a studio concerned with financial success? How can authorship be manifested across several games created by the same people or companies? Can there be auteurs in game design? While Bogost doesn’t necessarily answer these questions, he addresses them in several of his case analyses such as the one of popular phone game Flappy Bird, the first case analysis of the book, which is appropriate because he is able to cover several aspects of gaming in a game that most people will be familiar with. His encounter with the issues of gaming aren’t quite direct, he seems to start by getting at the appeal of these games, what makes them unique, what makes them successful. Often, it is these overarching themes in gaming that are the answer. For example, it is the relationship between the author’s intent and the resulting formal elements of Flappy Bird that make it a unique case study. Bogost identifies a relationship between the attitude of the game’s creator, whose aloofness, mystery, and decision to ultimately remove the game from distribution may have something to do with the success of the game. The resulting game is one that is similarly aloof and distant, which creates a “hard to get” situation for players. The game does not reward or change to beckon the players, it simply exists as if the author created it on a whim with no intention of going above and beyond to hook players.

In this analysis of Flappy Bird Bogost judges the game based on its own merit and criteria rather than fitting it into preexisting frameworks for understanding artistic mediums. By doing this he is boldly carving out a new way of talking about an emerging technology. It could be a start to talk about the composition, narrative, audience response to, and context of Flappy Bird as one would with literature, film, and visual art, but in showing how to talk about videogames, and deciding to write a book about it, Bogost supposes that we need to go beyond existing ways of critiquing and understanding. The nature of gaming is vast, interactive, and multidimensional. A sports video game, involving aspects of existing athletics and video game mechanics, cannot be judged the same way puzzle games are. In fact, this is how Bogost starts out his chapter on puzzle games.

“It’s hard to talk about abstract puzzle games, particularly about why certain examples deserve to be called excellent ones. We can discuss their formal properties, or their sensory aesthetics, or their interfaces. We can talk about them in terms of novelty of innovation, and we can talk about them in terms of how compelling they feel to play. But observations like these seem only to scratch the surface of titles like Drop7 and Orbital. Can we talk about such games the way we talk about, say, Bioshock or Pac-Man or SimCity? Sycg games offer aboutness of some kind, whether through narrative, characterization, or simulation. In each, there are concrete  topics that find representation in the rules and environments. Indeed, it’s hard to talk about abstract games precisely because they are not concrete.” (Bogost, 2013)

In fact, Bogost often talks about video games by suggesting they are hard to talk about, but attempting to do so anyway. And he often succeeds just by drawing attention to the thing. Ultimately the take away of How to Talk About Videogames is just this: to talk about videogames, you must think about them. First you encounter them, some you like, some you dislike, but there has to be a reason why. In that way it is no different than talking about any other medium, the only difference is the answers are new, complex, and ultimately somewhere between how to talk about a toaster and how to talk about the Mona Lisa.

Media Example:

Nidhogg, to be discussed in report.

Aesthetics

This presentation of "The New Aesthetic" was loaded with tons of examples of how the digital world and the physical world have started to converge, breeding a new culture, a new aesthetic. Particularly interesting to me were two projects each attempting to question and understand certain memetic aspects of our culture that have developed as a result of digital technology.

The first is some of the experimentations with Google Earth and Google street view. In one project, the artist draws attention to the strangeness of looking at a photo taken by a robot: slightly off the ground, similar to how we see things but different enough to make it of the Uncanny Valley. These 360 cameras function to allow us to see places as we do in real life, essentially imitating the human eye. What results instead of a robot seeing as a human, is a human seeing through the eyes of a robot. It allows us to understand this world view of the digital and for the digital to understand the world view of the human, encouraging convergence between the two. Will we ever truly see as machine? Thomas Nagel, a philosopher, wrote a paper called "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" that explores this crossover of consciousness that is not truly attainable and that only inference and speculation is possible. However, maybe as our digital presence grows, so will our digital consciousness.

The second project that struck me was an artist who created finger paintings by making the gestures we use when interacting with technology, like scrolling on a touch screen or the tapping of texting. This project illuminates how certain aspects of our physiology as well as our culture have developed as a result of the technological apparatus, and how these gestures and movements have become natural to us, as natural as breathing, walking, or stretching.

Children and Morality in TH White’s The Sword and the Stone

In TH White’s The Sword and the Stone, the first part of a series of novels that make up The Once and Future King, the story of King Arthur, the future King Arthur is as far from kingly as one might get. He is a young boy, an adopted orphan named Art, whose adopted brother Kay and everyone around him calls “Wart.” A boy named Wart is our atypical hero, who will one day rule the fictional and glorious kingdom of Camelot. Stories set in the Medieval Ages like this one feature castles, knights, fights, swords, and pretty women for whom said knights can be chivalrous towards. These kind of elements allow for morality based on loyalty, honor, chivalry, and courage. However, do they allow for humility? Empathy? Wisdom? Kindness? Wart, our dear young friend, sets the tone of the entirety of The Once and Future King by being a young, meek, and compassionate boy under the care of the wizard Merlin, who prophesies of Wart’s greatness, even if his brother Kay seems like the more likely pick. The impactful morality of this story is one that has deep ties to Christianity as well: “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the Earth.”

