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Analysing cybertext
Cybertext sounds like it ought only to refer to brand new works of literary endeavour that are inscribed in digital media. On the contrary, Aarseth considers the notion of cybertext in the wider context of literature, film - indeed any artefact which can be 'read' in some way.
Ergodic literature, Aarseth argues, refers to texts which require non-trivial work on the part of the user / audience / reader. This leads us to the notion of 'aporia' or challenge - such as puzzles which require solutions in order for the reader to progress.
Cybertext itself is a text which requires some kind of calculation in order for it to be manifested - this may be reflexive in that the text itself alters in response to the calcuation (which may be done by the users themselves, or by the algorithms which generate the text).
Aarseth uses these concepts to clarify and pull apart various terms which are often sloppily used: 'non-linear', 'multilinear', 'unicursal' and 'multicursal'.
Essential reading for the groundwork in understanding interactivity and narrative.
Tags: cybertext ergodic interactive narrative narratives-4 non-linearity text
Sociology doesn't like truth
And the reason sociology doesn't like truth is because no-one really knows what it is. This book traces notions of truth from Hegel to Derrida - a gradual undermining of our confidence in our ability to say things that are true with any claim to authority. Indeed, the point really is 'authority' - who has it, and why?
So in a postmodern culture in which image trumps substance, and in which truth is just a construct, maybe at least knowing the history of truth will help?
I think that's true.
Tags: media-participation post-structuralism postmodernism truth
A gentle introduction to theories of narrative
A good, nice, gentle introduction to narratology - the theory of narrative.
The opening chapter nicely weaves in specific examples of narrative from images, books, critics, etc.
In particular, Abbott emphasises how narrative is thought by some theorists to be as fundamental to human nature (hard-wired into us biologically) as language and grammar.
Tags: narrative narratives-1
Popular culture is stupifying
This book contains the classic essay 'The Culture Industry', in which Adorno and Horkheimer argue that mass media or popular culture forms like film are a part of the commodification of entertainment, which itself is a manifestation of the pacification and stupifaction of the 'masses'.
Those poor working classes who console themselves after their hard day's labour by watching films that are so absorbing that they silence the imagination, and indoctrinate their audiences with pacified dreams of unreachable happiness.
The essay contains many useful insights into the commodification of art into 'entertainment', and the consequences of the industrialisation of the production of media forms, and the relation between capital and media production. But their attitude to the audience of these forms is pretty much about as elitist as it gets. That's Marxists for you, they really think we're stupid.
Tags: culture elitism imagination industrialisation marxism media-participation
The End of the Bottleneck
A TV channel is a bottleneck. So is a retail store, or a IP monopoly. There's only so much offal a TV channel can pump through their transmitters in one day. There's a finite amount of space on the shelf for the top-selling products. These traditional marketplaces are bottlenecks, which create an economics of scarcity.
An economics of scarcity suits corporations because they can monopolise the market, and control prices and profits. An economics of abundance, if such as thing existed, would be really bad for corporations, because they would lose their profit margins and their cash cows.
Anderson argues that the Internet creates an economics of abundance. If you sell an mp3 on your website, the cost to you is limited, and what's more the cost to you of selling one is not much less than selling one million. Now we can all join the market, and compete with the corporations. And by god how they hate it.
Tags: capitalism economics internet market media-corporations media-participation
What is culture?
According to Arnold, culture is:
the disinterested study and pursuit of perfection
not dogmatism (which he calls Hebraism)
harmonious and equalising
a guard against anarchy
I agree with the first 3 sentiments; however, in his condemnation of anarchy, he includes the common uneducated man (it was always a man, back in the 19th century) and his 'base' interests and pursuits:
'this and that man, and this and that body of men, all over the country, are beginning to assert and put in practice an Englishman's right to do what he likes, his right to march where he likes, meet where he likes, enter where he likes, hoot as he likes, threaten as he likes, smash as he likes.'
I know he was writing in 1869, but please!
Elitism and participation
Arnold was a poet, Oxford don, literary critic, and educational reformer. I have a love-hate attitude to him.
On one hand, his zeal to create a secondary education system which opened up learning to an ever wider group of citizens was admirable and had a significant impact on the development of the UK's secondary education system at the end of the 19th and start of the 20th centuries.
On the other, one of the reasons he was so zealous was that he foresaw a culture industry catering to the masses, which he viewed as less valuable and less worthy than the rarified realms of poetry that he saw as the pinnacle of cultural achievement.
He was right on both accounts.. however if I don't appreciate poetry, surely I can nevertheless stake a claim to cultural value elsewhere? I love him for his foresight and commitment, but I reject his elitism.
Tags: anarchy culture education elitism media-participation poetry
Places and non-places
Marc Augé describes the reconfiguration of space in contemporary society. Here history bites our heels, space expands yet the world shrinks, and the individual is supposed to be allowed to be, do, but most of all, consume, whatever is necessary for them to achieve selfhood.
Of place, we might have thought that "all the inhabitants need do is recognise themselves in it". Now, in the supermodern space, we misrecognise ourselves: we obey direction, and we are permitted to experience only solitude: the consequence of individualism is solipsism, that of consumerism is solitude.
Tags: alienation anthropology consumerism individualism place solipsism space supermodernity
The Pinprick Master
Foul, scurrilous, abusive, satirical, witty and barbed.
A selection of poetry written with bile.
"Hatred is by far the longest pleasure
Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure".
Don Juan, Lord Byron
Baker writes, in his introduction, "In an age of wanton violence the lethal accuracy of the poet is as much to be valued as ever." A pity then that contemporary poetry is virtually indistinguishable from Gardener's Question Time. This volume is a rebuke.
The Writerly Text
Barthes' classic close examination of Balzac's story Sarrasine is introduced through an exposition of 'what is in the practice of the writer and what has left it'.
'What can be written' is the 'writerly' text - the creative space in which the reader becomes the writer. Contrast with the 'readerly' - the meaning we can only recieve from an author, that closes off interpretation, and that demands our submission to the authorial voice...
This is an important moment in understanding the subversion of the author - and therefore of authority. And yet can we not overplay its significance? Is it not a paultry kind of freedom to produce meaning, merely when consuming another's text? Why not simply write our own?
Tags: author authority media-participation readerly writerly