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'Flick-werk zusammengestückelte Arbeit; stümperhafte Arbeit, Pfuscherei; Sy Flickschusterei
(Wahrig - Deutsches Wörterbuch)
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Thursday, February 27, 2003
Spielmaschinen
I took a while to figure out that Spielmaschinen mentioned in Marcus Hammerschmitt's article in telepolis is the catalog to the exhibition History of Games curated by the Computerspiele Museum Berlin. But it is.
9:00 PM
Polish Daughter
The lyrics make about as much sense to me as Hatten Er Din, but Christian Kjellvander's Polish Daughter (click _discography_, then _Polish Daughter_) is definitvely my pick of the week.
8:40 PM
Outskirts
For the first time in this year, today it got warm enough to take the bike for a spin to the outskirts.
8:30 PM
What is it good for?
Greg Costikyan's new blog on Games, Design, Art and Culture has a "section" (do blogs have sections?) on games he'd like to development but cannot or will not for certain reasons.
This issue, it's Great Patriotic War, a war-game that's not strategy-based but arcade style.
"How much actual strategy is there in running the Eastern Front, after all?" asks Costikyan and perhaps, I wouldn't know, if one aims for realism in a war game, arcade might be closer than strategy (or role playing). But why War Games at all? Why would one want to enact war in no matter how realistic an environment? From all I hear, those who are in it (the real thing), above anything else want to get out again.
What I find most disturbing about the Great Patriotic War proposal is that Costikyan makes light of an iconography that is painful to some and lothsome to others. Sure, there's a sarcastic edge to the entire concept, but the Horst Wessel Lied (I don't even want to think about who Google'll send to Flickwerk now) or "funny" You Lose-lines like "You are condemned to a concentration camp, and your emaciated corpse is ultimately covered with lime and interred in a mass grave of your compatriots." cross my line.
7:15 PM
HollyBlog
via Meg Hourihan (Megnut): The world's first ever (or something) film-blog is currently being written on the set of I Love Your Work.
Hourihan quickly dismisses this effort as "not a weblog" (not in real-time, no links, publicist-approved content) but welcomes the idea of a movie-website with actual content.
In her article for Salon.com, Alisa Weinstein finds more critical things to say and quote: Esp. Helen Jane Yaeger's accounts of what she is not allowed to blog lets one fear for a site with content, yes, but interesting content? I don't expect marketing-fluff from Yaeger - nor the stuff that would "make a People magazine editor wet his pants" (although this here post is pretty heretic, don't you think). But with everything else stripped, what remains?
In fact, I find the I Love Your Work-blog disappointingly dull. And sloppily done (the contrast is really awful, esp. the tiny red links on grey background, some of the external links open in self, some don't (how I hate it when they do), you can't tell internal and external links apart, subpages accessible through the left-side navigation lose the right-side navigation and the header). duh.
But I like the concept of Blogger In Residence. Invite an "A-list blogger", a specialist, a celebrity, a journalist of your trust to write a blocumentary of a concert-tour, a filming, the making of an exhibition etc. I'm thinking Thierry de Navacelle's Woody Allen On Location on the making of radio days. (disclaimer: I hope I am. Read it ages ago, forgot the title, but a little web-search tells me this must be it)
Navacelle also shows what you can write about inside a tight contract: how you choose location, how lighting is done, if the director's working close to the script or encouraging improvisation, what it means to produce a film. One can tell such things even if one has to leave out the numbers and saucy details.
5:00 PM
Tuesday, February 25, 2003
bthuthdy
Fortunately, Torill's blog is vague enough about dates (and then there's the time-lag from here to Norway to take into account) for me to be maybe on time:
HIPY PAPY BTHUTHDTH THUTHDA BTHUTHDY, Torill!
6:15 PM
Friday, February 21, 2003
When Hypertext-Critique Became uncool
A few years ago, the thing to do for young hypertext-scholars, was to deconstruct Landow/ Bolter/ et al.'s conceptual enthusiasm. Kick free from the fathers. That should be through now. We should be able to take first wave hypertext theory for what it's worth. To trash Landow for the utopias that never came to pass is a bit like saying: Wordsworth, ok, but he's such a Romantic ...
The other "forefather", Michael Joyce's Afternoon has turned into a hyperfiction non grata (same with Myst for computer games), not because there's nothing (good) to say about it, but because so much has been said about these titles (and much of it merely reiterating well-worn phrases).
There's an awful lot of awful literary hypertext (or digital literature in general) around - but I have read and reread Afternoon and cannot help but say, it's not half bad. Neither is Victory Garden. While I'd question some of Moulthrop's design-choices, VG is above all simply very funny & a surprisingly good read.
Still, much hypertext-theory with a critical angle today thrives on trashing Landow & Bolter, Afternoon & Victory Garden. In the tradition of Sven Birkerts these texts often start with their author's confession: I've only read Victory Garden for about half an hour, but .... and then plunge into lengthy explanation of why the whole genre can bore a grown man to tears.
