Oh, I was totally going to embed the video, but since it starts playing automatically, it sucks. Click here to watch (it’s worth a click, but seriously, who thinks it’s a good idea to have videos start playing automatically?!).

GPaper hopes to accomplish the first goal through “flyerboards,” a new technology that mimics kiosks or bulletin boards with flyers. A strip of low-cost, shrunken “posters” — for time-sensitive events, like store sales or public events — would appear on the side of a homepage, for instance. The reader could see one that looks interesting, click on it, and have it appear enlarged on the screen. (A larger version of this, not tailored to hyperlocal news sites, operates on the Yale campus. Click here to view it.)

Wong’s idea is one that makes you slap yourself on the forehead and ask, “Why didn’t I think of that?” The example linked above (and here) is just a digitally transcoded bulletin board. I have a regular board above my computer as I type this. We have bulletin boards all over the Tunxis campus. Supermarkets and restaurants have them too.

We walk by them all the time, but if a well designed flier catches our eye, we stop and take a look. Wong is taking the same concept and monetizing it. If I understand the concept correctly, thumbnail fliers will hang out in the sidebar of local media sites, and if one catches the reader’s eye he can click to enlarge it right there without leaving the site. That’s key.

If I see a good posting on the Tunxis bulletin boards, I can just walk up and read it, then get back to what I was doing. The way advertising on the web generally works now is that a small ad draws your attention, but to click it means to leave the site (or open it in a new window) to learn more. That’s kind of like seeing a posting on the Tunxis bulletin board, but having to go to the Library to actually read it.

So as I delve into the Futures project with my teammates, maybe we can hone our big idea by taking a step back and looking for something so obvious that it hasn’t yet occurred to anyone.

The player learns that he must look for his cues on what to do next. The opening graphic screen of Amanita: Samorost has what appears to be a bottle neck with a stopper in it, just asking to be clicked. Clicking in the general area of the bottle stopper gets the story going. So for a game with no instructions, it certainly has rules. The initial goal of the game is to manipulate each environment in such a way that the little fella from the bottleneck can proceed. And for the most part he’s no help at all, content to wait on the player to figure things out.

And the story gets rolling after that first user interaction. The view is expanded and the player sees that another planet-ship is on a collision course with the planet-ship that the protagonist is living on. A cut-scene where no user input is allowed shows how the little guy gets from his own planet-ship over to the other one, and the game again waits for the player to explore with his mouse. There are some characters toiling away in the fields that smaller than the one in the foreground, though similarly dressed. The difference in scale implies that the little ones working on the hills are much further away.

The first step to completing this stage is to check out the relationships of all objects in the environment. The character lounging in the foreground isn’t smoking his hookah. So the player clicks on the hookah and he smokes it. The contents are spent. Try clicking on the hookah again, and the guy tries to smoke from it, but gets nothing and discards the mouthpiece. This mouthpiece looks kind of like a key, and there’s a keyhole very near where the mouthpiece now rests. Clicking on the mouthpiece causes it to jump up and rattle around in the lock. The next thing to do, naturally, is click on the button atop the lockbox. This starts that ski-lift in the back ground rolling—but nothing happens! The player notices a loose cable, and clicks it. Try the button on the lockbox again and the ski-lift brings the main character up the mountain. He’s ready to go, and he’s facing to the left. There’s a left-pointing arrow on the left side of the screen, so the player clicks on the character, who turns around and skis back down where he came from. There’s another environmental factor to tweak. It’s the sign. Clicking on it until it points toward the left (where the hint/arrow points) ought to do the trick. Bring the guy back up on the ski-lift. Oh wait, on his way down he knocked the cable loose again! Finally after getting him back on the hill, with the directional sign pointed in the right direction, the player clicks on the guy. At this point, the player receives a pretty explicit hint. The character says “He’s in my way” and an arrow appears out of nowhere pointing directly at the obstructing character. When the player clicks on the little worker dude, he moves and then the player can click on the main character and send him skiing off to the next level.

Compared to this early stage, clicking on the main character from here on in elicits nothing more than a shrug and a stupid look (unless he’s able to act, assuming that the environment has been appropriately manipulated). The ultimate goal of the game is revealed at the end, when the other planet-ship that the little guy landed on (and explored with a great deal of help from the player) is steered clear of collision with his home planet.

As a game, Zork starts off very similarly to Amanita, but instead of the player being faced with a graphic environment and background music, he’s faced with a brief text-only description of the environment. Those superficial differences aside, the games both sit there and wait for player input, with no indication of where or how to start other than environmental cues. A person interested in playing Amanita will use his mouse to explore the environment, checking for places to interact. A person interested in playing Zork will mentally construct the environment, and will perhaps take the most obvious action by typing into the prompt: “open mailbox”.

The player can manipulate and explore the environment in Zork just as he can in Amanita, except that in Zork the player can move back and forth between rooms or spaces. Using text commands instead of the mouse, the player can walk around the house and discover a window that’s ajar. Attempting to enter through the window at this point is impossible, because the window is not open. This is a lot like trying to lift the character up on the ski lift in Amanita when the cable is loose. It’s an environmental condition of the game space. The player in Amanita cannot operate the ski lift with a loose cable, just as the player in Zork cannot enter the window while it is merely ajar.

Similarly to the subtle hints in Amanita, there are some subtle hints in Zork. Using the window example, the description of the window upon examination is “The window is slightly ajar, but not enough to allow entry.” Hint, hint! If the player enters a command to open the window, he is informed that “With great effort, you open the window far enough to allow entry.” Another hint! The next command is to “Enter window” and then the player is in the house.

In Zork and in Amanita, the player learns the rules of the game as he goes. In Amanita, if the player attempts to do something that is not possible, he is notified visually or aurally. In Zork, he is notified via descriptive text. There are many objects in the world of Zork that the player may wish to interact with, using commands like “spit on table,” that are not possible. In Zork, one cannot just spit on the table, it’s a limitation of the game’s programmers, who did not foresee that the player might want the character to spit on the table. In Amanita, perhaps the player wants to swat one of the little flies that is buzzing around. Well, it simply cannot be done. Clicking on the fly—at least when I tried it—has no effect.

