[ok. King of Space (right, Mark, say it, it's a hyperfiction), Beast Within, Toonstruck, Faust (badly executed, but nonetheless), Neverhood (sign-systems), Black & White (I heard ...)]
1:41 PM

Monday, November 26, 2001  
The Schweizer Jugendbuch-Institut and the German Department of Zurich University held an "explorative workshop on time and space in interactive media for kids" from Nov 23-25 - primarily aimed to benefit two doctoral candidates (which is A Cool Thing in the first place, I wish I'd had that!), but certainly to the benefit of all present. While the international (mainly USAmerican and Scandinavian) gamestudies-scene is already beyond cozy and quite established, I can remember a time (not quite so long agao) in Germany / German-speaking Europe when writing a thesis or trying to give a talk on *games* was met with strange looks, shoulder-shrugging or dismissal even. It's good to see that the German-speaking literary / cultural theory-community has recognized computer games as a specimen of digital literature to be reckoned with.

The organizers (Prof. Michael Böhler, Zurich Uni, Dr. Verena Rutschmann, SJI, and Mela Kocher & Judith Mathez) had made a point of inviting researchers with backgrounds in gamestudies, game-programming and in literature for children (which includes reader-response and psychology) - which meant that - even among the presenters - there were people present who did not a priori agree that computer games are among the most exciting representatives of digital literature - or even that they are any good or useful at all. This made for a very lively as well as interesting discussion and I think everybody present came, at more than one occasion, to the point where she or he had to start to reconsider her presumptions. Which was good.

The workshop was structured into three blocks of short presentations ("games and narrative" - " time & space" "computer games and/for kids") with discussions before, inbetween, and after that centered around, well, narrative properties of games, space (not so much 3D but metaphorical space), reception and user-respose and quality (the impact of technological development, the diversity of the genre, "literary" quality - unfortunately measured up against the pre-postmodern novel with negligiance of postmodern approaches as well a poetry and drama -, and quality of content - as in "what do my kinds learn from games") - with a marked absence of (with the exception of Randi Gunzenhaeuser's presentation) gender-issues.
There were work-presentations as well, _Myst III - Exile_ and _Wiggles_ for their treatment of space as well as Susanne Berkenheger presenting a finished and a work-in-progress of hers.

Not to forget the atmosphere & the hospitability of the organizers. I really enjoyed myself in a heated and productive though never hostile or fencing one-and-a-half-days of ongoing discussion and exchange & met people who strangely (and sadly) never turn up at the more international events (+ some well-know faces ;-). I really hope that this sort of productive gamestudies-get-together will catch on & happen more often in central Europe.
7:40 AM

 
Paradise found?

Ok, I don't go to museums often. Basically, because I find most exhibitions a bit dull (ok, I don't have much time, most of the time, either) - at least in Germany. Rooms filled with stuff but no booklets or guides in sight, don't touch anything, no infos to the exhibits, no apparent order or "walkthrough" - exhibitions for the specialist-visitor who knows what she is looking at. Britain is different. From hands-on exhibits in the Natural History Museum to castles in Scotland where guides linger unobtrusively, but have stories to tell when you ask them - or when you discuss a piece, they might saunter up and drop a comment ...
I was in Zuerich this weekend and stumbled into "Paradise lost - 10,000 years to the microchip". The Swiss National Musum's exhibition for the "Scharnierjahr" (sic) (= hinge year) 2001. 6 rooms touching aspects of groundbreaking changes in human life and/or society, tied up with the aspect of growth of population.

- a "time-tunnel" with tools from a bone-harpoon to a commodore PC
- population growth: the dance of death and the incubator, growth and dimensions symbolized by a sand-heap (6 billion people today and rising), a little bucket of sand (6 million when agriculture started) and a little shovel (growth by 200,000 a day)
- ressources: gadgets for measuring an weighing, a bike driven generator, the first gas-pump
- agroland: slide-shows & photos on early farming, tools, containers from a clay-jar to the sixpack, how to make a sickle, an axe
- factory-land: spinning, printing, sound-storage, development of factories
- dataland mouses, switchboards, transistors, disks ...

