Putting the Video Back in Video Games: Opportunities and Challenges for Visual Studies Approaches to Video Game Analysis

I argue for the application of visual studies in video game analysis. This approach presents opportunities for the intersectional analysis of video game visuals as games are brought into dialogue with other visual media like film and painting. This approach also presents challenges due to ontological distinctions between different media as well as due to academic divisions regarding the study of different art and media objects. Despite the challenges presented, a visual studies approach is particularly useful as a critical window into contemporary visual culture at large. I outline the fields of game studies and visual studies, marking their distinctions as well as the areas in which they overlap. I provide examples of visual studies approaches to video game analysis through an emphasis on the visual characteristics of video games. As visual studies is generally considered an interdisciplinary endeavor, I contextualize my analyses through comparisons with other visual media, in particular finding intersections with art history and film studies. Specifically, I argue that perspective is an integral visual trait of many video games, relating the use of linear perspective and isometric perspective, used in some genres of games, with the development of perspective in painting. I examine various cinematic techniques used in video games and discuss their ideological potency. I also cover ways in which video games subvert conventional norms, such as through self-reflexivity, to open up novel avenues for visual expression

Osservazioni sul ruolo urbano della demolizione

La demolizione è un territorio negletto: da un lato viene liquidata come una prassi ovvia del processo generativo, dall’altro additata come una scorciatoia ingiustificata –e sempre meno giustificabile– per sbrigare situazioni irrisolte. D’altra parte la demolizione è anche la rappresentazione fenomenologica di uno stato di crisi, un apice di discontinuità, l’occupazione temporanea dello ‘spazio dello scontro’, uno spazio che ha perso progressivamente la sua importanza a partire dagli anni ottanta del novecento, scalzato dalla necessità di individuare margini di mitigazione e convergenza. Questo luogo critico non ha tuttavia smesso di esistere e continua a svolgere la sua funzione rivelatrice delle trasformazioni in atto, assumendo manifestazioni via via più complesse. Questo lavoro si occupa dunque della demolizione e delle sue conseguenze nel progetto della città. Se la demolizione ha sempre svolto un ruolo evidente nel processo evolutivo dell’ambiente urbano, le modalità con cui essa viene assorbita da queste trasformazioni hanno subito delle importanti modificazioni sia di senso che nella loro pratica. La demolizione diventa uno strumento fondamentale a partire dalla metà dell’ottocento per assecondare l’accelerazione di queste trasformazioni, un’accelerazione di cui iniziamo a percepire solo oggi una fase discendente. Lo spostamento di senso che la demolizione subisce è infatti ampiamente condizionato dalla rapidità del consumo dell’ambiente costruito sia nei suoi aspetti materiali che in quelli simbolici. Dopo un’introduzione che delinea la demolizione all’interno di un quadro culturale più ampio e il suo impatto nella cultura visuale –a partire dalle sue prime manifestazioni fino all’epoca contemporanea–, la tesi si struttura in due parti autonome ma allo stesso tempo strettamente connesse. Nella prima parte si tenta una ricostruzione della sua collocazione teorica attraverso l’osservazione di alcuni temi fondamentali della lettura della città: qui la demolizione viene messa a confronto con la questione della conservazione, con lo scontro di quest’ultima con il progetto moderno e con l’emergere di metafore importanti e confliggenti come tabula rasa e palinsesto. Pur sfuggendo da un criterio prettamente cronologico, questa prima parte ricostruisce una sorta di teoria retroattiva della demolizione. La seconda parte, attraverso l’osservazione di quattro episodi specifici, ripercorre contestualizzandola, l’evoluzione della pratica della demolizione mettendo in luce la progressiva marginalizzazione del suo utilizzo. Una gestione sostenibile del costruito esistente e della sua dismissione passa attraverso il riuso dei componenti e degli elementi edilizi, privilegiando alla scala urbana delle strategie che non prevedano la completa demolizione. Ma al netto di una considerazione puramente ambientalista del questione ecologica, la domanda che questo lavoro, chiudendosi, vuole aprire è: quanto abbiamo ancora bisogno della demolizione e in quale situazione la demolizione continua ad essere uno strumento insostituibile

