World of Warcraft

After waiting almost an hour for the game to download, I created a "Night Elf" alter-ego. This was probably the most enjoyable part of my personal playing experience. I love the idea of creating a detailed, individualized character in a fantasy world, but when it comes to actually doing something with it... I was a bit lost. I did a lot of aimless wandering and had a hard time figuring out what I was supposed to be doing. I was often distracted by the streaming chat, but honestly, I was happy it was there.

World of Warcraft will never replace my first online gaming love- real-time "Blitzkrieg" chess. I used to spend hours playing chess with people all over the world. There was a chat function on this network too, and I made a few serious friends with my fellow chess nerds. Although I never became a particularly excellent chess player, I totally got sucked into the addiction and superficial internet community of online gaming. There is a weird satisfaction with these sorts of games- you feel a connection and an occasional superiority over strangers. Even though I couldn't quite devote myself to World of Warcraft, I completely understand the complicated mentality of gaming.

Video Games as Literature

I was pretty fascinated by the discussion of video games in these articles. I've never been super into gaming but have had my share of obsessions (Legend of Zelda) and I understand why the literary credibility of the genre is debatable. Some games definitely take the player on a journey where problem-solving skills progress him or her along a storyline, but others are just meaningless battle or racing games. While I'm sure they're all fun in their own right, I really feel like games that involve the player in acting out a part in a story are truly the most engaging. Will Wright agrees with this in his article "Dream Machines", asserting that video games stimulate a child (or adult's) imagination in the same manner as literature. But the thing about video games is that they really allow for so much more imaginative freedom than normal literary narratives. For example, when was the last time you saw someone make a rap based on a work of literature? I found this compilation of Zelda rap remixes and it totally rules. The world of video gaming is vast with possibilities!

John Cayley

John Cayley's literal art is completely captivating. He makes poetry both a visual experience and a sort of game, where the reader is responsible for discovering the code behind his seemingly arbitrary arrangement of letters. Language is completely reinterpreted in these works; writing becomes more the nature of language than a form of speech. The poem in the images above, "River Island", was my favorite of his works. The reader can control the organization of letters in order to make simple poems, as well as manipulate the images to produce sound. It is a true sensory experience playing with these poems, and redefines the art of literature. The reader must think not only about the words in front of him, but the reason why they they appear in the order, arrangement, and aesthetic appearance that they do.

This reminds me of a website I've been following for about a year called QuickMuse. The site invites renowned poets to write a poem on the spot, then plays the process in real time for the reader. As the site producers put it,

"QuickMuse is a cutting contest, a linguistic jam session, a series of on-the-fly compositions in which some great poets riff away on a randomly picked subject. It's an experiment, QuickMuse, to see if first thoughts are indeed the best ones. We're not entirely sure about this, but we suspect QuickMuse will bring readers closer to the moment of composition than they have ever been before. Best part: our "playback" feature lets you watch the poems unfold, second by second. Or as Thlyias Moss says, it's "the chance for a poem to find its/audience fast," in which words don't "have as much/time to stale, pale/lose the relevance of the moment" to which they belong."

The process is fascinating, because you're able to see authors add, delete, and move around phrases as they think of them. It's a great inspiration for aspiring poets as well as a marvel of recording technology.

Hacking the Future

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Arthur and Marilouise Kroker raise many prophetic, insightful, and at times, shocking ideas about humanity and technology in their book "Hacking the Future." There are several fascinating theories discussed, but the essence of their thought lies in the idea of "The American Algorithm." Because America has such a brief, multifaceted history, we are able to build any identity. In our reign as a global superpower, America's identity has become technology. In their words,

"Shucking off talk of a social contract or a divine right of kings and spitting on the noblesse oblige of "civilizational discourse," American identity is technology. And we don't mean technology as prosthetics or technology as a servomechanism of the struggling inner self, but two-fingered tech, make that straight up and no ice please. Like a chip factory running flat out, the American self plops off the electronic conveyor-belt with wired flesh."

The Krokers assert that Americans are truly disconnecting from their humanity, adopting a "web consciousness" rather than linear thought. This is an awareness that involves thinking about many things simultaneously, similar to the way a computer operates. In fact, it seems that Americans are beginning to desire more technologically advanced presences in every sense of their being. The Krokers call today's superficial society "Artificial Life," and see a retrospective alienation of humans from their own bodies. Arthur and Marilouise believe that human flesh is the "best android flesh of all," and we strive harder than ever to alter ourselves to look less human. This reminds me of something I recently came across on Geekologie: Terminator toys that make you into a convincing half-robot. The most interesting of these toys is a Terminator fist that actually shoots off to hit your long-distance enemies.

From Work to Text

Roland Barthes' essay 'From Work to Text' struck me in several ways. I really enjoyed its evaluation of the self in digital culture and where humans fit into the machinery systems of today. Barthes defines the self as "complicated and multiple," and I find that to be extremely relevant to the effects of the constantly flashing media stimuli that surround us. Barthes elaborates, saying that humans operate in "combinatory systems," meaning that everything is interdisciplinary and interconnected. Art occurs when you realize the combinatory nature of everything and the interplay potential. A wonderful example of this concept would be David Byrnes' experimental "Playing the Building" project. In this endeavor, Byrnes wired a dilapidated old building to an organ and "played" the various pipes, air shafts, and walls of the structure. The result can be seen in this video:



Another concept of this essay that piqued my interest was Barthes' idea that humans are something in between machine and organism. This reminds me of a film I recently saw, Metropolis, which was written by Thea von Harbou and directed by Fritz Lang in 1927. Far more ahead of its time than von Harbou and Lang could have possibly known, the plot examines a futuristic dystopia and the struggle between man and technology. Maria (played by Brigitte Helm), is at first the angelic voice of the working class, but is victimized because of her goodness and is turned into a machine.


The movie ends with the realization that humans must embrace not only the head (conscious thought) and the hands (the technology we create), but the heart between them as well. This is the essence of Barthes essay: we must interconnect the parts of our logical systems without losing humanity in between.