The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T

Platform/Structure

In their discussion of Platform Studies, Bogost and Montfort reveal new academic insight into “the underlying computer systems that support creative work” rather than the creative media that is meant to be played by the user. They break down their discussion by highlighting common misconceptions about what Platform Studies is or might be. As someone who has never considered that there could or should be an area of studies devoted to the technology that allows digital creative work to function, here is what I learned and found interesting.

Platform Studies is less interested in determining whether something is or isn’t a platform, though the criteria they give is “Is it programmable?,” but rather it asks the question “Is it an important platform? Is it significant? What is its significance?” Then you connect the social impact of the platform with its function as a platform. As I was reading through this, I thought of the website Neopets, where there is a feature where you can create a guild and a guild webpage using HTML. Using this website as a kid taught me HTML, and I have come to find that many of my peers have had the same experience. Neopets, specifically this guild feature, is not just a platform, but it is a platform worthy of study because of its potential wide impact on my generation. The way Neopets is designed and set up has not changed much from 2004 when I was playing it, and the set up requires the user to explore, learn, and even program some. Though technically there might be some noteworthy things happening with Neopets, what Platform Studies seems to be more concerned with is the cultural impact with a supporting focus on hardware/software. While this phenomena that I have identified could be studied outside the scope of understanding it as a “platform” what using this framework allows us to do is essentially marry social impact and technology in what Bogost and Montfort refer to as “soft” technological determinism, meaning that technology and social reception influence each other, rather than technology being the sole driving force of social change. My taking this technological humanities view, it is important to understand both the tech/digital stuff (though you don’t necessarily have to be a programmer as they point out) and connect these digital platforms with particular cultural trends and occurrences, as I have briefly illustrated with my Neopets example.  

Gif Cinema: Artist's Statement

Gifs are a medium that exists somewhere between still and moving image. It differs from cinema in that they are much shorter format and are looped, meaning that they repeat their sequence endlessly. Gifs are more self-contained than film but offer more information, movement, and versatility than a photograph. Gifs also only exist digitally, as they are a specific file format. A gif cannot be really printed and hung on your wall or played in a movie theatre. (Though one is a physical limitation and the other a convention.) Perhaps more so than the looping nature of the gif, is this aspect of gifs interesting to me. As with all mediums, there are certain conventions associated with and applied to the usage of gif images. They are used online, most often as a way of heightening or clarifying expression of language on the internet. Like emojis they can portray emotion or add humor and nuance. Some gifs are used as a way of digitally displaying sequences from cinematic media on the internet without the commitment and inconvenience of video clips. Like most new and emerging media, however, the practical use of the gif is only beginning to make way for the storytelling potential of the gif. In the producing of this gif cinema project, our class is joining those who seek to push the boundaries of new mediums. In my own interpretation, I wanted to play off of the traditional usage of gifs to create a narrative similar to how The Blair Witch Project uses documentary conventions to tell a fictional story. I also stayed in the vein of horror. The low quality, slow frame rate aspect of gifs allows for a lot of potential when it comes to horror, hence my gifs of the girl staring into the camera, or the invisible shape moving in the woods. Horror can be more terrifying if it feels real, so I imagined an internet user coming across a true crime/horror story and posting his or her findings on imgur/reddit. I wanted to mimic the way people present stories on the internet, often using gifs as evidence and a tool to build up and draw out the story. In some ways I was able to do it successfully, but the problem with gifs is that they must come from some sort of footage that begins as motion picture. I wasn't quite able to get the footage I wanted, so I had to be crafty and borrow some things from the internet, which worked out, because it's what my fictional author/narrator would have to do, and curating the gifs is part of the conventions of the medium.

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.