Jennilee's blog

What I have gotten from Spacebass' Undefining ARG article is clearer than I expected. The author started off saying that in defining ARGs we would learn that there is no clear definition, but to me although there may not be a written in stone definition of what they are, there are commonly agreed upon components that make an ARG an ARG. It's not as confusing as I thought. In fact I see the article as a clear articulation of what ARGs are by someone who can communicate it. Basically, what I have been thinking since we've started reading and learning about ARGs, but definitely communicated and expressed more concretely and clearer. It's not as hard to understand as I had thought, given my lack of experience with ARGs. According to Spacebass, ARGs are chaotic play (an experience of chaotic fiction): Chaotic in that the end result is undetermined and play because the audience takes part in the process and they are who influence the outcome. From this experience of chaotic play comes chaotic fiction: again chaotic meaning the end result was not predetermined and fiction meaning that a work that is intended to be imagined and not real.  read more »

Is Cathy's Book an ARG or not? I say yes! Using Dave Szulborski's explanation of Alternate Reality Gaming, I would definitely say so. Szulborski's introduction to defining ARG's is the fact that its main goal is to deny and disguise the fact that it's even a game. When I picked up my copy of Cathy's Book earlier in the semester, I was excited because I thought that it was some sort of mystery book and that the pouch of articles was some sort of pouch of clues to help us along the story. They have helped us through the story, but in so many more ways than just by looking at each item at face value. While reading Cathy's journal, without even knowing it, we are being pulled into this ARG. Some of us choose to engage ourselves within the story: calling phone numbers, figuring out pass codes, and visiting web-sites, all the while immersing ourselves more and more into this game that isn't a game, or rather having the game immerse itself into our realities. Szulborski states that most successful ARG's are really about relationships between characters, entities in the game and the players, I think Cathy's Book covers these relationships quite well.  read more »

After trying out Michael Joyce's Twelve Blue for the first time, I was at first fascinated by the whole process of piecing together this story in any way I chose. With no real beginning or ending it was fun and interesting to go about the text and kind of make my own story up the way that I wanted to. But after a while I quickly got lost and bored. Having heard most of the class' remarks on Twelve Blue I didn't feel alone in my confusion. However, after reading Marie Ryan's explanation of the type of hypertext fiction Twelve Blue really is, it made the text clearer. I went from thinking of it as a bunch of random text to different events that are recollected and interpreted differently. Ryan explains the text as a reproduction of dreams and memory as well as a stream of consciousness. Each link is like bringing those recollections from one's memories into their conscious thought. Since these memories come into mind at anytime, they aren't in any order of time, and they can come back at any time.  read more »

When I first tried Photopia, I was so confused!  read more »

I whole heartedly agree with Robin as well as N. katherine Hayles on the idea that Narrative and Database are natural symbians: they both need each other; database needs narrative to make its results readable and narrative needs database to "test its insights". In Dr. Hayles' lecture she rethinks Lev Manovich's idea that database and narrative are natural enemies by finding an alternative view to the relationship between the two. Manovich has a limited view on what narrative is, describing it as found in only formal art, like in movies and literature, but according to Hayles, he fails to recognize that narrative figures are found in almost every type of "communication and congregation" humans participate in. Manovich's view on the database is also skewed, he goes from referring to database in the technical sense of a storage and retrieval device to making database and data one in the same. Hayles contrasts this idea with the concept of possibility space, since the idea of the database is limited and "represents only a small slice of actual and potential data".  read more »

In my Victorian Literature class this semester, one of the many texts we have to read is Alice's in Wonderland. Every time my Professor speaks about the text he mentions one thing that stands out to me each time: the text along with the images are one. In a sense, the story isn't the story without the images, and the images aren't the images without the text. To me Alice in Wonderland is a great example of W.T.J. Mitchell's theory of Image-text in the Beyond Comparison piece we read. My Professor cautions those who bought the text without the illustrations, in that they wont get the full literary experience without them. In this instance, although the illustrations may seem like reproductions of the text, they aren't as separate as they appear, and have everything to do with one another. John Tenniel created the images for the story alongside Lewis Carrol who wrote the story. Together both of their distinct works (the text and the images) work together to tell the story of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.  read more »

After watching the Helvetica documentary, I decided to do some research online about this typeface that I almost never put to use, but that is so widely used. I was surprised to find that there is somewhat of a debate, more like a war, on the differences between the Helvetica and Arial typefaces, which are commonly thought of as identical.  read more »

After taking my first look at Krazy Kat and It's relationship with Ignatz , my mind immediately went into black and white mode. Meaning, Krazy is black and loves this white mouse, who wont have her. From what I've read so far, not only is Krazy's gender ambiguous, but race hasn't been mentioned either. Because Krazy is dark and it's dialect is different from the others (yes I realize they all have an off way of speaking and the comic is in black and white), I still see Krazy as a black character. Without any previous knowledge about George Herriman, and being that it was the early 1900's, I assumed that Krazy was something like a mammy and that basically the comic was yet another stereotypical portrayal of blacks. When it wasn't talked about in class, I guess I assumed I was wrong. After a little research I found that I wasn't alone after all! As short as this bio is, its interesting and worth reading, George Herriman I guess it helps me understand Krazy and Ignatz's relations and the whole black/white question. So what have I learned?  read more »