december 2002

Using characters like this is a fascinating technique for academic thinking and writing. It does much more than analogy ("bloggers are like ants"): it allows you to think as an ant (as we think an ant might think). It lets you see our own activity from outside, from a strange position, it's a Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt, or perhaps more like the ostranenje (is that the right word?) described by the Russian Formalists (was it a story by Tolstoy they used as an example, a story narrated by a horse who sees humans, well, differently? I don't have my books here) It lends some of that distance that traditional scientific method demands you have to your object of study, but it's a very different kind of distance.

My favourite book of game theory (as in playing games not economic games) is Bernard Suits'sThe Grasshopper, and I just realised it does something similar to what Grumpygirl's doing. It builds on the old tale of the grasshopper who played all summer while the ants worked hard to gather food for winter. When winter came, the grasshopper asked the ants for food, but they refused it to him, and so he died. The moral is obvious: don't play too much. In Suits's book, the Grasshopper is a guru and two rebel ants are his disciples. Winter is coming and the Grasshopper will die, but though the ants offer him some of the food they had gathered, the Grasshopper refuses it, insisting that play is enough. The book consists of dialogues between the Grasshopper and the Ants, rather like Platonic dialogues actually, where the Grasshopper is definitely the master. Though I don't think the characters are quite so clear in the ancient dialogues. The main theoretical contribution of the book is to define what a game is, and the definition is suggested, considered, redefined and honed through the continual questions and suggestions and disagreements between this master and the Ants.

There are glorious illustrations too. And lots of examples and strange situations and "would that be a game?" - and finally, the Grasshopper dies. But not before he has defined the nature of a game. I should go reread that book, it's gorgeous.<

Suits published his dialogues as a finished piece. A paradox of sorts, publishing dialogues in a perfected, impenetrable form. Grumpygirl is publishing as she thinks, and so the usefulness of her staged dialogues as a way of thinking is much more visible. And other people can join in the conversation as it happens. Wow.

posted: 10/12/02 09:49 |

novel and romance

I spent the day at a seminar on the novel - d'you know English is the only European language that separates the novel from the older tradition of the romance? Other languages call it all roman or romanzi. So what we generally call "a novel", meaning book-length prose narratives after the 18th century or so, would more precisely be called "the bourgeois novel" or something. If you define novel as "a book-length narrative usually in prose" suddenly it has a 2000 year old tradition around the Meditteranean and a 1000 year tradition in Asia. The ancient Greeks had novels, but they didn't have a name for the genre, whereas they had words for comedy and tragedy. So we see connections between ancient comedy and modern comedy but often not between ancient book-length prose narratives, medieval romances and modern novels. Names have power.

Franco Moretti gave an thought-provoking presentation that was based on quantitative research. At first I was deeply sceptical, thinking of whatsit, the anti-reader, in If on a Winter's Night a Traveller who is such a horrible character and loves analysing literature quantitatively - but Moretti did amazing things with his data and graphs. He had graphs of publication of novels in various countries (Britain, France, Nigeria, Japan, Denmark) in various periods and showed how they all follow cycles and patterns. And how new genres appear at regular intervals, not spread out but in clusters of four or five at a time, fairly regularly every 30-40 years. How the gender shift from more authors being female to more authors being male in the 18th century is researched as a single event, which misrepresents it as a once-only phenomenon: however, if you look at the genders of published novelists across 200 years, you see that the dominance of male or female authors shifts back and forwards fairly regularly. It oscillates, and is loosely tied to the kinds of genres favoured in various periods: nautical novels or domestic comedies, for instance. "These oscillations allow an optimal use of the resources available to the system", Moretti said (as I remember) - he didn't talk about literary history as a self-organising system, but his ideas about looking at cycles, models and patterns rather than always thinking of each event or novel or genre as unique and separate are really powerful.

posted: 9/12/02 15:28 |

chatting as ad

So hunting around for stuff on Internet addiction I somehow got one of those casino pop-up ads (here's the link to the ad if you really want to look at it). Only this one looked kind of different. I was about to close the window when I saw it was a chatroom.