The recent issue of Dichtung Digital sports two specimen, Dennis G. Jerz's On the Trail of the Memex
Vannevar Bush, Weblogs and the Google Galaxy (see Jill's and Mark's comments) and Henning Ziegler's When Hypertext became uncool
Notes on Power, Politics, and the Interface. Ziegler tries to render a post-Marxist reading of hypertext-theory and popular GUIs. His article is convoluted and poorly structured and I have a hard time following his argument. But his wholesale trashing of early hypertext-theory and as early hyperfiction is quite pointless without a close reading and the (at least) terminological (if not conceptual) sloppiness of using _hypertext_ and _hyperfiction_ indiscriminately does not help either. Ziegler recognizes that the stability sought by user-application GUIs is not what hypertext-fiction is aiming for, but passes over this point in his attempt to declare hypertext _uncool_ on the basis of a personal dissatisfying reading-experience "on a hot day in late 1999".
10:45 PM
A Tale in the Desert
Greg Costikyan blogs new MMG A Tale in the Desert, and a long and detailed post it is, too. I don't usually go in for MMGs, but after reading Costikyan, I'd try this one. What makes it sound interesting when I've never gotten past 10, 20 minutes in a virtual world, mostly because I get killed immediately & never muster the patience to get into the game far enough to gather the necessary skills to even survive? - It's probably that Costikyan makes it sound as if the skills you learn in ATITD are real-life skills: ATITD is looks like an animated museum of the history of technology - which sounds fun to explore.
9:10 PM
Security
I pass the US Ambassy twice a day. It sits comfortabely in an upscale residential area. The road has been closed for cars since September 2001 with US security personnel guarding access. The road that merges opposite the entrance has a real life road block, barbed wire and all.
Yesterday, four German police vehicles drove up, two on each side. This morning, they were checking approaching cars with machine guns at the ready.
7:30 PM
Oh so true
The Princess Series - a site for sore eyes.
7:20 PM
Monday, February 17, 2003
JoDi
Susana Tosca and Jill Walker's new Hypertext Criticism-JoDI is out: Hypertext Criticism: Writing about Hypertext.
It's not a line-up of individual articles, but 27 nodes by 7 authors + an editorial; interlinked by the authors. Quote from the editorial: "We invited submissions consisting of one or more brief nodes which we would then link together to create a hypertextual journal issue: an interconnected discussion of a topic rather than disconnected articles. ... We hope that this issue can serve as a landmark in the way hypertext criticism is perceived by authors, theorists and the general public alike."
Great concept. So much better (and truer to the topic) than a collection connected only through a common URL.
But how do I read this thing? The typical hyperjump-technique (change nodes whenever a link looks attractive) will soon lead to confusion. Might be better to read through the nodes first and then explore the connections, who linked where and why.
A more convenient navigation could include markers for different link types: links to notes and references; links among nodes by a single author; notes made by the author of a node to someone else's writing; links made by someone other than the author of this node; external links. Probably not in in keeping with the JoDI styleguide ...
Note: Jill's Blog moved. JoDI still has her old address - remember to update!
9:00 PM
Bargain
It seems that Google bought Pyra, makers of Blogger. This piece of news has made the rounds this weekend, but no-one seems to be terribly excited. No-one sees monopolist conspiracies. Now, if Microsoft had ... But Google?!
Perhaps they're trying to "acquire" a user-base who are used to paying for services (Blogger Pro) as a basis against launching their own for-cash-products. Perhaps they're buying out the largest player in personal publishing because those highly interlinked weblogs have taken over the leading positions in Google search results - positions Google, like most other search-engines, might want to sell some day? (Or if not directly *sell* positions, at least a search-engine that list predominantly private pages isn't very intersting for commercial site-owners who'd otherwise use Google advertising-features.) (Just a thought.)
8:45 PM
Hurt
Possibly the best music-video ever. Song's a NiN-cover, though (did you know that?). (Romanek's site's not half bad, either.)
8:30 PM
Saturday, February 15, 2003
Shelves
When I moved into this apartment, it seemed large enough to keep books and files in strategic piles spread across the floor - and small enough to benefit from bare walls. Now that, for various reasons, floor space has become limited, I broke my promise never to shop for Scandinavian "design" furniture again. (They got pretty neat stuff now. Not the rickety structures of my student days that had to be bolted to the wall. Magicker stands on its own.)
Anyway, shelves: Suddenly, I know what I know again. I remember how, when I wrote my thesis, I had a visual memory of where to find a quote. At times only that the relevant quote would be in the last quarter of a slim blue volume, left page, upper half. Just run my finger along the shelves.
And the spines lined up look (mind the cliche) like old friends. Not so much the individual books but the patterns and colors of volumes that have lived beside each other for years. When new books are added, the features change slightly, but remain familiar.
8:45 PM
Saturday, February 15, 2003
TEKKA
Tekka is out. I feel a bit like a first-time father who's been pacing the waiting-room. Mark's taken the programming upon himself (thanks!). But the baby's there - now you all go and have a look ...
ENJOY!
Tekka is all about enjoying new media. Think going for a coffee with your friends. Lots of talking and waving of hands. One of you coins the bonmot du jour with which you'll sign your e-mails for the next few days. Someone spills some coffee. Back at your desk, you dig into your work twice as vigorously as before and skribble notes for an article on the side.
11:15 PM
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