Fall 2008: Digital New Media: The Guild

Sunday, September 7, 2008

The Guild

The Guild is an online sitcom that premiered July 27, 2007. It was written by Felicia Day, directed by Jane Selle Morgan and Greg Bensen, and produced by Jane Selle Morgan and Ken Evey. It is made up of succinct 3-6 minute episodes chronicling the adventures of Cyd Sherman, (Felicia Day), and her guild's real and digital lives.

The "webisodes" are available for viewing on youtube.com and for purchase on DVD, yet have not yet made the move to television, most likely due to their niche audience and brevity. The series has won several awards including the Yahoo! Video Award for Best Series and the YouTube Award for Best Series.

Felicia Day, an actress who once suffered from video-gaming addiction, parodies video gamers’ ways of life in not only a humorous, but intelligent way. Rather than fortifying worldwide beliefs about people who play video games, The Guild succeeds in giving its characters, while stereotypically presented, endearing qualities that humanize them in a way that most video game parodies could not. Roles played include the expected: overweight gamer, Middle-Eastern gamer, Asian gamer, teen gamer, lonely gamer, and bored gamer. The gaming community in The Guild is, although to some extent exaggerated, represented as a group of people enjoying each other’s company while doing something that they love.

As a person who has very limited experience with or knowledge about video gaming, I was interested in watching the Guild only as an opportunity for an educational glimpse into an unknown world. Surprisingly to me, after watching the first ten episodes of Season One, I was fascinated to the point of telling my friends about the clever little clips and even sending a youtube.com link to my 16-year-old brother.

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New Media Timeline

01. The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges, 1941
+Helped develop the concept of the hypertext novel (a novel which can be read in many different ways)
+Greatly influenced the first hypertext novel, Hopscotch, by Julio Cortazar, 1963

02. As We May Think by Vannevar Bush, 1945
+Published in Atlantic Monthly, 1945
+Bush was the main creator behind the US Military Industrial Complex during WWII, 1940
+Bush developed the first analog computing projects at MIT
+Bush developed new ideas in information storage, "MEMEX"
+The MEMEX is a mechanized personal library in the shape of a desk

03. Computing Machinery and Intelligence by Alan Turing, 1950
+Charles Babbage, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge from 1828 to 1839, planned a digital computer called the "Analytical Engine," which was never completed.
+Turing believes that in 50 years from his writing this text there will be a computer built that will have a storage capacity that will allow them to play the "imitation game" so well that the interrogator will only make the correct identification 70% of the time.
+Turing abandons experimentation until advances can be made in computer storage

04. Men, Machines, and the World About by Norbert Wiener, 1954
+In 1987 Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility began giving out an annual Wiener Award.
+Describes the "antiaircraft gun" that was developed in the First World War
+Negative feedback is discussed by Clerk Maxwell in 1868.
+Wiener fears for the future of a technological world.

05. Man-Computer Symbiosis by J.C.R. Licklider, 1960
+ Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider assumed leadership of the Advanced Research Projects Agency in 1962.
+Licklider was a strong promoter of computer science education, time-sharing systems, interactive computing, and computer networks. In support of these, Licklider directed company funding towards projects that broadly benefitted.
+Licklider left ARPA in 1964, but ARPAnet was created in 1969.

06. "Happenings" in the New York Scene, 1961
+ Happenings were events organized in the 19502 and 1960s.
+Kaprow, an artist who participated and staged Happenings, places emphasis on the chance and impermanence that Happenings embody.
+ Allan Kaprow coined the term "Happenings" in 1959.
+ Performance art that changes
+ Had their genesis in renaissance mystery plays.
+ An important person: Yoko Ono.

07. The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin by William S. Burroughs, 1961
+ Burroughs describes a literal form of "cut & paste."
+ Randomness and recombination are considered key.
+This essay was even cut-up and expanded by Burroughts between its 1961 and 1978 publications.
+ Tristan Tsara created the first cut-up poem which got him kicked out of the Surrealist movement.
+ David Bowie and John Lennon used this method to write lyrics.

08. Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework by Douglas Engelbart, 1962
+ Engelbart invented the mouse, window, and word processor. He also made strides in establishing the Internet, investigating computer-supported cooperative work, structural programming, videoconferencing, and displays.
+Engelbart worked at the Stanford Research Institite in 1959 and three years later was studying augmentation full time.