I would say that Zork and Amanita have more in common than not, when viewed as systems. It’s easy to take a superficial glance and conclude that Amanita is far more advanced than Zork, but that ignores the fundamental aspects of the gameplay, which are the same.

John G. Timmons (above right) and Steve “Lettucehead” Ersinghaus, gave us an exclusive interview about the new program they are designing for Tunxis called New Media.
View Movie (Windows Streaming Media Player Format)

OK, OK, what happened to the video?

So what happens when we play Super Mario Bros.? We’re all probably familiar with the game and its mechanics, and so we don’t expect anything like what the video below shows. Apparently this is a custom-designed level, and it’s looks to be painfully frustrating to play. And I admit that I haven’t watched all 24 minutes of this video, but if the remaining 19 are as entertaining as the first five, then I’m in for a treat.

The guy who is narrating the video isn’t actually playing. He added his commentary for comedic purposes. Don’t play this video at work–at least not with the sound on.

Games have rules that are sometimes contrary to the rules in the real world. Within those rules, when playing, we must suspend our regular expectations, morals, etc.

To demonstrate the importance of architecture to New Media, we played Half Life 2 for a bit. Then we took a look at the editing program called Hammer, and were able to navigate through the same world that we played, but we were able to see the keyframes and triggers that set off events.

The building blocks of Half Life 2 are modular. They work together, they’re customizable, and they’re interchangeable.

Compared to a game like Pong, Ring King is more sophisticated graphics-wise, but is still primitive. The size of the characters in proportion to eachother doesn’t change when the fighters move around in the ring.

Blackboard Notes on Ring King

• Boxing - 2 players (or 1 player plus computer)
• Background effects (crowd)
• Color
• Movement
• Iconic Representation

Gun.Smoke for the NES. The game moves you forward, whether you want to or not. Compared to the “confines” of the ring in Ring King or the “table” in Pong, Gun.Smoke has a much bigger world to explore. It’s akin to first person shooters, but without the perspective or the ability to wander wherever you want.
Blackboard Notes on Gun.Smoke

• Screen Movement
• Vertical Scrolling

And that’s the simplified version. Which is why I am looking at Picasa for Exercise 5. Picasa is a photo organizing software, offered free by Google, that essentially fast-tracks the process that I described above. Rather than using a minimum of four different pieces of software (Explorer, Photoshop, Web Browser, WordPress), I can simply use Picasa to accomplish what ought to be a very straight-forward task.
(more…)

• boundary — all games have boundaries, rules to play by
• complexity — in games, complexity is often hidden
• emergence — the way that game designers set the player up along the way
• goals — all games have goals and are goal-driven

Interactive Fiction
a/k/a

• IF
• Text Adventure (Game)
• Computer-Mediated Narrative

This type of fiction has been around since the 1980s. They were the first “commercial” computer games. Most authoring systems and older works of Interactive Fiction have become freeware.

Zork was one of the first and best known interactive fiction games. In order to really get anywhere in the game, the player had to create a map. As the game is played, the map is drawn out.

This reminds me a lot of Harold and his Purple Crayon. He created his world, made his choices, and drew his own damn map. He controlled the outcome of his story. Now, of course, Professor Timmons brings up Harold and the Purple Crayon. Let it be noted that it occurred to me before he mentioned it. I’m learning dammit!

Simple definition of interactive fiction: Reading text and pressing keys on your keyboard.

The programmer of the game controls the boundaries.

Inform — Interactive Fiction software.

Playing Pong. We have some visual boundaries, which are the borders of the screen. We have the paddles. There are feedback elements. The annoying buzz/beep noise is one form of feedback. The score shown on the screen is another element of feedback. Feedback is obviously an important part of the game.

A lot of stuff about game design is covered quite well by this entry in my new media journal, which is actually just a brief one with links. In fact, Part 4 has been released since I first published that entry.

So why have I switched to StatCounter? Geek News Central explains:

Examination on my own has discovered, and I am able to confirm, on two of my sites, that Sitemeter was sending “specificclick cookies” to anyone visiting this site. Violating not only my policy but apparently not following their own terms of service.

I have removed the SiteMeter.com counter and now have all of my sites using Google Analytics only. I am going to contact my attorney as well on this mater to find out what recourse we have in this mater.

This is not the behavior one would expect from a company that you pay a annual fee to, for service. This is so over the top that I can hardly believe that the would betray the trust of their subscribers to such a high level.

I’m not a paying customer, thankfully. All I can do is use my blog to raise awareness that if you use SiteMeter on your website, you’re allowing them to install third party tracking cookies. If you visit sites that have SiteMeter installed, your clicks and browsing on those sites are being tracked by a third party.

And I can switch. I switched to StatCounter. I just took the latest numbers of unique visits and page views from SiteMeter and put them in as the “starting” numbers for StatCounter. The number you see in the footer of this website is the total number of visits since June 2006. My StatCounter stats can be viewed here.

Ed Bott has tips on how to block third-party cookies like the ones surreptitiously installed by SiteMeter. Alternatively, you could install the CookieSafe extension for Firefox. And if you don’t use Firefox for browsing, now is as good a time as any to give it a whirl.

Professor Ersinghaus is taking photographs at 7 megapixels. Now he’s asking what to do with the pics. Put the SD card into the slot. Open the folder, and view the pictures in thumbnail format in a folder. He copied the pictures into a folder named “Tunxis” on the computer, which he could do because they were recorded in a digital format.

He opens the picture in photoshop, and resizes it from 3k pixels wide to 450 pixels wide. Saves it back into the Tunxis folder. Opens FireFox, logs into WordPress, uploads the picture and then previews before publishing. Voila, here it is:

We discussed three act structure in class, but instead of reinventing the wheel, I just reposted the lecture from Professor Timmons’ online Film Art class at this link.

Key frames are the decision points. Like in a basketball videogame, if the digital ball hits the digital basket, a point is registered and the ball is shown going through the basket.

In class demonstration of Macromedia Flash Professional 8.

In class demonstration of Adobe Photoshop.

(Some things just aren’t conducive to note taking)

Apparently there is a part four coming, but I enjoyed parts one, two, and three.

Also via BoingBoing (actually, from a link to a “related post” to the one where I found the Understanding Games links, which shows that automated recommendation engines can work very well), I find an e-book by Ralph Koster that may or may not be an excerpt from his real book, Theory of Fun.

