Herewith my hastily scribbled notes on Ian's talk. Video and audio to follow.
Structuring effect of discourse
McLuhan
Cognitive linguistics: Lakoff
We understand one domain in terms of another
Force of words
Glaukopis Athene
Metric filler, mnemonic
Received forms that we change over time
Invention of linguistic constraint
Oulipo
Lipogram (omitting certain letters)
Perec
Tree of Codes
Cut out of Street of Crododiles
Histories of how we got from clay tablet to codex don't let us think what to do...next...
Book as a book
"I was never making a book--I was putting words down"
We think o photography as representational
"the illusion of a literal description of what the camera saw"
(Winogrand)
Graininess from chemical halide in high shutter speeds
Triumph of tech vs a strange random walk
35 mil camera by a guy who had asthma and didn't want to use view camera!
The way a lens "sees"
Cartier Bresson at small apertures
Or Brassaille in the rain
The confluence of stuff in the image
Light sensitive emulsion or sensitive chip
The ways we want to let the camera see favor certain kinds of vision
Two identical pics of light with same aperture etc. Newer one prevents flare
Frank photo of glowing jukebox
Allowance of flair
Sets of ways of knowledge, not just an accident.
Computers not identical
We tend to want to undermine computers into binary data
Platform studies
Not just delivery--the platform is supported by what it can and can't do
Levels:
Reception/operation
Interface
Form/Function
Code
Platform
We usually stay on top level
Platforms can be windows into other platforms!
You have to know which is doing what and why
Atari: Television Interface Adapter
Playfield
Player Sprites
2 missiles
One ball
Commonalities--what can we make from them
Level playing field etc
Display tech
We think of pics as flat and 2d
But Oscilloscopes
Intense phosphor burn
The electron gun is position then moved
Cathode ray tube tv
Phosphorescence is illuminated by scanning gun that does it 60x per second
Graphic, space then copy to screen
Atari doesn't have a screen buffer
So that interfaces with the electron gun
You have to get everything synched
Not like writing or ploughing
Code for how to get a black screen
20 bits just to make screen
Flipped symmetrically
Adventure Games created way for others to follow
Neutral zone produced by reading out code and running data
You are seeing the code for the data
Layer dip
Flat Ontology
How do we make all the layers visible
You and the metal
Strangely peaceful
How do you make this visible?
A Slow Year
Solitude
Imagism
Haiku
Four games about four seasons
Like poems
Pitfall
Steve Cartwright
Barnstorming
Rain as optical illusion
Trying to get all the levels present in the work
Uniqueness
Living machines that have something to teach us
Everything is like that
Q: form
Making a book
vs writing a book
We complain around it
Stuck in world of ideas
Some analogy between a sonnet and 128k
But one is form and the other is capacity
"chef" programming
Which registers are interesting at any moment
Q: Nostalgia in video game studies
Silicon Valley technical innovation vs Hollywood Style
We throw machines away
Hard to take Atari at face value
Patience or not with earlier forms
Games have largely been killed or thrown away
Nostalgia objects rather than earnest aesthetic containers
What if I took the @ seriously
Activision vs Atari paintings
The paintings create an interesting space
You know it doesn't match the game!
We construe tech as advancement
Imagining obsolescence??
Failure and difficulty--Yar's Revenge
Q: A game that allows mistakes to happen? (Gina)
"I wonder how I can break it?"
"Where is the edge?"
Could you go to the lowest level of Playstation?
You have to understand something about the aesthetics
Commercial games: no one ever frames it
"I wanted to write a game for Playstation that used the smallest number of instructions"
Q: 6 axis controller in Playstation 3
Gimmickry
You would need to take it seriously
That affordance of the device hasn't been plumbed to its depths
Atari had very long commercial life
Like VW Beetle
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