The three "lands" all presented in a design to match: factoryland with exhibits on conveyor-belts, dataland organized on mainboards, agroland with an earthen floor, the exhibites protected by rows of wooded stakes. Stuff to touch & try out as well. Slide-shows with sound-carpets, a video. Sufficient written info at crucial places.
- The booklet's a bit low, though ...

Agree or disagree that agriculture, industrialization and the microchip were the "inventions" pushed the world foreward and in the direction where we find now, agree or disagree with the close conncetion of these developments with over-population: this is an inspiring and well-made exhibition. Immersive, tactile, with a slowly unfolding underlying narration. Only maybe a one-time thing: there might have been more exhibits and more written info (a good booklet) - but I don't think _paradise lost_ was meant as a come back again and again-thing.

Living in or traveling to Zurich? The website has a little quiz that wins you a reduced-fee ticket.
7:07 AM

Friday, November 23, 2001  
In Zürich, Switzerland, for a workshop on time and space in interactive childrens literature (and on a weird keyboard).
First thing I noticed right off the train (after the oldfashioned bronze (? messing?) drinking water fountain): a vending machine, not with sweets but with games (dice, trading cards, etc.). cool. seems to be the right place to hold a workshop on computer games (which is not what Id understand by "interactive literature", but well ...)

Just got snowed on for the first time this season. The cold is crisp and clean here and the snow hangs out in the air as if to say, man, im at home here. or something.

Next time I hit an internet cafe: "Paradise lost - 10000 years till the microchip" exhibition in the national museum, and mor on the workshop.
4:18 AM

Thursday, November 22, 2001  
Studying (and trying to say something useful about) (computer) games (or digital art in genereal) is like the work of Sisiphos - only, every time up the hill the terrain is different.
4:00 AM

Wednesday, November 21, 2001  
So far, however, the World Wide Web, the must successful hypertext system by far, has only produced a better distribution mechanism, and very few texts actually use the nonlinear possibilities of the technology. (Gamestudies 1 July 2001; Editorial)

This is just an Aside in Espen Aarseth's editorial to the first brilliant issue of Gamestudies but it struck me: What if hypertext as a text-structure is a failure, a dead alley, a Fata Morgana even?
It was spring 1994 when I started to read ahead for a summer-school session in the States, Landow's Hypertext in its first edition & I felt like Garfield looking at a dish of lasagna: Where have you been all my life?! This was what I had been looking for most of my writing life - and lately even almost consciously, although I had no way of technically phrasing my desire, a way of writing where b) does not necessarily have to follow a) or at least not only a) and where the interelation of c) and f) as well as their influence on b) can be knitted into the very structure of the very text itself, not only pointed out, footnote-wise. I loved the concept so much that I managed to keep my interest alive through 2 years in an English Department in Germany, relatively untouched by the internet or even computers, and then convince a professor and fund-providers alike to let me write a thesis on fiction in hypertext.

-- All this by way of disclaimer; I really came to literary hypertext with the best of intentions. I read and read. Some of my all-time favorite texts are in hypertext (if you can access JoDI you can read more about my infatuation). But, frankly, who wants to read hyperfiction? And who wants to write it? It seems that as a technology for fiction-writing, hypertext asks the writer to surrender most of her control over the text. But how do I get across messages of multiple threads and voices and possible readings when I lose my reader between the 3rd and 4th node?

Information storage and retrieval for large amounts of data, yes. But when I sweat through a text, compose effects or an argument, do I want to give this up again? And as a reader, how painful it is to plot through a hypertext in search of crafted effects vs. pitfalls!
5:56 AM

Tuesday, November 20, 2001  
Torill's right: there's a whole universe of para-academic discussion out there (in here?)

I stumbled across Mark Bernstein's little games-heresy ... Are games an appropriate vessel for the artistic representation of deeper human issues? My spontaneous answer would be: Who cares? My scooter doesn't have a stero system or side impact protection or a spatious boot. But it's perfect for sneaking to work through early morning dense traffic and picking up some graceries on the way home.
Torill put this a bit more seriously: "... a game is not a story. What we learn of games don't necessarily compare to what we learn from stories." And why indeed should games go over the same ground traditional genres have already covered? There are things games can do that only games can do (How To Do Things With Games).