How the hell does this happen?

Well, Bob doesn’t really blog anonymously, and he’s a prolific political video creator. This explains why his original 1984/Lieberman ad didn’t get much play last summer. It was good, but compared to some of CT Bob’s other work, it just didn’t command that much attention (especially when you add in that videos by myself and by CTBlogger were also garnering attention).

The 1984/Clinton clip was put together in a very professional way. It was distributed anonymously. It was basically an attack ad targeted at one high profile Democrat that championed another high profile Democrat. The media seems to love this kind of crap, and when they learned that the 1984 mash-up concept for a political ad wasn’t original, I think they were a little shocked.

And so when traditional media catches up with people-powered media, my friend CT Bob (who’s IMDB listing can be found here, right next to my IMDB listing) gets a mention on CNN.

I’m not really in to those kinds of games, and am quite a loyal customer of Nintendo products to the exclusion of all other systems. My brother spoke to me enthusiastically about Gears of War, trying to convince me of its greatness by virtue of its realism. I’ve never played the game, but it’s not something I can see myself getting into. It may be as close to “real” as games have come so far, but that’s still quite a ways off from reality. At risk of making a Bill Gates-ish statement (one that was falsely attributed to him anyway), I do not foresee any technology that will completely and totally blur the lines between reality and fantasy. There is no matrix in our future.

But an experience doesn’t have to be realistic to be immersive. Take the Nintendo Wii. I covet the Nintendo Wii–and I’m not the only one, because the damn thing is sold out everywhere–because it’s got a slew of games that don’t even pretend to look realistic, but are arguably more immersive than the Gears of War.

I think this is because the games leave a little room for projection. Even though you create an avatar that resembles you, it isn’t a high-resolution photograph. You have to make that leap, and put yourself onto that avatar and into that space. Having to get off your ass and move your body to play the game certainly helps.

I guess that the more realistic something pretends to be, the more disappointment with the experience is possible and likely. If something looks real, and you can’t interact with it the way you would interact with something real, then it’s immediately clear that it’s NOT real. In my opinion this ruins the experience.

If you’re in a game environment that doesn’t pretend to be realistic, you don’t bring in your real-world expectations.

Real Space and Fictional Space.

We exist in reality and we cannot physically go into the story, the world of the story. We want to, and while we’re experiencing the story we “get into” it and forget about the real world. We actually believe that the events taking place in the story are real. We suspend disbelief and buy into the story world being real. A story creates its own reality.

For example, the Julio Cortazar (I may be spelling his name wrong, I forgot my texts at home!) story creates a story space within a story space.

These things happen in the real world within the story space:
Signs Power of Attorney. Gives someone joint ownership of his estate. Goes to his study to read. Sits in a green chair. He’s in the final chapters of the book. Starts to read, metaphorically moving into it. The characters take over.

These things happen in the story space within the story space:
The man and woman character meet in the cabin. The woman patches up the man’s cut on his back. They both leave the cabin, and split up. Man goes to estate. He goes through the house and finds another man sitting in a green chair reading a book and kills him.

Is it possible for a character in the story to kill the person who is reading the story? Only if the events in the story by some coincidence mirror the events in the readers life exactly.

The narrative of the Cortazon story is linear, because it was written by a typewriter.

We’re checking out Microsoft Word, which is just a digital transcoding of a typewriter. Across the top are several icons, some of them outdated (like the floppy disk for saving files). MS Word is a good linear representation of a typewriter. It makes sense, and is usable. Microsoft Word is a linear environment.

Steve Ersinghaus doesn’t think in a linear way.

Information Explosion
You can’t easily or practically deal with massive amounts of information in a linear way.

Memex may have been the first hypertext machine. Vannevar Bush article in the Atlantic called As We May Think.

Cross-referencing systems are non-linear, and as such the memex is proto-hypertext (according to Wikipedia).

The Limitations of Technology
1. The amount of information that you can see on the screen at one time.

Shitty Software (David Winer’s term) is always under development, and is never complete. It always asks for user input to make it better. By his definition, all software is shitty.

According to John Timmons, most people use 10% or less of Microsoft Word’s functions.

Hypertext - Deena Larsen’s Nine Vicious Little Hypertexts
We check out a hypertext story called Firewheel, and click arbitrarily. The text window that pops up has a passage with four hyperlinks. Is it the beginning of the story? It is now, because it’s where we begin. If we want to find out where we are, we can check out the storyspace, which is a map of the non-linear hypertext story. In hypertext, we traverse the text. We traverse the text by using the links as paths.

In the course of traversing the the text, we are editing the story. Every link we choose to follow is an edit. We can find our own meaning in whatever path we take.

In hypertext there is always an origin and a destination.

The origin is the text box that you begin in (in a web browser, the origin is the home page). The destination is the place you go when you click the hyperlink.

Lies by Richard Pryll

You can take any human technology and take it as a new extension of our body. Telescopes extend our eyes, cars our legs, telephones our voice. Computers do a lot of these things but the most important thing is that they extend our imagination.

This is a very powerful thing, an amplifier for imagination.

We use computers for entertainment, education, social spaces. How is this going to impact the world going forward? Every now and then the world goes through a huge paradigm shift… sometimes by social shifts, sometimes only once or twice in a lifetime. Some are grass roots, some are top down, and some take us by surprise.

We have a lot more heading our way. More political and social issues. Obviously environmental issues. Some people are issuing warnings.

But when we look at games specifically and entertainment in general, games often have this perception of mindless toys, but they can be much more than that. They can help us develop systematic thinking. They can help us build accurate models of the world around us; and hopefully these things will help us change the world just a little bit for the better.

All I can do is encourage you to go read it. I have been remiss in updating this blog, I know, but I could pull material from that keynote and riff off it for a long time. I just might.

1. It is a language
2. It is comprised of codes and structures
3. It can be invisible (continuity)
4. It can be visible (disjunctive)

Editing is the process that sets film apart as an art form.

Juxtaposition

A placing or being placed in nearness or contiguity, or side by side; as, a juxtaposition of words.

Juxtaposition creates meaning and indicates that time has passed or that a change has taken place. In comics, the gutter is the edit.

Editing is the joining of two shots.