Filling The Gaps: Playing The Semiotic Network In The Extemporization Of Scores For Improvisational Theater

The Art of Scoring for Improvisational Theater draws on traditions whose origins are obscured by the fog of History and Myth. With no prior plan, a musician is tasked with providing accompaniment that creates or reinforces mood, era, location, or genre. Through such accompaniment, a musician reads and activates nodes in a semiotic network, to generate context, subtext, or both. Drawing from sources in Semiotics, Multimedia, Marketing, Sociology, Artificial Intelligence, Film Music History, Theater, Music Theory, and Musicology, as well as interviews with an array of Participants and the Author\u27s personal experience, this paper seeks to articulate a framework of musical understanding that is uniquely in-the-moment, yet ever-present

Mobile-mentory mobile documentaries in the mediascape

This thesis investigates the potential of and prospects for mobile documentary filmmaking. As a result of practice-led research, the city film Max with a Keitai was produced on mobile camera phones for cinematic projection. The feature-length documentary portrays the contemporary Japanese megalopolis through the lens of a mobile phone and records the mobile filmmaking process. Simultaneously, the project experimented with mobile phones as viewing devices for ‘micro-movies’. Through curating an international mobile art exhibition and mobile feature film screening, the research explored the new mobile aesthetic from 2004 onwards, which is presented as the Keitai Aesthetic in this thesis. In the first chapters the thesis maps out the early mobile mediascape in the years 2004 to 2007 and analyses cinematic technology through user-based histories. Furthermore, the theoretical framework explores the city films of the 1920s and the concept of motion in film. Mobile filmmaking in the years 2004 to 2007 constitutes a return to non-linear documentary practices, such as interval theory (Dziga Vertov) and Ur-Kino (Hans Richter). The final chapters examine the new emerging mobile aesthetic in the research timeframe from 2004 to 2007 and further develop the argument that innovation in mobile filmmaking occurred, both in the domain of the gallery and the film-festival context before the media industry realized the potential of mobile media. The particular mobile resolution adds new elements to the emerging Keitai Aesthetic: the experience of location, notions of personal, immediate and intimate qualities. This research documents the alternative approach offered by the mobile-mentary (mobile documentary) and explores its potential as an intervention into the industry dominated discourse

Subtitling the films of Volker Schlöndorff in English

Volker Schlöndorff is one of Germany’s foremost directors, and a prominent member of the group who formed the New German Cinema in the 1960s, a movement which rejected the ‘old film-making’ in Germany and embraced a new way of working whose main thrust was artistic, rather than commercial. This thesis seeks to use the Descriptive Translation Studies framework to examine the English subtitles for two of Schlöndorff’s best known films: Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum [The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum], directed in 1975, and Die Blechtrommel [The Tin Drum], from 1979. Using the concept of translational norms as one of its main heuristic tools, this research examines an audiovisual corpus consisting of five different sets of DVD subtitles from the two films: three from Die Blechtrommel, dating from 1995, 2002 and 2010, and two from Katharina Blum, dated 2003 and 2009, thus spanning the era from the advent of digitisation and the beginning of DVD to the rise of TV and film streaming services. The data is analysed to investigate the translation strategies that have been activated by the subtitlers when encountering culture-specific references, and then to pinpoint any diachronic trends that come to the fore, with a view to testing the earliest concept of the retranslation hypothesis (Bensimon, 1990; Berman, 1990)

Literatura 2.0: para uma cartografia da narrativa digital

Este trabalho de investigação procura mostrar de que modo a materialidade dos novos suportes molda a forma de ser das obras literárias digitais, provocando reconfigurações nas instâncias do autor, do leitor e do texto e permitindo-nos antever, em função da introdução do digital na literatura, um conjunto de transformações ao próprio sistema literário. Identificando a literatura digital interativa como uma das formas mais recentes, sofisticadas e “radicais” de produção de narrativa procuramos, a partir dela, e especificamente através da análise da obra digital Pry, compreender as propriedades e particularidades da obra literária digital, reconhecendo que esta impõe novas possibilidades de escrita e de leitura, e que convoca, pela sua natureza formal, um inequívoco diálogo com a forma de ser e de viver do sujeito contemporâneo

