mony greene's blog

Most of the American society uses the features of a Microsoft program to perform daily duties. Existentially, the sounds signify a meaning relative to the norm, yet as Ryan states, “the Internet is an overflowing well of narratives.” Computer users’ interactivity with Microsoft sounds creates unforeseen narratives that are always part of the norm. The “norms” of how computer sounds are portrayed or the order in which the sounds of Microsoft are organized can constitute a story. Of course the story could change when the sounds and images are reorganized. Some of Microsoft’s sounds, as presented at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfIe5UfGvvw are a medium in which a story is derived from the interactivity between the computer and its user. Thus, a narrative with a musical discourse is created from the daily computer sounds. Personally, I appreciate the way in which the sounds that I interact with on a daily basis are narratized. It shows that narratives help give meaning to what already exists in life.

Is there already a prewritten, set story that the player is interacting with in Photopia? Is the player limited to the verbal outline that has been pre-set for the game?  read more »

At the beginning of class on Wednesday, 3-5-08, Zach Whalen performed a visual experiment. He sat instead of standing while taking role. The bases of his experiment was to see if his optical, maybe perceived as intimidating, presence would have an affect on the way students spent their time in anticipation for class to start. Zach noticed that the students had a more uninterrupted social environment when he was sitting instead of standing. The Double Slit Experiment, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfPeprQ7oGc (note: if this link doesn’t work, just type in “Double Slit Experiment"), being performed by the animated Dr. Quantum, presents an experiment where an optical presence also affects the actions of what is watched. For instance, the path of the electrons or particles of matter in the existents are altered when observed. This is comparative to the visual, verbal affect of comics or computer games. The story that is verbally presented in the text can be altered by the way it is visually presented in the events and existents, and just by being observed, the viewers’ perception of the story can be altered.  read more »

In comparing human intelligence and computer intelligence, the distinction, or lack there of, between the two must be addressed. Some say that the computer is modeled after the human brain. The computer was created or is created by humans, so the computer is, in fact, a result of human intelligence. Even though humans created the computer and the program, there is still a debate on which is the implied narrator and the real narrator is in an interactive game such as Eliza. In an interactive program, both the program and the human interacting have an impact on how the story develops. For instance, the events develop as the characters (the computer program and the human, player) are interacting. That is, Eliza, a character, puts the happenings into effect by creating verbal action. What Eliza first verbalizes, introduces or opens a template to a story about the human, character’s psychological defects.  read more »

As Huizinga mentioned, Game, or the act of playing a game, preexists culture, but playing a game also frees a culture from the constraints that can impede creativity. For instance, instead of family time being spell bound in, “The Twilight Zone,” the family can play an interactive video game on a TV set where narratives can be created. The players’ perception of the game world is relative to the players’ real world, or vice versa. The game world signifies society which has an impact on players who constitute society, and if the players have not yet experienced the sociological constituent that a game might offer, then that sociological aspect might be first experienced and modeled after the game world. The narrative comes diagrammatically full circle where or when there are two events and existents occurring simultaneously through different discourses. Either at the time of playing a game or when the players are outside of the game, the game world is as physically, mentally narratological as the physical world that constitutes daily living. The game world and the physical world are interconnected.  read more »

"Tarzan of the Apes," by Edgar Rice Burroughs, presents the visual representation of language and why the ability to reason is a determinant factor in how humans, mentally superior to other forms of life, are able to construct meaning or story from images. Tarzan first comprehended the letters and words in a book as, “little bugs.” When Tarzan discovered drawings that visually explained the words, such as B-O-Y with a picture of a young boy, the “little bugs” suddenly had significance in meaning. The visual aspect of the text, the shapes, the size and type of the font, et cetera remained the same, but, for Tarzan, the meaning of the text changed when he was able to give meaning to the images. The same pictures, images were in the books, yet Tarzan came up with two different interpretations. Since I began studying English in college, I have read Tarzan with a different interpretation than when I was ten years old. The way in which I view the sentence construction, the verbiage of the time when "Tarzan" was written, and my perception of the characters have all changed.  read more »

My partner, Alice, and I viewed the “Dancing girl” at the same time. I perceived the dancer turning to the right. She perceived the dancer turning to the left. When I thought the dancer’s back was pointed to us, Alice thought the opposite. I mentioned that I must be right since the shadow of the leg followed in a clockwise motion, the dancer pivoted on her left leg, and the left side of her body moved proportional to a clockwise motion. I thought any other interpretation would break the physical laws of the universe. Well, it must have been the physical laws of my universe since; Alice had a totally different perception. Who was right? She is a left brainer, that is factual, et cetera, and I am a right brainer, that is philosophical, et cetera. If there is, as Derrida put it, “nothing outside of the picture,” then how is the movement of the animated picture different to each viewer? The representation of the image relative to the viewer’s paradigm constructs what is in the picture or how it is moving. The conceptual, visual stimulation is contrarily metamorphosed when there are multiple discourses in one event.

Combining the visual and text aspect of game, game, and again game, the player has more variability in the verbal discourse of the game. The metaphysical state of verbal narratives is a priori. The something of nothingness, as released in the verbal narrative, leads to an entirely new concept of the story space, for the story and its manifestation is not limited to the technical and physical discourse, but open to the reader, player visualizing the text while still interacting with the game. Hence, the existents are not limited to what is visually seen. The settings as perceived on the computer screen and the settings as perceived in the player's mind are juxtaposed and both the visual and the mental story are occurring at the same time, but could have different narrative meanings.

Viewing the final page of Krazy Kat on page one hundred and twenty five gives an understanding of the causality of time in relation to the story and discourse of a comic. The lines of the panels, or lack there of, are laid out to accent and draw the reader’s attention to the final comic frame located in the bottom right corner. In the last panel, a dramatized version of the entire story, still visual to the viewer of the panels, is being told in the past tense but could be visually taking place in the present moment. As explicated by the discourse, the entire story is told in the last panel, but takes all of the panels on the page to present the stories actual time relative to the events of the narrative that were supposed to have taken place.

Given the game world’s technological advancements, the first time an avid computer game player plays Passage, the gamer could be taken back by the simplicity and lack of digital clarity that is so often seen in today’s interactive games. In Passage, the focus is on the interaction between the player and the games’ possible narratives that come from the player being able to interact and change the way in which the game is carried out. Regardless of which way the game is carried out, there is always a beginning and an inevitable end. The technical discourse remains the same, yet the story or way in which the player (s) makes it from the beginning to the end can differ.