Take this word:

tire

Now when a letter is added:

tires

Or a different letter:

tired

The juxtaposition changes the meaning. Adding context changes the meaning too:

“My tire is flat.” or “I tire of you.”

The way we juxtapose the word “tired” changes its meaning:

“I am tired” versus “I am tired of you” versus “I am tired of you telling me what to do”

An example of something that was re-cut over 20 years ago–non-digitally:

Editing is the relationship between shots:

• Graphic
• Rhythmic
• Spatial
• Temporal

The four editing relationships in terms of the word Sky

• Graphic: crimson sky
• Rhythmic: crimson sky at night
• Spatial: vast crimson sky above
• Temporal: the crimson sky morphed into darkness

The physical act of editing:

• Transitions: Cut, Wipe, Dissolve, Fade-in, Fade-Out

For this exercise you will be working with both traditional forms of media and new forms. You will also be using the language of visual iconography as it is used and explained by Scott McCloud in his book Understanding Comics. One goal here would be to identify and apply different forms, variations, and degrees of the icon using the “pictorial vocabulary” (McCloud 51) of comics.

First, use newspapers, magazines, textbooks, appliance or game “feelies” to assemble and group icons used by these “texts,” including the use of strips, logos, graphs, and other visuals. You may use non-pictorial and pictorial icons for this assignment. Describe where these icons fall on McCloud’s version of the picture plane (52-53) and how the icons are used in their context to shape narrative or a meaningful sequence of ideas or concepts. You should address at least three examples of a range of icons. (Minimum of nine icons).

Secondly, take your show on the web or to other digital texts, such as cellphone/iPod/Zune displays, and do the same for these, assembling and grouping icons according to the same criteria as in part one.

For collection use: scissors, box cutters, cameras, screen captures, Diigo.

The Non-Digital Icons

Icon #2 is the picture used with Colin McEnroe’s weekly column in the Sunday edition of the Hartford Courant. It’s down near the representational edge (the bottom line) and very close to the retinal edge (the left-hand diagonal line) because the detail of the picture is very close to reality. I see Colin’s nose, glasses, eyes, facial hair, and the grumpy look on his face–it’s unlikely that anyone but Colin will identify himself with that picture. However, I didn’t rank the icon all the way over in reality corner because it’s a low resolution newspaper print and it’s in black and white.

Icon #4 is the word “DIRECTIONS” cut from a box of Easy Mac. I placed this icon nearly all the way to the right, and slightly above the absolute meaning intersection because it’s just a word. It’s barely dressed up with a little bit of color and boldness, which helps the reader to “receive” the message faster than the words in this paragraph. If I didn’t know what the word meant or was illiterate, there’s virtually no way for me to interpret the importance of the icon (word) aside from it’s placement and coloring on the package. It’s only because of my accumulated knowledge that I can interpret this icon.

Icon #7 is the Nike® Swoosh. Besides being a ubiquitous icon/logo for their brand, I can’t think of anything that it actually represents. The fact that I call it a Swoosh is interesting to me because I can’t recall where I picked up the whole concept of the swoosh. Swoosh seems onomatopoeia-ish (onomatopoeiac?), but since it doesn’t closely resemble anything real or tangible, McCloud says on page 49 panel 3 that it requires “greater levels of perception, more like words.” That’s why I placed the Swoosh in the picture plane at the intersection of the retinal edge, the language border (second line from right) and the conceptual edge (right-hand diagonal line).

The Digital Icons

Icon #1 was included for comparison with Icon #2 in the non-digital icon set. That’s the picture of Colin McEnroe that is used on his official blog at the Hartford Courant. It being in color makes it more representational and realistic.

Icon #2 is from Bloglines.com and is a rendering of the earth from outer space. It’s recognizable as our planet, but it doesn’t contain so much detail that it could not be mistaken for something else. However, just because we’ve never seen pictures or drawings of a planet similar to ours doesn’t mean that such a planet does not exist. The icon is closer to reality than it is to language.

Icon #6 is from Courant.com and is a digital rendering of the words in the masthead from their print edition. I ranked this icon between the language border and the conceptual edge because the words are dressed up a bit, in order to help them stand out and be more easily received.

Icon #9 is from Wunderground.com and is supposed to indicate forecasted rain. What’s interesting to me about this icon is that the cloud has been personified. It’s been given a mouth, nose and eyes. I ranked it far to the right and near the top because it is hardly representative of reality. Though we often perceive figures in the clouds, rarely are rainclouds seen with pursed lips.

Icon #11 is the universal RSS icon. Like the Nike® Swoosh, it’s almost perfectly abstract. It’s not quite in the picture plane, because the lines, colors and shapes are assembled to represent something–but RSS? That’s why it has to be near the language border. Only through learned experience does this icon have any meaning whatsoever. The concept of RSS as a kind of broadcast (hence the dot and “airwaves” in the icon) is still a strange one to grasp. Broadcast television is something that is ongoing. If you tune in to the 6:30 news at 6:40, you can’t start watching from the beginning. RSS is a time and place shifting concept that a great many people still don’t get. Perhaps I didn’t rank this icon as abstract enough…

Part 2: Application

In comic book format, use both pictorial and non-pictorial (but no words) icons to teach a person how to make a hot cup of tea on the stovetop. This person, for some reason, is from a place where tea and technology and alphabetic reading are not common.

For both Parts 1 and 2, you may team up with a partner and develop a collaborative work. You may be called upon to present this work to the class, so be sure you are prepared to make your audience understand what you have done and why.

Here is a scan of my comic book format instructions on how to make tea. Now that I’ve read the directions again, it seems that perhaps I should have used pictorial icons (as in cut out pictures) but I’m not quite sure–I try not to make things more difficult than necessary.

Partly because my drawing is crappy, partly because I wanted a 10-minute diversion, and partly because JPEGs are static, I made a “video” of the instructions, and set it to music:

• Systems
• Sequences
• Relationships
• Flow

We’re looking at 2Advanced.com. Where is the eye first attracted when looking at the main page there? It’s a non-linear open system.
Is it the old and the new? I think it looks like the little guy on the screen is checking out the big picture.

Oh, and the words are floating over the town, which I’m quite sure means something. And the words do mean something, the words are links which represent paths from the home page.

The 2Advanced site incorporates quite a few of the New Media principles. According to Prof. Ersinghaus, Flash is the new media platform because you can use it to do most anything.