09. Sketchpad: A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System by Ivan E. Sutherland, 1963
+Sketchpad was created by Sutherland on a computer meant for developing military radar.
+He created the basic vocabulary for computer drawing.
+His work was applicable through art, architecture, animation, and engineering and electrical circuitry.
+ Microsoft paint used the technoloty of Sketchpad in Windows 1.0 (1985)

10. The Construction of Change by Roy Ascott, 1964
+Ascott was one of the first to advocate a connection between cybernetics and art.
+In the 1980s Ascott was a pioneer of telematic art, a system through which communication and collaboration are available between people that are far away.
+ Roy Ascott mentored Brian Eno

11. A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing, and the Indeterminate by Theodore H. Nelson, 1965
+Ted Nelson coined the term "hypertext."
+Nelson's model includes complex, reconfigurable, linked structures of information which can be manipulated.
+Nelson calls for a way to file and organize the information on computers.

12. Six Selections by the Oulipo, 1961, 1973, 1981
+ The Oulipo were a group of creatives studying "potential literature" in which they used constraints to create their work.
+Their most famous work is the Cent Mille Milliards de poemes, originally written in French.
+Marcel Duchamp was an Oulipo
+ Reminiscent of the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books, relative to the hypertext novel.

13. Two Selections by Marshall McLuhan, 1962, 1964
+ The Galaxy Reconfigured and The Medium is the Message were two of his most well-known works of writing.
+McLuhan wrote of media as an extension of human abilities.
+He also discusses the social and personal consequences involved in a medium.

14. Four Selections by Experiments in Art and Technology, 1961, 1966, 1967, 1972
+ E.A.T.= Experiments in Art and Technology
+ They were a group of artists working to bring artists and engineers together.
+Two of their most famous works were the Pepsi Pavilion and 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering
+Involved were Billy Kluver, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Whitman, and Fred Waldhauer.

15. Cybernated Art by Nam June Paik, 1964
+ Nam June Paik is considered to be the first video artist.
+ The work of many artists can be associated with Paik's work, including E.A.T., Roy Ascott, Norbert Weiner, Bill Viola, Grahame Weinbren, Lynn Hershman, and Myron Krueger.

16. A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect by Douglas Engelbart and William English, 1968
+ The 1968 Fall Joint Computer Concerence in San Francisco held the "mother of all demos" for new media innovation.
+ Engelbart's goals included technology for the expert, shared space and networking, and the "bootstrapping" principle of allowing the user to create.

17. From Software - Information Technology, Its New Meaning for Art, 1970
+ In 1970 an exhibition was held to redefine the area of esthetic awareness.
+ A great deal of the pieces in the exhibition failed to work.
+One famous and successful work was entitled "Seek."
+Ted Nelson's catalogue, "Labyrinth" was the first publicly accessible hypertext.

18. Constituents of a Theory of Media by Hans Magnus Enzenberger, 1970
+ Enzensberger calls for a new organization of media.
+ He wanted to create a communication model that used network and was built on the principle of a reversibility of circuits.
+ He also wanted to use media to interact with social conflict.

19. Requiem for the Media by Jean Baudrillard, 1972
+ Baudrillard argues that Enzensberger's "organized reversible circuits" are not enough.
+ He claims that the model of communication (Saussure) has to be changed.
+The roles of consumer and producer are not enough, they must be transgressed.

20. The Technology and the Society by Raymond Williams, 1972
+ Williams is interested in how television has become a part of our lives.
+ He believes that the flow, rather than the program is the most important.

21. Computer Lib / Dream Machines by Theodore H. Nelson, 1974
+ Nelson claims the computer is a personal device.
+ Nelson encourages users to be creative in their design.
+EVERYBODY SHOULD UNDERSTAND COMPUTERS.

22. From Theatre of the Oppressed by Augusto Boal. 1974
+ In 1992, in Brazil, Boal ran for political office as part of a theatre act and actually got elected.
+ Advocation of interactive performance, especially invisible theatre.
+ Emphasized overcoming the actor/spectator divide.

23. From Soft Architecture Machines by Nicholas Negroponte, 1975
+ Negroponte appreciated the architectural knowledge of space and design.
+Advocated empowerment through computers.
+Co-founded Wired

24. From Computer Power and Human Reason by Joseph Weizenbaum, 1976
+ Wrote Eliza, then worried about the effects it would have on humans.
+ Demanded that scientists take responsibility for the use of what they discover and develop.

25. Responsive Environments by Myron W. Krueger, 1977
+ Krueger worked to pursue artistic and scientific goals within new media.
+ ”The Response is the Medium” was his famous quote.
+ Krueger calls for lay understanding of technology and computers.