Caroline> So anyway, that's my story today

Oh. Hm. What was her story today, I wondered. Was it interesting? I prod at the chat window with my mouse cursor to see if it's alive. Perhaps I can type into that box and ask her about her story. But what's this! Once I click on the window, someone else types something:

Sharon7up> wow! Looks like you could use a little fun

I click again, but this is where the illusion falls apart: all the next lines come tumbling out at once:

Caroline> But I can't go out now - I'm waiting for the cable technician
Joni2go> You don't need to go out! We're going to play craps online - why don't you join us?
Caroline> I don't know... is it safe?
Sharon7up> of course it's safe! You know me - I only go with the best, and 888.com is the best place to play casino games online. You can play as long as you like for free!

Right.

Interestingly it ends - or rather, stops - in media res (can you end in media res or only begin in media res?)

Caroline> Sounds really great :) maybe I will join you. You know, that reminds me...

posted: 6/12/02 12:26 |

users

Today I'm editing the introduction (it needs big changes) and I got to the bit where I work out what to call the users or readers or viewers or interactors or participators or whatevers. You know, the humans. Us guys. Brenda Laurel hates the word "user", and refuses to use it:

...that demeaning little word, "user". This term implies an unbalanced power relationship - the experts make things; everybody else is just a user. (Laurel, Utopian Entrepreneur, 2001, page 49)

Espen pointed out to me that perhaps that is exactly the point. And yes, indeed, I've argued that part of the pleasure of being a user is precisely submitting to the machine. Why are we drivers of cars but users of drugs and computers? Computers are often presented as a substance that is easily abused. The media and some researchers happily talk about internet addiction, or about gamers who become unable to extract themselves from the game though they lose their jobs, their families, their lives. EverQuest, for instance, is the digital version of crack. Did you watch Red Dwarf and the Better Than Life episode? Plug in VR that was very explicitly set up to look just like a drug addiction. And what about television? I've heard of television slaves (or is that only in Norwegian, TV-slave), but I don't think I've heard of a television addict or user. Why not?

posted: 6/12/02 11:45 |

hoaxes, fiction and art

Today I've been writing about the Kaycee Nicole hoax. Useful sources include: The Kaycee Nicole FAQ, the Metafilter discussions (1 and 2) and the story as told by Randall van der Woning, who hosted the weblogs. Unfortunately the Way Back Machine has blocked their archives of Kaycee's journals, presumably because the "hoaxer" or van der Woning asked them to. I'm writing about the question of fictionality and trickery keep arising in other bits of my thesis. Many readers of Online Caroline, for instance, thought that she was real and were furious when they discovered she wasn't - though I thought it was pretty obvious she was fictional. I'm writing about how we use representational works as props in games of make-believe, and the theory I'm using only talks about works that are meant as fiction. Yet we probably use, say, weblogs much in the same way.

Without being an expert, I know there's a long tradition of this kind of "is it fictional or is it real" in performance art, net art and theatre, and so I posted a question to e-kunst asking for help in finding examples. Already I have received some wonderful leads. Maja Løvland is part of a hidden theatre (skjult teater) group here in Bergen and recommends Anne-Britt Grans article on hidden theatre in Samtiden 4:2001 (Norwegian and print only). Synne Skjulstad reminds me of the male psychologist who pretended to be a handicapped woman, described in Turkle's Life on the Screen, and she also suggests looking at the artist Joey Skagg's work, and at the performance theorist Richard Schechner's writing. Jørgen Larsson has some links to sites that use disinformation as net art and also points me to Mouchette. Ragnhild Tronstad reminds me of Boal's "invisible theater" (Maja Løvland also mentioned Boal) - he's written a lot of books, though, I'll have to figure out where he wrote about this - and also suggests Vibeke Tandberg's Brud as an example of visual art pretending to be "real", and has noticed a wikipedia entry on false documents in art and literature.

The line between fiction, hoax, scam and art is very porous. I find that fascinating.