On to Ch. 2 in Understanding Comics. The Icon.

Two types of icons are pictorial and non-pictorial

• Some examples of non-pictorial icons: 1 # w
• Some examples of pictorial icons:

Page 46 in the McCloud book breaks down the progressions that we want to note:

• Complex to Simple
• Realistic to Iconic
• Objective to Subjective
• Specific to Universal

Objective is static, and subjective is flexible or changing–open to interpretation.

Page 51 in the McCloud book has a detailed diagram of the Reality/Language/Picture triangle.

The more iconic, the more we identify with it. The more realistic, the less we identify with it.
—————–
Reading the comic is panel reading. In animation, panels are called cells.

There are six types of transitions between panels:

• Moment-to-moment
• Action-to-action
• Subject-to-subject
• Scene-to-scene
• Aspect-to-aspect
• Non-Sequitur

The panels have to form a narrative.

Narrative — A sequence of events with a cause and effect relationship happening in space and time

There is some suggested action going on outside the panels, between the panels, but we just can’t see it. Time is either progressing or being shown simultaneously.
—————–

Watchmen
From the perspective of this cover, the viewer is involved. We pushed the smiley face out the window (or are involved in whatever way we can infer from the elements of the image).


And there’s a clear passage of time between that image of the cover and this one:


We’re looking at a page with 7 panels. Three panels on the first two rows, and one panel in the third row that spans all three columns. What’s striking (and what was pointed out to us by Prof. Ersinghaus) is that the page is made up of panels, but the page itself is unified as a single panel by the hidden structure.

In future pages, the red tinted panels indicate speculation about past action, and the cooler colored panels indicate action occurring in the present. The action is the detectives speculating about the crime.
—————————
When we’re analyzing, we need to be looking for patterns. Do they tell us about space? Moment to moment?

Stuff for next week:

• Editing
• Hypertext
• Assignment

This video is brilliant, and it strikes me as reminiscent of Chapter 2 in Understanding Comics. Words as abstract icons. The video could be accurately described as “text and audio” but its creator has made something far more interesting and entertaining by manipulating the letter icons in a meaningful way.

A much better QuickTime version of this video can be viewed here.

Update: Here’s the audio. The first minute or two is mostly silence (or anything but substance), and I should have cut it. Oh well.

Professor Timmons is guiding us through a powerpoint slideshow/timeline of “written” communication.

• Something very stylized can hold more meaning than something very detailed.
• Iconography/Icons = Simplicity

Humanism - alludes to the fact that artists were looking at the world in a more realistic way.

Iconography is more static vs. Humanism which is more dynamic.

An image of the Madonna, wherein the figures around the Madonna are all gazing into space, and the only way that we can tell that the Madonna is the most important figure is because she is placed in the center, she’s bigger than all the other figures, and she’s drastically different from the others.

An image of the death of Christ, where Mary is holding her dead son in the bottom left of the frame. We’re guided to the most important part of the image–the dead guy–because all of the gazes and the lines that are implied by the other figures that lead us there.

Digital technology allows us to take this one step further. Now, we can virtually enter the space and explore it.

Class is ended early because the weather sucks.

The window exercise is interesting. It wasn’t so much at the time, but in hindsight it is interesting. We looked at a static digital picture of the hallway from every angle we desired–and recorded our observations. Then we looked out into the hallway through the narrow classroom window and recorded our observations. Then we flung open the doors and took off into the hallway and recorded our observations.

At the time, I thought that exploring the hallway would be what I remembered as the most interesting. After all, it was total immersion into the environment. I could have bought a soda, or tipped the machine. I could have peed on the rug. I could have knocked on the doors of classrooms where class was in session. All of those possibilities were interesting–and I didn’t do any of them. For obvious reasons (except buying the soda, which I refrained from doing because I’m cheap).

No, what I found to be most interesting was looking through the window. There was some inherent drama, because anything could happen out there, I just had to be in the right spot to see it (positioning myself for a good view was about all I had control over). Though looking through the window is a bit readerly because I can’t impose myself onto what I see–it is what it is.

The picture…*yawn*

Well, I’m all WordPress all the time from now on.

• Same vs. Different
• Compare + Contrast

Criteria - the things we use to judge something

• For example, size, texture, color, or surface are criteria we use to judge something.
• These criteria mean different things when we use them to judge virtual versions versus dead-tree versions (ex. USA TODAY)
• Surface in the print version is something to put ink on, and surface in the online version is something to put graphics on.

In order to find the relationships between old and new media–and to describe them–we need to define the criteria.

Aesthetics are a collection of criteria.

Use the terms that we’ve defined in class. Is the newspaper linear? Is the online version transactional? The five principles of new media. Static. Narrative.

• What do you think?
• What do you know?
• Does it match?
• Why?

“We don’t see things as they are
We see things as we are.”
–Anais Nin

We perceive the world through our five senses (plus intuition?).

The Perception Process

1. Selection

First stage in the perception process in which some data are chosen to attend to and other are ignored.

2. Organization

Stage in the perception process that involves arranging data in a meaningful way.

3. Interpretation

Process of attaching meaning to make sense of data.

Context affects our perception. The letter “i” in Tim is pronounced differently than the letter “i” in time Or “Take a bow.” versus “The bow of the ship.” versus “This is a bow and arrow.”

Influences on Perception

1. Physiological

The senses, age, health, fatigue, hunger, and biological cycles.

2. Social

Roles of gender, roles of occupation, our self-concept, and shared narratives.

3. Cultural

Every culture has its own way of looking at the world.

Something to think about…
When looking at optical illusions, how important are relationships to those optical illusions (effects)?

Then we observed the view through the narrow vertical window on the classroom door, again from as many perspectives as possible.
I saw the ramp (from a different perspective of the photo), the door across the hallway, another bulletin board, the floor outside the door, the wall across from the room, and some student who walked by.

Lastly, the doors were opened and we were told to go out and explore. So I walked around. I saw all the classrooms in the 200 building, some unused furniture stacked in the hallway, saw that it was cold outside, some artwork display cases without any artwork, the men’s and women’s bathrooms, and the water fountain.

All of my observations above were very superficial.