26. Personal Dynamic Media by Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg, 1977
+ Kay encouraged the use of computers by children rather than only by engineers and those expected to use computers.
+ The Star computer that the Xerox PARC group worked on under Kay was realized in personal computing in Apple’s Macintosh.

27. From A Thousand Plateaus by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, 1980
+ Encourage the creation rather than “syntactical cleverness” to make a multiple be heard.
+ Compared often to Eihei Dogen’s 10,000 dharmas.
+ Also write the book Anti-Oedipus together.
+ Can be compared to the literary machines of the Oulipo, Ted Nelson, and Italo Calvino.

28. From Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas by Seymour Papert, 1980
+Children embraced video games in the 1980s.
+ Papert’s philosophy of education was called “constructionism.”
+ Papert predicted that children’s toys would have strong computer power, which has proved to be a correct assertion.

29. “Put-That-There”: Voice and Gesture at the Graphics Interface by Richard A. Bolt, 1980
+ Bolt worked to combine speech and gesture input to create a computer interface more like a spoken conversation.
+ Worked towards a multimodal interface with communication with a computer via several channels.
+ The “Put-That-There” program prefers speech over typing.

30. From Literary Machines Proposal for a Universal Electronic Publishing System and Archive by Ted Nelson, 1981
+ Ted Nelson outlines his Xanadu project in Literary Machines
+ “Proposal for a Universal Electronic Publishing System and Archive” is very similar to the Web that we work with today.
+ Nelson Suggests that documents be connected for public use.

31. Will There by Condominiums in Data Space? By Bill Viola, 1982
+ Bill Viola is a video artist who does not follow the patterns of video art that we usually see. He instead focuses his work on a more poetic type of description.
+ Viola has been a Whitney retrospective artist as well as a Venice Biennale artist.

32. The Endless Chain by Ben Bagdikian, 1983
+ Ben Bagdikian illuminates the many relationships that make up the network of new media.
+ Through the development of six editions of his book, the number of companies that control the media has become smaller and smaller.
+ Bagdikian shows similar views on the front and back ends of new media as those of Ted Nelson.

33. Direct Manipulation: A Step Beyond Programming Languages by Ben Shneiderman, 1983
+ The Macintosh was released a year after this article appeared.
+ Shneiderman is an advocate of direct manipulation.
+ Shneiderman discusses direct manipulation in a way that reminds one of the ease with which other thinkers, such as Ted Nelson, want computers to be used with.

34. Video Games and Computer Holding Power by Sherry Turkle, 1984
+ Sherry Turkle believes that video games play a social and psychological role.
+ Defines video games as something you do in comparison to television which is something you watch.
+ Turkle encourages us to consider the ways that human interaction with computers has changed throughout time, from living in a world created by a programmer, to programming our own worlds, and in a sense, living second lives.

35. A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century by Donna Haraway, 1985
+ Haraway is a leading thinker about people’s relationships with computers.
+ Haraway argues against essentialism.
+ This essay is a feminist critique of capitalism.

36. The GNU Manifesto by Richard Stallman, 1985
+ Stallman was a member of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab.
+ He, like Licklider, worked towards free software and sharing between users.
+ Stallman’s program is called Linux.

37. Using Computers: A Direction for Design by Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores, 1986
+ Winograd and Flores turned away from machine understanding and towards machine support.
+ They invented the concept of “ontological design.”
+ Communication through computers is one of their main focuses.

38. Two Selections by Brenda Laurel, 1986, 1991
+ Brenda Laurel co-founded a company, Purple Moon, to create “graphical adventure games” for girls.
+ Brenda Laurel’s approach to computing is very classical.
+ Her most important idea is that the computer can and should be studied from a “humanistic perspective” using models from other art forms.

39. Towards a New Classification of Tele-Information Services by Jan L. Bordewijk and Ben van Kaam, 1986
+ Jan L. Bordewijk and Ben van Kaam declare that a tightly defined classification system for telecommunications systems is needed.
+ The authors believe that these services should be organized based on social power relations.
+ Their essay brought out ideas of using software to fulfill service roles and even the roles of other individuals, similar to the Eliza program.

40. Mythinformation by Langdon Winner, 1986
+ Winner questions the social goals and construction of the revolution.
+ Winner has similar views to Nelson and Engelbart.
+ Winner was one of the first to step back and see the “computer revolution” from a less naïve perspective and to encourage thoughtful action.

41. From Plans and Situated Actions by Lucy A. Suchman, 1987
+ Suchman illuminated the fact that AI creation was misguided.
+ Suchman claims that we must understand the difference between interactions between computers and humans, and straight human interaction.