Discursos audiovisuales en las aulas: cine, videojuegos y machinima

Texto en español y resumen en inglésEl objetivo principal que marca este trabajo es descubrir cómo pueden ser introducidos los juegos (de aventura y/o estrategia) en el aula, las posibilidades y características que cada uno de ellos ofrece y cómo pueden profesores e investigadores utilizarlos en el aula para contribuir a la formación de personas críticas ante los mensajes que generan los medios de comunicación en el siglo XXI. En este contexto, la investigación profundiza en aspectos claves que derivan de la consideración de los videojuegos como parte integrantes de la cultura popular y como, gracias a las posibilidades que ofrecen la interacción con ellos, los usuarios pueden participar activamente creando producciones multimodales aportando así creaciones a la cultura. Una de estas aportaciones son las producciones machinima que son definidas como creaciones audiovisuales generadas por ordenador a través de las imágenes del videojuego. Estas producciones machinima forman parte de lo que Jenkins denomina cultura participativa (Jenkins, 2006). Desde esta perspectiva se ha trabajado con dos tipos de juegos que permiten crear situaciones de aprendizaje en las aulas: Harry Potter y el Cáliz de Fuego, definido como un juego de aventuras y Spore, centrado en las estrategias. Cada uno de ellos se ha utilizado en contextos diferentes y con objetivos distintos, aspectos que marcaron el desarrollo de los talleres realizados en dos centros públicos de la Comunidad de Madrid. Durante el curso escolar 2006-2007 tuvo lugar el taller "Narrativas audiovisuales de los medios compartidos de Harry Potter y el Cáliz de Fuego" en el CEIP Henares con alumnos y alumnas de 2º de Primaria. Posteriormente se trabajó en el IES Manuel de Falla durante el curso 2008-2009 con el alumnado de secundaria (4º ESO B) y su profesora de Biología, donde se desarrolló el taller "Aprender a construir machinima con el videojuego Spore". Los resultados obtenidos en esta investigación muestran que no todos los videojuegos ofrecen las mismas posibilidades de aprendizaje en el aula. Podemos hablar de características comunes como las reglas o la presencia de mundos imaginarios, pero cada uno de ellos permite al profesor/investigador el desarrollo de diferentes tareas. Desde la perspectiva del alumnado se ha podido observar como la presencia de los videojuegos y otros medios como el cine permite generar nuevas "historias", convirtiendo a los estudiantes en emisores de información, expresando sus valores y comportamientos. La forma de actuar en el videojuego, a su vez, está limitada por las acciones y las narrativas que éste permite. De esta forma los alumnos también descubrieron que los videojuegos poseen una mecánica interna que deben aprender a través de la resolución de problemas. Estas decisiones son las que crean la trama del juego y posibilitan la creación de textos por parte de los alumnos y alumnas describiendo sus acciones

As dimensões midiáticas e a transmidialidade : os comportamentos de literatura, cinema e videogame, considerando aspectos de estrutura/sequência, tempo, espaço/visibilidade e a convergência entre as mídias

Esta tese tem como objetivo fomentar um estudo sobre os diálogos midiáticos e transmidiáticos ao trazer uma análise que discorre sobre a ótica das dimensionalidades específicas de cada mídia e de seus comportamentos. Dessa forma, viso a iniciar o diálogo entre teorias literárias, cinematográficas e a nova teoria proveniente das novas mídias videointerativas e os estudos comparatista, acerca dos processos de criação e manifestação das mídias literatura, cinema e videogame. O objetivo específico é analisar, pensar, elencar e escrever, de forma particularizada, a respeito das individualidades de cada uma das mídias e de como essas individualidades encontram-se em diálogo quando articulam-se como componentes de uma transmedia storytelling. Para tanto, apresento inicialmente uma teorização sobre as dimensionalidades midiáticas e remoto a manifestação histórica do storytelling. Em seguida, analiso os aspectos de sequência, tempo e espaço/visibilidade em cada uma das três mídias para, então, adentrar as especificidades das interrelações transmidiáticas, que serão observadas a partir da franquia Warcraft.This thesis aims to promote a study on media and transmedia dialogues, through the perspective of the specific dimensions of each media and their behaviours. In this way, I aim to initiate the dialogue between literary, cinematographic theories and the new theory from the new video interactive media and comparative studies, about the processes of creation and the manifestation of literature, cinema and video games. The specific objective is to analyse, reflect, list, and compose, in a particular way, about the individualities of each of the media and how these individuals are in dialogue when they are articulated as components of transmedia storytelling. For that, I initially present a theorization about the media dimensionalities and remote the historical manifestation of storytelling. Then, I analyse the aspects of sequence, time and space/visibility in each of the three media to then enter the specifics of transmedia interrelationships, which will be observed from the Warcraft franchise