In part one, we were limited by what the camera recorded for the photo. When we got close to the picture, we were not able to see more detail necessarily (after a certain point).

In part two, the size of the window was quite limiting, but as we moved what we saw moved with us. We were looking through a frame so as our vantage point changed what we could see changed.

In part three, we could see whatever we wanted. Having free reign over the hallways allowed us to observe everything. We were immersed into the environment. Once we got outside of the room, we had removed the frames that served as editors of the world.

The window frame “edits” the world that we see, as does the photo that we look at.

Take a look at these 360 degree VR images from Times Square, versus the 2-D static image that we looked at in class.

For next week:

• Write a summary of the experience of The Window Exercise.
• Read Watchman ch. 1, 2, and 5
• Read McCloud chapters on syllabus

The entrance is located near the center of the store immediately to the right of the exit. Where people go in, people go out. Inside the door is a man standing at a workstation. He’s posted there to acknowledge every person who comes in and goes out which discourages shoplifting. His presence and that of his workstation keep us walking to the right. This reminds me a lot of those splash pages on websites where you can enter your zipcode, or sign up for a candidate’s e-mail list before you continue. When you enter the Best Buy, you don’t have to go to the right, just like when you see a splash page you don’t have to enter your info. On the website, if you can find the eensy weensy link, you can “continue to the main site” and in the store if you want to go against the flow of all the lines at the entrance, you can go straight to the loss-leaders that are set up by the cash registers (Best Buy would rather you go around their whole store and check out the other stuff before picking up the latest CDs that they’re selling at cost or a loss).

The path of least resistance through the store takes you around past the greatest number of sections, in sort of a loop ending up by the cash registers and the exit doors (which are on the other side of the gatekeeper guy). On a website, you don’t have to exit through the splash page, you can exit whenever you want from whatever section you’re browsing. Because Best Buy is a physical architectural space, it has to have a sort of pre-defined path to maximize revenue.

Some New Media elements are incorporated into the Best Buy retail store. If what you’re looking for is not in stock, you can use a kiosk to purchase the item online from BestBuy.com. I realize that this is a tenuous connection to New Media through the principles of modularity and numerical representation. The store has some modular elements. Each week, as new films or albums come out, displays are changed at the front of the store. A promotional merchandise display for a blockbuster film can be put into place and later removed without affecting the rest of the store, much like a pic-of-the-day feature on a website can be updated without monkeying with the site.

The honorary sixth principle of New Media, Interactivity, is present in this space in the form of demonstration models. Want to try out the PS3 before you buy it? Pick up the controller and play. Not sure which MP3 player will be easiest to operate? Grab one that’s tethered to the display and try navigating its menu. Almost all of the laptop computers and desktop PCs are plugged in and logged on for interactive demonstration and trial. Obviously, all of this interactivity is in service to the store’s goal of selling something, not in service of entertainment.

The flow of the store is not restricted, but it’s not exactly open. I’d describe the flow as “suggested”. As you may be able to see in the drawing above, there’s a path leading from the entrance to the right and back, then across to the left and then back down to the cash registers. Compared to a New Media space, like a video game, the store space is similar. If you play a Grand Theft Auto game, you can roam around the city doing as you please, but there are guided missions. Same with a game like Super Mario 64. You can wander around in the 3-D environments, swimming, running, and jumping then just turn the game off. That’s akin to walking around a Best Buy and checking everything out and then leaving without buying.

• convenient
• personal
• static

Online attributes

• convenient
• archived articles
• updated throughout the day
• multimedia
• dynamic content

The online edition is dynamic content. A customized version of USA TODAY utilizes the new media principles of variability, digitalization, and transcoding. It’s called a personalized newspaper but it’s clearly not a paper.

Technology tries to extend every sense.

Digital technology attempts to work in the same way, extending senses.

Digital technology struggles to appeal to all five senses, and there’s a question as to whether appealing to more senses increases the immersion.

There is however such a thing as good and bad.

What is “author”?
–Performs a FUNCTION
–”I” centered
–Works with standard codes and structures
–But the structures are hidden
–meanings are fixed (every time we watch Gladiator, the same meanings are present)
Think of “Author” as “authority”

What is “writer”?
–Performs an ACTIVITY
–”de”-centered
–structures are revealed
–allows the reader to manipulate the codes and structures (a Web 2.0 principle)
–meanings are not fixed, but are transferred to the reader

Authored or Written?
1+1=2 and 2+2=4
These are examples of fixed or authored statements.

Stories, movies, paintings, photographs, music, etc. that speaks to us in different ways each time we experience them are authored but have a written aspect.

Is Harold an author or a writer?
Harold is a writer, but the book is authored.

Authors create Readerly Texts
Writers create Writerly Texts

What the hell is “readerly”?
–a stable text
–assembled out of familiar signs (we know how to read it and interact with it)
–the reader passively decodes
–combines into a cohesive meaning
–meets the expectations of the reader
– 2+2=4 or Two plus Two Equals Four (both fixed meaning examples of readerly)

What the hell is “writerly”?
–makes the reader a producer of the text (a la CYOA)
–the reader actively controls the codes and structure
–has plurality (implicit meaning that varies depending upon who experiences it)
–is networked
–is decentralized

Plurality - Writerly supports connotation (multiple associations beyond literal meanings) rather than denotation (fixed meanings).

Networked - Writerly allows the reader to navigate their own course along the body of the text, freely and repetitively experiencing the text making it possible to read a text from point to point not just straight through

Decentralized - Writerly removes any hierarchy of meaning but is a galaxy that has no beginning and can be accessed from multiple entrances none more dominant than the other

A calculator (virtual or physical) is an example of a writerly text or item because we can use it and manipulate it to find sums and products etc.

Blindspot by Darcey Steinke is an example of a writerly text, or a hypertext story.

Another example of writerly text is Caveman’s Crib, an interactive room.

The readerly work will never change. We will change, so if we come back to the work in 10 years, the text may change.

In hypertext, the writerly work can change. Every time you go back to the hypertext novel, the work changes and the text changes.

In new media, everything is a text. If we can read it, interpret it, design it, and learn from it, it’s a text.

Architectural Narrative

On some form of writing surface, draw a map of the interior of an architectural interior, describing the layout of the space from the crow’s view (top down). Here are a few guidelines. Before you attempt a map, complete a walkthrough of the space. Walk around and make notes. Try to note as many features of the space as you can, including entrances, exits, rooms, passages, and halls.