I'll rewrite this post to include a little more on the various leads I found as I check them out. So beware: this is an edit-as-you-go post! Blink and it might have changed! Oh, and if you have any suggestions, please leave a comment!

posted: 5/12/02 12:31 |

mozzie!

I won a Mozzie! Yay! (Um, I got 7 votes and Bjørn got 6, so I reckon we both deserve some fame for that, eh?)

posted: 4/12/02 23:26 |

find yourself

At nikewomen.com I can "find myself" as one of six stereotypes and watch accompanying flash animations for each, but I can't find a catalogue that just plains lists what shoes they sell. An ad campaign taken a bit too far. I suppose I shouldn't be buying Nike gear anyway, huh? [Update: Actually, NikeWatch's F.A.Q. suggests that instead of boycotting Nike, we should write to them and ask for better wages for workers, and they admit that they're not picking on Nike because Nike's worse than others, but simply because they don't have the resources to pick on everyone and Nike has higher profits than most. And there isn't any other brand of sneakers that is any better than Nike when it comes to wages and allowing independent monitoring of factories.]

posted: 4/12/02 16:36 |

would you like to be david still?

You have the opportunity to be David Still.
Would you like to know more about who you could be?

If you'd like to try being David, go to davidstill.org. At the site, you can send email from him (write it yourself or choose from a number of prewritten messages) or reply to emails that previous recipients of emails from David have sent him, or you can look at your (David's) photos and memories.

I like the idea of a free identity, offered to the public at large. Kevin Foust's play.ground was, like David Still, set up around an email account that was open to all, but it was different. Kevin's piece was a "ready-made", a hotmail account that he gave people the password too. Part of the interest of that piece was that some users locked the account, some made changes, some sent emails to mailing lists, and so on.

David Still offers a prefabricated identity. A house, a home, a face, a childhood - or at least photos of them. The prewritten emails are like some of the spams I get (perhaps those spams are art, just as I've expected), and though I think I'd scare my friends if I sent some of these mails to them, just reading the messages and thinking of their being sent is wonderful (choose the "messages" link in the bottom navigation bar to see them). The F.A.A.Q., brilliantly, is a list of questions which don't offer answers, rather, they ask you to answer them. After all, you're David Still. You have the answers.

Why the site is there? Perhaps it's a tribute to a loved one?

You inspired this site - it's just as much yours as mine. You know sometimes, when I'm thinking of new photos or text I can use, it's almost as though you were in my head - you feel that close! If I can't physically be near you, this is the next best thing. You can see what I see, read my thoughts, even use my name - you can more or less be me. I want to feel there's no distance between us - I want you to climb inside my head, I want you to see me. Feel me. Be me. (from the preset message titled "See me. Be me.")

Or perhaps it's just a hobby?

When I just moved here, I was quite excited. New opportunities. New people. But I quickly got caught up in the old rut. Work, work and more work. But I love being in communications. I love meeting people. So I decided to make my work my hobby and designed a site for myself - about me - but something you can use as well. I suppose I'm a sort of real life screen hero. You can 'borrow' my identity - send people emails pretending to be me.

You know, it's getting kind of weird. Maybe I've become an artist - or am I the work of art? (from the preset message titled "Playing the hero?")

I'm wondering whether to write about it in my thesis. I suppose I find this kind of work because I am looking for it, fictions where the reader is both addressed as "you" and invited to step inside the role of "you" - but it does seem to me to be a particularly common and perhaps successful technique in digital fiction and art. The tension of wondering whether there really is a David Still or not is part of what makes this project so fascinating. Like fiction, the idea and presentation of David Still invites us to imagine him. And to imagine ourselves as him. I love that. (Danny Setiawan mentioned this site to me in an email: thanks!)

posted: 3/12/02 15:57 |

project blog: cooking every recipe in the book

In The Julie/Julia Project, Julie Powell has vowed to cook, and blog, every recipe in Julia Child's cookbook within a year.

posted: 3/12/02 15:40 |

big brother meets minority report

There's a good article in Salon today that addresses the Total Information Awareness (I can't believe it actually has a website) that the American government wants to use to track everything its own citizens and the rest of the world does.