Interactive Digital Technologies and the User Experience of Time and Place

This research examines the relationship between the development of a portfolio of interactive digital techniques and compositions, and its impact on user experiences of time and place. It is designed to answer two research questions: • What are some effective methods and techniques for evoking an enhanced awareness of past time and place using interactive digital technologies (IDTs)? • How can users play a role in improving the development and impact of interfaces made with IDTs? The principal creative and thematic element of the portfolio is the concept of the palimpsest, and its artistic potential to reveal visual and aural layers that lie behind the landscapes and soundscapes around us. This research thus contributes to an evolving cadre of creative interest in palimpsests, developing techniques and compositions in the context of testing, collating user experience feedback, and improving the ways in which IDTs enable an artistic exploration and realisation of hidden layers, both aural and visual, of the past of place. An iterative theory-composition-testing methodology is developed and applied to optimise techniques for enabling users to navigate multiple layers of content, as well as in finding methods that evoke an increased emotional connection with the past of place. This iterative realisation cycle comprises four stages – of content origination, pre-processing, mapping and user interaction. The user interaction stage of this cycle forms an integral element of the research methodology, involving the techniques being subjected to formalised user experience testing, both to assist with their further refinement and to assess their value in evoking an increased awareness of time and place. Online usability testing gathered 5,451 responses over three years of iterative cycles of composition development and refinement, with more detailed usability labs conducted involving eighteen participants. Usability lab response categories span efficiency, accuracy, recall and emotional response. The portfolio includes a variety of interactive techniques developed and improved during its testing and refinement. User experience feedback data plays an essential role in influencing the development and direction of the portfolio, helping refine techniques to evoke an enhanced awareness of the past of place by identifying those that worked most, and least, effectively for users. This includes an analysis of the role of synthetic and authentic content on user perception of various digital techniques and compositions. The contributions of this research include: • the composition portfolio and the associated IDT techniques originated, developed, tested and refined in its research and creation • the research methodology developed and applied, utilising iterative development of aspects of the portfolio informed by user feedback obtained both online and in usability labs • the findings from user experience testing, in particular the extent to which various visual and aural techniques help evoke a heightened sense of the past of place • an exploration of the extent to which the usability testing substantiates that user responses to the compositions have the potential to establish an evocative connection that communicates a sense close to that of Barthes’ punctum (something that pierces the viewer) rather than solely that of the studium • the role of synthetic and authentic content on user perception and appreciation of the techniques and compositions • the emergence of an analytical framework with the potential for wider application to the development, analysis and design of IDT composition

Art and Media: resistance tactics (1932-2016)