Check out iPhone website for insight on flow.

Two things they’re looking for in the assignment are a map and a concise essay.

Avoid small or few-featured spaces (like bedrooms, apartments, etc).

• Neuron Magazine article on time

I had to find an empty table at which to sit and read the paper, because I needed to make room for my laptop and the newspaper, which quadruples in size when unfolded. I’m seated near the back of the Tunxis Library. Before I even open the paper, here’s what I see in the left-hand column:

• A column that is slightly wider than 1/5 of the page that the typical column of text occupies. This column contains a picture of the Indanapolis Colts’ coach Dungy holding a trophy above his head. Below the photo is a tiny credit, a short caption, and a headline. Instead of an article about the Super Bowl below the headline, I see two related subheads next to color-coded bullet points that both indicate the page number and section letter that I must turn to in order to read the article.
• Below that, a horizontal rule that divides the section above from the one below. Immediately below the horizontal rule is the date of the newspaper’s publication, bold and underlined: “Tuesday, February 6, 2007“
• Below the date is a headline, also bold and underlined reading “Newsline“. Under that headline is a small key to the colored bullet points mentioned above (and used next to every article that is teased or previewed on the front page). A blue square next to “News” articles (funny, I thought this was a newspaper). A green square next to “Money” articles. An orange square next to “Sports” articles. A purple square next to “Life” articles. This gives me two ways to find the articles I’m looking for. I can use the information listed at the end of the article tease (6D for example) to find section D and turn to page 6 to find the article I’m interested in. Alternatively, I could look for the section with the purple color code–but I’d still have to read the 6D bit to know what page I’m looking for.



• Below the key is a picture of an accused child molester/abductor to the left of a color coded tease of the article.
• Below that is another horizontal rule, under which is a headline and color coded article tease to the left of a photograph.
• In order to read the rest of this column, I’ve got to flip the paper, and read what’s “below the fold,” so I do. I find another horizontal rule, under which are three brief headlines and teasers–none of which are color coded! All three of these are located in section A, the blue “News” section.
• Below this, a color coded headline and tease for a money article, followed by same for a sports and then life article.
• Horizontal rule, and then a byline? I suppose that John O. Buckley worked very hard on this sidebar and deserves a little credit.
• Below the byline, a green color coded headline followed by a summary table of four financial markets.
• Below this is a “USA TODAY Snapshots®” headline followed by a color graphic conveying the states with the highest and lowest home ownership rates.
• Last on the page is a barcode and a short table of contents, listing the page and section locations of what are presumably the more popular daily features of USA TODAY: Crossword, Sudoku. Editorial/Opinion. Lotteries. Marketplace Today. State-by-state. Market scoreboard. Under the barcode and contents is a copyright notice, a number to call for customer service and subscriptions and a URI for same.

Back up above-the-fold, below the masthead is a banner with a green background and a color-coded headline “Hoops poll points to Madness” There’s a vertical rule between the leftmost column and the center column, over which a red bubble/sticker graphic thing reading “Super Colts” is positioned. The same kind of red bubble is also present at the right end of the green “Hoops” banner mentioned above, though that bubble does not rest on top of the horizontal rule below it.

The horizontal rule spans across the remaining columns and is much thicker than the other lines used on the page.

• The center column of the page actually accomodates three columns of text, but the bulk of the space in the center above the fold is used by a full color photograph.
• Below the photograph is a caption with a quote, and between the caption and photo, in very small print aligned to the right is the byline for the image.
• Next is the two-line headline for the article reading “U.S. advisers find joint patrols with Iraqis don’t go as planned“
• On the far left of the center column, and bisected by the fold, is a dropquote box with a preview of the articles contents
• There are two columns of text for this story, that continue over the fold, and the article itself is continued with a notation “Please see COVER STORY next page”
• Below this article is another thick horizontal rule, followed by a headline, and a three-column article that does not continue to another page. Above the first column of text is a subhead and then a byline before the article begins.
• Another thick black horizontal rule divides the third article in the center column from the second.
• The headline reads “Evacuee camp kids worry schools chief“
• The first column has a subhead, then a byline, and then the article begins and is not continued to another page
• One fourth of the way from the top of this article, and cutting 1/3 of the way into each of the second and third columns is a color graphic map of Louisiana.
• There is no horizontal rule across the bottom of the page

Back up above-the-fold and to the far right below the green “Hoops” banner is a large headline.

• This is the largest headline on the page, it is exactly one text column wide and reads “Vote on Iraq is blocked by GOP” followed by a subhead reading “Each party says other is trying to limit debate” followed by a byline.
• This article is only one column wide, but approximately four paragraphs are above-the-fold.
• Below-the-fold we have five more paragraphs and then an inset box with a headline reading “How senators voted” and a blue color coded line of text reading “See details at usatoday.com”
• This article continues for seven more paragraphs, but does not continue to another page. In all, there are three articles on the front page that can be read in their entirety without opening the paper.
• A thick black horizontal rule separates the end of this article from a one-column wide photo
• Below the photo is a small headline reading “Billions for wars in budget” followed by a blue color coded teaser reading “Bush sends his $2.9 trillion budget proposal to Capitol, 4-5A” and a green color coded teaser reading “Air-ticket tax shift in plan, 1B”

So I go to the top and see an article that I want to read about American Idol. It’s color coded purple, so I pull out the “Life” section and use up some more deskspace to set the other sections aside. The article, thankfully, is all contained on the front page of the life section. No further page turning, just an unfolding (or flipping) of the paper to read the article as it spans beyond the fold.

A related article on Idol is suggested by a dropbox in the text, and so I turn to page “6-7D”

Article is not an accurate description of what I find. Spanning the center fold are several captioned photos of American Idol contestants who were rejected. This photo collage thing takes up a huge chunk of the unfolded page. So much so that as I type to describe it, 3/5 of the paper is hanging off the end of the desk at which I’m sitting.

Part 2
I sit at my desk and open Firefox. With my right hand I use the mouse to click in the address box and type in “http://www.usatoday.com” (typing http:// is a bad habit I got into a long time ago) and then reach for my coffee mug and take a sip.