One point the journalist (Farhad Manjoo) makes is that computer scientists love the idea. And that makes me realise that the Orwellian system actually wants to do exactly what I love in all the blog connection systems (Blogdex, Allconsuming, etc) and in data mining and recommendation systems, like Amazon. They see patterns in data. If you do X perhaps you are also considering doing Y. If you've done X and Z you're 95% likely to do Y. Only the point of Total Information is of course that it is total. They want all information on everyone. And they are the army and the FBI and so on and they can basically do what they like to you. Blogdex can tell people who my link buddies are but can't put me in jail, or deny me a visa. I think I would hate there being one system that showed connections between blogs. What I love about all these systems is that each is incomplete, and each shows a different point of view of the networks and connections. Imagine, though, a Total Informtion Awareness system that tracks everything you write, click or do on the net.

Another creepy thing: a problem with combining American databases (your bank records, your driving licence, your supermarket shopping) is that there's no common identifier for an individual. In Norway there is. We have person numbers. My bank, my current and previous employers, the tax authorities, the immigration authorities, and I think even my gym know my person number, along with many others agencies. Actually the airlines probably don't. In Norway we also have strict privacy legislation, and it is very, very difficult to get permission to combine databases.

I hope we can keep it.

You need a Salon membership to read past the first page of the article, but you can get a free day pass by clicking through four pages of Mercedes ads. You can click fast.

posted: 3/12/02 14:48 |

tropisms

tropisms.org is a videolog that consists of "crudities": pieces of raw experience, regularly uploaded from South-America.

The author's in the Netherlands now, but is still uploading little videos, from cybercafes, it seems, images, moving, edited, often with text tracks. Rather a nice combination of text blog and "play video" buttons. You need a high bandwidth connection to view it, though.

tropisms.org is a test-case for the hard- and software that, after a 'debugging' period of 6 months, will be used by students of the St.Joost.

[update: Adrian comments tropisms and other video blogs, with interesting ideas about what would or could be bloggish about video]

posted: 2/12/02 14:23 |

howard blogs

John Howard's blog. Supposedly. It's even got his Christmas list for Santa. Howard's the prime minister of Australia (I doubt anyone but the Australians know that - or maybe they do, GooglePeople knows), the one who has detention camps for refugees and who tried to send the Tampa anywhere but Australia and who enthusiastically fights terrorism and does anything else Bush suggests. Any other politicians' blogs out there? (via Adrian) [update 5/12: I gathered some links to fictional weblogs last May.]

posted: 2/12/02 11:14 |

dac

I don't think I've seen a conference chair's blog before. Adrian's chairing Digital Arts and Culture (May 2003 in Melbourne) and has just sent out the first round of acceptances and rejections.

posted: 2/12/02 11:11 |

surveillance

There was a tiny notice in yesterday's paper saying that the Americans want access to European airlines' passenger lists. In Norway, that information is confidential, and noone has access to it. I couldn't find anything more concrete about the issue, except that even the Norwegian police can't access the passenger information directly, they have to have a warrant to access the databases and their search has to relate directly to a criminal investigation. The police would like greater access, but the justice department is sceptical. Passenger lists not only say who's flying where, but also what diet they've ordered (vegetarian, muslim, kosher?) and passenger addresses and other information. And I have to say, just the idea of a foreign government assuming they can have total access to passenger lists that are protected by privacy legislation here...

Today the editorial of my local paper is shocked at this. But I still can't find other information about it.

posted: 2/12/02 10:53 |

sunday?

This morning I turned the alarm off and went back to sleep at seven, annoyed that I'd set the alarm on a Sunday morning. At 7.30 my daughter padded in on bare feet, and asked me what time it was. Too early, I muttered, wondering whether I should suggest an hour of Sunday morning television. Can I open the advent calendar now? she asked. That's when I realised. It was Monday.

I'd have been quite happy for it to have really been Sunday, you know.

posted: 2/12/02 09:02 |

new book reviews

There are new book reviews up at the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies. I love how there are usually a couple of reviews of each books, and the author often has a response, too.

posted: 1/12/02 23:23 |