Tesis inédita de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Bellas Artes, leída el 21 de junio de 2017; presidente, José Manuel Gayoso Vázquez.En los últimos años, con una intensidad creciente, los medios digitales han comenzado a ser vistos como dispositivos sociales clave: desde ser herramientas comunicacionales paradigmáticas para la organización de movimientos sociales como la llamada Primavera Árabe, Occupy Wall Street o el 15-M; hasta posicionarlas como infraestructura informacional estratégica en relación a las mediatizadas filtraciones de WikiLeaks o los hackeos de Annonymous. Al mismo tiempo, viejos relatos sobre las posibilidades propagandísticas propias del contexto del nacimiento de los medios de masas –aplicadas al condicionamiento conductual de la audiencia comienzan a resurgir como temor entre algunos usuarios de los medios digitales en relación a corporaciones como Google o Facebook –o incluso variaciones más conspiranoicas que involucran gobiernos, agencias de inteligencia, o hackers a sueldo de la red profunda–. En medio de esta polarización discursiva, pensadores de primer nivel y periodistas tecnólogos inician múltiples reflexiones sobre las posibles ‘revoluciones electrónicas’ o la ‘resistencia digital’ en torno a las potencialidades políticas de los ‘nuevos’ medios; y, sin embargo, las aportaciones del arte no son tenidas en cuenta. En 1987 nace en Florida el colectivo Critical Art Ensemble, conformado por especialistas de diseño web, vídeo, la fotografía y la performance, con el objetivo de ‘explorar las intersecciones entre el arte, la teoría crítica, la tecnología y el activismo’. Además de múltiples proyectos, para el año 1994 publicarán una teoría sobre la ‘perturbación electrónica’, que será continuada con la ‘desobediencia civil electrónica’ (1996) y la ‘resistencia digital’ en (2001). Por otro lado, en Holanda se celebrará en 1993 un festival artístico transdisciplinar en torno a las posibilidades sociales de la televisión y los computadores, que se repetirá en 1997 centrándose específicamente en la potencialidad de internet en relación al conjunto de los medios; la extensa documentación teórica allí producida –siendo paradigmático el manifiesto de los ‘medios tácticos’– está disponible online desde entonces. Estos dos breves relatos –siendo a su vez dobles– representan el punto de partida de esta investigación, o más bien, la ausencia que la motiva: aquello que hemos denominado ‘tácticas de resistencia’ –aunando la propuesta de Critical Art Ensemble y los ‘medios tácticos’– y cuya genealogía se remonta, al menos, dos décadas atrás, permaneciendo casi desapercibido en nuestra contemporaneidad inmediata a pesar de ser tema de análisis habitual. Así, la intención primera que da forma a esta investigación es trazar la genealogía de esta tipología específica de praxis artística para poder estudiar los vínculos y afectaciones mutuas históricas que haya podido haber –tanto a nivel técnico como discursivo– en relación a los medios. De este modo, el objetivo último es analizar las intersecciones que existen entre el arte y los medios para, a partir de ello, poder evaluar la importancia que esta tradición artística tiene en relación al pensamiento y las técnicas contemporáneas...In recent years, with increasing intensity, digital media have begun to be seen as key social devices: from being paradigmatic communication tools for the organization of social movements such as the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street or 15-M; to position them as strategic informational infrastructure in relation to the mediated leaks of WikiLeaks or the hacks of Annonymous. At the same time, old accounts of the propagandistic possibilities of the context of the birth of the mass media –applied to the behavioral conditioning of the audience– begin to reemerge as fear among some digital media users in relation to corporations like Google or Facebook –or even more conspiranoic variations involving governments, intelligence agencies, or hackers from the deep network–. In the midst of this discursive polarization, top level thinkers and technological journalists initiate multiple reflections on possible 'electronic revolutions' or 'digital resistances' around the political potentialities of 'new' media; but, however, the contributions of art are not taken into account. In 1987, the Critical Art Ensemble was created in Florida, made up of specialists in web design, video, photography and performance, with the aim of 'exploring the intersections between art, critical theory, technology and activism'. In addition to multiple projets, by 1994 they will publish a theory on 'electronic disturbance', which will be continued with 'electronic civil disobedience' (1996) and 'digital resistance' in (2001). On the other hand, in 1993 a transdisciplinary artistic festival will be held in Netherlands, focusing on the social possibilities of television and computers, which will be repeated in 1997 focusing specifically on the potential of the internet in relation to all media. The extensive theoretical documentation produced there –being paradigmatic the manifesto of 'tactical media'– has been available online ever since. These two short stories –which are themselves doubles– represent the starting point of this research, or rather, the absence that motivates it: what we have coined as 'resistance tactics' –joining the Critical Art Ensemble proposal and the' tactical media'– and whose genealogy goes back at least two decades ago, remaining almost unnoticed in our immediate contemporaneity despite being a subject of habitual analysis. Thus, the first intention that gives shape to this research is to trace the genealogy of this specific typology of artistic praxis, to be able to study the historical links and affectations that may have been –both at a technical and discursive level– in relation to the media. In this way, the ultimate goal is to analyze the intersections between art and the media, so as to be able to evaluate the importance of this artistic tradition in relation to contemporary thinking and techniques...Fac. de Bellas ArtesTRUEunpu