The page loads immediately, and Firefox has blocked a pop-up. I don’t care to know what it was advertising, and am pleased that the ad was thwarted. I see a search box at the top, sponsored by Yahoo, along with an option to click and personalize my weather. No thanks. It’s cold out–everybody knows that.

The masthead has the same blue banner with white USA Today logo, except that immediately below it indicates the time that the site was last updated. I wonder how many times per day the news at USAToday.com gets updated. One-third of my screen is wasted on whitespace, probably because the resolution on my monitor is 1280×1024 (slightly larger than average). I’m looking at two columns of content in the portion of my screen that is being utilized.

• On the far left next to the masthead are some color-coded rows with text. Dark blue for “News”. Lighter blue for “Travel”. Green for “Money”. Red for “Sports”. Purple for “Life”. Orange for “Tech”. Yellow for “Weather”.
• Each color coded label is a hyperlink. I can click on it, but I’m still examining the online front page.
• Below these color coded sections is a title labeling the hyperlinks below as “Essentials”. The things deemed essential are Scores, My USA TODAY, Blogs, Interactive Media, Day in pictures, Video, Archives, Print edition, Subscriber services, and Contact us.
• Below this is a table of “Best Bets” that spans beyond the bottom of my screen. As I scroll to read it, it’s wider than the column of section labels above. It’s got a light blue background and each “bet” is separated by a horizontal rule.
• There are nine items in the “Best Bets” section, each set up in a three-column format. On the left, a bold headline. In the center, a 3 to 4 line text description. On the right, a square photo of a celebrity, or presumably the author of the column or article linked.
• Every one of the descriptions is a hyperlink (or a series of hyperlinks)
• Below the “Best Bets” is a color animated ad for USA TODAY’s 2007 Ski Guide.
• Below this, the last notable thing in the leftmost column, are two “related ads” that do not appear to be related to anything I can see.

Back up at the top, the masthead is animated. Every 5 seconds, a new photo and article description is displayed, cycling among five different articles (one for each of five sections). There are five bullet point hyperlinks that indicate which one is showing, that I could click on to navigate between the descriptions. Each of the descriptions, when displayed, is a hyperlink to its related article.

• Below the USA TODAY logo is a photo, with a link to a photo gallery. This is positioned to the right of the “Essentials” list.
• To the right of this photo and gallery links is a vertical rule, to the right of which is a large, bold headline reading “N. Korea talks yield progress” followed by a subhead which is followed by a blue hyperlink to the story.
• Below this is a thick black horizontal rule followed by some gray text reading “Latest headlines”
• The list of “Latest headlines” contains five items, all headlines and all hyperlinks
• Below this is a blue banner, spanning the width of the “page” reading “More news” in white text at the center
• Below this banner to the left is the “Best Bets” column detailed earlier. On the right is a table summary of market data, to the right of which is an advertisement.
• Below the market table is a search box, where one can type in a stock symbol to receive a “quick quote”
• Below this are nine sections, all divided by horizontal rules, and all featuring hyperlink headlines and brief article teasers. Three of these sections have photos, all photos are small and aligned to the right of the “page”

Back up at the top, I click on “My USA TODAY” and am directed to a page where I can customize the headlines and news that I see. The page layout is similar to the Windows Explorer program used to browse computer files back in the Windows 3.1 days.

Rather than hit the browser’s back button, I find the USA TODAY logo at the top left and click it to return to the home page.

I see an article on a suicide prevention group that criticizes a GM advertisement from the Super Bowl. The article teaser is displayed in the animated masthead, so I click on it.

The article loads and is contained on one page, though I do have to scroll to read it in its entirety. Below the headlines are options to E-Mail, Save, Print, Reprints & Permissions, and an RSS subscription link.

Part 3

• The first similarity between the two is the visual element. Both the online and paper versions of USA TODAY use the same color coding scheme to categorize the articles. Also, the same USA TODAY logo is used both in print and online. Columns and headlines are used both in print and online to organize the text, separate the stories, and to break the page (a term I use to describe both the print and online versions) into easily digestible parts. Also, the same style, color, and thickness is used for all of the horizontal and vertical rules in both editions.
• Another similarity is the hierarchy. A hard news story is prominently featured in both editions, but both editions call attention to the feature type articles using color graphics across the top and in the lefthand column.

The differences between the two are more fun to note.

• The print version, first of all, has yesterday’s news. It doesn’t indicate when it was last updated at all, but as the day progresses the news in print only gets older while the online version is updated as USA TODAY reporters file their stories.
• The online version is searchable. If there’s a particular story I’m tracking, I can type in a few keywords and see if any developments have occurred.
• The print version takes up a lot of space! When fully unfolded, the print edition is 4x the size of my monitor, and I have to dispose of it (or in the case of a borrowed library copy, return it to the shelf). Online, when I’m done reading USA TODAY, all I need to do is close the browser window.
• The print version costs 75 cents! I was able to browse the online version for free.
• The online version has unlimited (provided bandwidth) availability while the print version does not. That’s why I was looking at a two-day-old issue of USA TODAY–there simply were not enough copies to go around in the Tunxis library.
• The online version is digital. I can take an excerpt and insert it right here with just a couple of keystrokes:
  

  Recommendation site fights manipulation
  Posted 2/7/2007 11:30 AM ET E-mail | Save | Print | Subscribe to stories like this Subscribe to stories like this
  By Anick Jesdanun, AP Internet Writer
  NEW YORK — A website that ranks and displays news, blog and other items based on recommendations from its visitors has responded to efforts to manipulate the rankings by dropping its list of most active users.

  In an open letter, Digg founder Kevin Rose said the top users who were spending “hundreds if not thousands of hours” identifying the best stories for others to read wound up getting blamed for much of the efforts at manipulation, which includes offering cash and other incentives to vote favorably for certain items.

  If I wanted to include an excerpt of the same story from the print edition, I’d have to retype it myself. If I wanted to have you read the rest of the story that I had typed up the excerpt for, I’d have to cite it according to the MLA standard and you’d have to take the time to track down the physical paper, and look for the full article.

• The online version has more sections. Though it could be that the other sections were not published on the day of the print edition that I picked up. The difference lies in the fact that I can access a “Tech” section at USATODAY.com every day.
• The online version offers video.
• The print edition has full stori