The story is told in a series of tales. The book itself is probably beyond the reading level of any child, but the stories are memorable and accessible for children. Disney thought so to, hence the animated adaptation of this novel, which pretty closely follows the tales in the book of Wart and Merlin. Each tale has its own moral and all together present a morality counter to the typical ethics portrayed in Medieval tales. The first tale sets this precedent. In it, Wart and Kay decide to take one of the hawks, Cully, out for some hunting. Impulsive and boarish Kay decides to release Cully before the appropriate time, and the hawk’s release is unsuccessful, getting him stuck in a tree, feeling too unsafe to return to the boys. Frustrated, Kay storms off, leaving Wart, who stays because he is concerned for Hob, who had spent so much time raising and training the Hawk. “When Cully was lost a part of Hob would be lost too,” the Wart realizes. Kay, who calls Hob “only a villein anyway,” cares only for his sport and immediate enjoyment. Wart empathizes with the frightened Cully and the dedicated Hob. In his decision to try and recover the Hawk, he becomes lost and scared himself until he encounters a very old knight, who is on a quest for the “Questing Beast” a most likely imaginary animal who continues to elude the old knight. The juxtaposition of Wart’s personal quest and the arbitrary quest of the old knight is the same between the traditional Medieval morality tale and this one. Ultimately, Wart is rewarded for his choice to do good because it is through his experience in the woods that he meets Merlin, the wizard who helps him realize his destiny. Merlin fosters Wart’s natural sense of curiosity, compassion, and wisdom by becoming his tutor and using the untraditional method of transfiguration. As he strengthens these traits, he becomes closer to the moment where he pulls the sword from the stone and transforms from Wart to King Arthur.

The story of a child who can do what an adult cannot is common and appealing to kids, but instead of portraying adults as idiots The Sword and the Stone merely highlights the natural qualities of children which are valued within Christian morality. Sir Ector is often kind, Merlin is wise, and the old knight is honorable, but it is the lowly and meek Wart who “inherits the Earth.” The Sword and the Stone is a crucial work for children ages 1-100 as we shape our personal moralities.

Winged Migration: Building Taxonomies for Children

Let’s start with children’s picture books. In class we went through a picture book meant for children which on each page had a thematically sorted conglomerate of illustrated images and their correct English label. The book is meant to be non-fiction, a visual tool for parents to teach young children the kind of vocabularies that a young, Christian, American person might need as they are learning to communicate. While this particular one was an older publication, hundreds of these types of picture books exist on various basic topics a kid might want in order to flesh out his or her vocabulary. Media as a tool for giving kids the tools of classification is incredibly important, and books are a really effective tool, because they usually require an adult’s accompaniment to engage with the child, which studies show is the best way to learn. However, I suggest that books like these are the very basic building block of a child’s taxonomy. Children’s media must be able to not only provide image/word associations, but present the observable world in action in a way that books can’t, and without simple illustrations and labels, give kids further valuable information about a particular subject. Moving image is the most effective tool for this kind of learning, and it is best demonstrated in observational documentaries such as Winged Migration (2001).

Winged Migration is a 90 minute documentary that follows the migrations of several different bird species from every continent over the course of 3 years. This documentary puts birds first and humans second with minimal human involvement, and narration is used sparingly. If you’re of the belief that the attention of kids can only be held by fast, colorful animations, than this might not at first seem like a film intended as “children’s media.” In my experience with children, their interest might be piqued by anything, so why not a film that is mostly shots of birds flying. This kind of film meets the needs of inquiry and curiosity, providing kids with a taxonomy of not only birds, but famous landmarks, geography, biomes, climates, food chains, and natural disasters. Most kids will not get a chance to see an avalanche in their young lives, but Winged Migration shows one occurring in nature. The focus of this documentary might not be avalanches, climates, or the statue of liberty, but by following the patterns and behaviors of birds, migratory creatures, they are able to see these things in context. Context is the key here that separates observational documentaries like this from the classification picture books. A picture book might be able to show basic features of a duck and label it as such, but the nature film allows for more inquiry and inference. “Look this is a duck. The duck swims, flies, grooms, communicates, and even fights sometimes.”

Children learn human behavior in their homes. They interact with their parents and siblings and watch plenty of shows about other children. Things like play, communication, and basic needs are picked up by the day to day necessities of being a young person. However, if this is all a child is exposed to, their world is small and human-centric. Winged Migration is the antithesis to it. It’s large, expansive, and rejects humancentrism. Through the documentation of birds and nature, children can learn through observation about diversity, natural environments, and understand the similarities and differences of all living things. While Winged Migration is quite educational, it also reads as spiritual. The music contributes to this of course with chamber choir music, but it is also interested in the transcendental qualities of nature, qualities that are capable of transfixing children and contributing to both their secular and spiritual inquiries and growth.

Narrative and Gaming

I appreciated how thorough Juul is in his argument that video games and narratives are separate entities although games can have narrative components. I found that as I came up with a counter argument, he addresses it without completely dismissing it. I have particularly been of the mindset that narrative is separate from any sort of medium, and that the author can chose to have narrative as its dominant or not and the spectator can also chose to interpret it from a narrative standpoint or not. However, Juul argues that the nature of traditional story telling formats is narrative, and the nature of gaming is interactive and therefore not interpretive dominant. This encouraged me to understand narrative in a new way: as something that is created and fixed. Narratives have specific components and qualities that are observable: existants, locale, agents, diagetic/non-diagetic, resolution, etc. What is usually the interpretive part is theme, moral, message, tone, meaning, etc. In stories and films, the formal elements are fixed although we have all the room in the world to interpret them. In video games, the formal elements are fixed in that the possible options are generated before hand either by design or algorithm, but what is not fixed is the structure, the order, the options the players will choose. By adding that agency, video games open up formal elements in the way that thematic elements are open in traditional narrative in that the player/spectator is necessary in determining them.

With this in mind, here is my example from new media on how this operates: how the user can determine formal elements in such a way that is not possible in traditional narrative mediums.

This is a video game adapted from a book, which is interesting in terms of the narrative argument. You glean pieces of the book as you play the game, but ultimately the experience of living at Walden Pond is in your hands.