42. Siren Shapes: Exploratory and Constructive Hypertexts by Michael Joyce, 1988
+ Michael Joyce distinguishes between “exploratory” hypertexts and “constructive” hypertexts.
+ The earlier ideas of Bush, Engelbart, and Nelson allowed the user to go back and forth between these roles.
+ Joyce’s ideas regarding “constructive” hypertexts could transform education as we know it.

43. The Work of Culture in the Age of Cybernetic Systems by Bill Nichols, 1988
+ Bill Nichols writes an update to Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”
+ He invokes the assistance of Pac Man, ELIZA, and even Monopoly in his argument.
+ He pays special attention to the relationship games have with the law.

44. The Fantasy Beyond Control by Lynn Hershman, 1990
+ Lynn Hershman created the first interactive video art installation with her “Lorna.”
+ Hershman explored the idea of making video art a two-way conversation.
+ “Lorna” was one of the first uses of a CD-ROM.

45. Cardboard Computers: Mocking-It-Up or Hands-On the Future by Pelle Ehn and Morten Kyng, 1991
+ Pelle Ehn and Morten Kyng were the leaders of a project called Utopia.
+ They believed that the best tools could be created through working with the uses throughout the design process.
+ They take their argument with close attention to the Scandinavian newspaper business.

46. The Lessons of Lucasfilm’s Habitat by Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer, 1991
+ Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer implemented Habitat in 1991.
+ The authors pay special attention to “computer mediated communications and virtual environments.”
+Habitat was similar to Ultima Online and reminds me of many of the games that we have today.

47. Seeing and Writing by J. David Bolter, 1991
+ J. David Bolter describes how the history of typography and printing relates to our current situation of writing on a computer screen.
+ Along with Richard Grusin, Bolter has explored how changes in new media influence our concepts of reading and writing and how this influenced established media, which they have termed “remediation.”
+ Bolter’s claims that the elements we see on the computer screen have been influenced by non-computer imagery.

48. You Say You Want a Revolution? : Hypertext and the Laws of Media by Stuart Moulthrop, 1991
+ Moulthrop, using McLuhan’s four-part interrogation plan, studied hypertext.
+ Moulthrop points out several assertions, which were taken for granted and have now been disproven.
+ Moulthrop also authored hypertext fictions and experimented with Jorge Luis Borges’s “Garden of Forking Paths.”

49. The End of Books by Robert Coover, 1992
+ This essay appeared in the New York Times Book Review in 1992.
+ Coover has decided that the Golden age of “literary hypertext has ended.
+ Coover believes that work that is written in hyperspace should be read in hyperspace.

50. Time Frames by Scott McCloud, 1993
+ Scott McCloud is a renowned comic book writer.
+ “Sequential art,” which McCloud uses to define comics, has been around since the Ancient Egyptians.
+ McCloud uses comics to make his points about comics.

51. Surveillance and Capture: Two Models of Privacy by Philip E. Agre, 1994
+ Philip Agre studied computer systems design.
+ He developed the capture model.
+ He believes that, similar to Foucault and Bentham, “informed organization internalizes capture.” Basically, if we know we are being watched, we are careful.

52. Nonlinearity and Literary Theory by Espen J. Aarseth, 1994
+ Espen J. Aarseth studied nonlinear literature.
+ One example of nonlinear narrative is Julio Cortazar’s “Blow-Up,” which was made into a film by Michelangelo Antonioni.
+ Aarseth questions what this study will do to literary theory and hopes that is will open the floodgates to new perspectives on literature as a whole.

53. Nomadic Power and Cultural Resistance by Critical Art Ensemble, 1994
+ The CAE is the Critical Art Ensemble.
+ According to Wikipedia, they are founded upon “the exploration of the intersections between art, critical theory, technology, and political activism.”
+ Original members include: Steve Barnes, Dorian Burr, Steve Kurtz, Hope Kurtz and Beverly Schlee.
+ Book projects include: The Electronic Disturbance (1997), Electronic Civil Disobedience & Other Unpopular Ideas(1998), Flesh Machine; Cyborgs, Designer Babies, Eugenic Consciousness (1998), Digital Resistance: Explorations in Tactical Media (2001), Molecular Invasion (2002), and Marching Plague (2006).

54. The World-Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee, Robert Cailliau, Art Luotenen, Henrik Frystyk Nielsen, and Arthur Secret, 1994
+ W3 was developed to be a pool of human knowledge.
+ It was designed for organization, in that projects that were later on found to be related could be easily reshaped on the W3.
+ W3 is a system of interlinked hypertext documents.

Fall 2008: Digital New Media

Sunday, September 7, 2008

The Guild

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