But maybe Mark is right to challenge the content-value of games. I'd agree that art (expect for being about art ...) is / should be about LIFE. I want ART to touch me and to talk to me. And most computer games, alas, don't do that. But is that because the genre as such is inherently insublime? While computer games (mind the cliche!) are being made by adolescent boys for adolescent boys, I wouldn't waste too much time on looking for meaning. There are exceptions, though.
The semi-computer game King of Space for example, incidentally published by Eastgate Systems and admittedly written by an adult woman , Sarah Smith is a moving and very clever story-game about the limits of free will (and interactivity). It even teaches us something about sexuality ...
And Gabriel Knight 1, "Sins of the Fathers", which I haven't played, seems to be about fathers and sons. Can't say much about it. But I've said some things about Gabriel Knight 2, "The Beast Within" ... "Beat" is a gripping game, it has a little historic backgdrop which I wouldn't trust too far, but its treatment of Otherness is really cool. It's all about fighting the other and/or evil that's inside you as well, facing up to your fears and learning something about yourself. It also carries a weird little homoerotic subplot, a thing one doesn't find often in compute games ... (and as is the case in too many books, the subplot is countered, and annoyingly with the exchange of a women as commodity between the two guys, but we've seen that one before).

+ A Note on games that "skip back and forth between different stories" (Lisbeth here) - Sierra Games do that all the time, esp. between series - KQ into Space Quest and vice versa. Maniac Mansion 2, The Day of the Tentacle does it as well. Nice bit of cross-advertising ;-)
4:53 AM

Sunday, November 18, 2001  
I did not expect to start a discussion with my review (butchery?) of Caitlin Fisher's The Waves of GirIs, winner of this year's ELO award. Mark Bernstein, Jill Walker and Lisbeth Klastrup have blogged me. There's also a German discussion I had the chance to reply to & here's some more comments I'd like to make.

The major point of this discussion seems to be the question whether or not digital literature has to be multimedial at all costs. I never said it did. But if an artist sets out to create a multimedia text, she should make sure it is finished - and that means, among other aspects, debugged - before she publishes it. Of couse the web encourages the release of work-in-progress but I'd guess that an award is a situation where a certain degree of finishedness is called for. The book-world comparison here is not glossy illustrations but whether I have my table of contents, the index and the bibliography in order, the spelling checked, the paragraphs complete, the quotes doublechecked -- It is easier to come up with a list like this for a piece of academic than for fictional writing, because, when it's art, basically everything can be read to be intentional. Or can it?
I agree with Adrian Miles that a broken, trashy interface may well be intentional, meant to express something, tie in, in this case, with the young girl-motiv. But, hey, if I were to create something that hinges on the brokenness of broken links and images, I'd take extra care to make sure that my audience sees what I'm doing; and most of the bugs in Waves are awfully hard to be read as intentional, even with the best of intentions -- I'm tempted to mention John McDaid's Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse (again and again and again) - McDaid plays with error messages in an environment that makes it quite clear they're tongue-in-cheek.

For all I care, Fisher could have submitted a text-only piece - only I guess the ELO would not have accepted it, seeing as they called for contributions that use up to date technology. - Though maybe they wouldn't have minded - after all the fiction-award went to a text that does not meet the standards set up by the jury. But even if Fisher be a "natural-born bad programmer", she might think up great multimedia - but then she needs a team to realize it. I agree with Mark that there are lots of great places on the web that have been created by an individual - but the computer encourages and facilitates team-work and why shouldn't a text-person use this option when she's had an idea that works best in multimedia. My HTML sucks, but I work with designers and programmers who not only realize my concepts but are vital part of the creative process - because they add their know-how. Team-work is taxing, keeping the team going takes a lot of work - but if the team is made up of dedicated poeple who know what they're doing it's always worth while.

There's also the thing about the judging criteria: all comments to my review suggest that _innovative use of electronic techniques and enhancements_ and _quality and accessibility of interface design_ are not what most people look for in digital literature. Might be intersting to find out what people, those who are intimately familiar with digital literature as well as those who do not yet really read it, expect from it. I personally would stick with _quality and accessibility of interface design_ but could do without _innovative use of electronic techniques and enhancements_ as long as the technology is used *correctly*.

10:24 AM