This article uses Bolter and Grusin's notion of remediationto explore analog media technologies—cinema, photography,cartography, television, and radio—in digital horror videogames.Such moments illustrate what Lister et al. term the "technologicalimaginary" of both old and new media technological imaginaryof both old and new media. Old media technologies contributea sense of the real perceived as lacking in digital media, yetcentral to a generically-significant impression of embodiment.Critical theorization of these forms within media studies illuminatetheir function within digital video game texts; such processesillustrating the cultural, institutional, and aesthetic meaningsand mythologies of both analog and digital media, while continuingtraditional use of media technologies within discourses of horrorand the supernatural.
Key Words: analog • digital • film • horror • remediation
I tried watching Paprika last night, and found it to be a fascinating film. Certainly I recognised the "dream hacking" theme as somewhat comparable to Ghost in the Shell, and the gastropod wreaking havoc at the end reminded me of Akira. But I had a problem sitting still because I was so taken by the vivid colours and the theme of digital interoperability between [me] the viewer and the reflexive digital themes of the film itself, that I was getting up off the sofa every few minutes to photograph the action. I've put up some of my efforts here, and the beauty of Gimp 2 is that there are all manner of effects you can render. "Softglow" is my personal favourite, as it really helps remove distortion from a television image, as can also be seen in the bottom image taken from the latest Grand Theft Auto. Having said that though, I think a bit of graininess is a virtue in the second image, as it connects to the media theme of Paprika, which I've amplified through use of one of Gimp's distorting "lens" effects.
Part of the reason I felt motivated to do this was I think it reconnects to themes of information storage and retrieval, as well as the Matt Hanson type stuff ,that has previously featured on this blog. Who is going to document, store, and then make accessible for future researchers, the vast tracts of virtual geography, especially once their original storage medium becomes out of date? It is a basic problem that explains why information managers generally prefer to speak of "digital persistence" rather than "digital preservation" per se. Hence I was interested to read a report some time ago about the initiative taken by the University of Texas:
The project will establish a repository that, Prof Winget hopes, game makers will come to use as an archive for games. She also hopes that the project gets game makers thinking about the steps they need to take during game creation to preserve materials. "We want to raise the consciousness in the industry about how important these records are," said Prof Winget. "I do not think they save anything or it's saved in such a way that they would not be able to recognise the significance of what they are holding."
Thanks for the tip off ahuthnance (note though that this latest trailer is only 2 weeks old). Other than the most obvious reasons, I include it here as well as confirmation of some of the points raised in the earlier post on Matt Hanson. By any measure though, this is certainly an impressive effort. This film is in production and hopefully will be out in the end of Fall 2008. Its a "No Budget" fan film project created with a purpose to appreciate 2 Best Sci-Fi franchises.On this web site I will be posting news and media files, such as videos and stills. ENJOY! http://popovproductions.com/avpr_main.html
I couldn't resist posting a picture of Hideo Kojima's appearance at a launch event for the latest instalment of Metal Gear Solid, where he took the stage to the strains of Joy Division's "Atmosphere" (Kojima is known to be a huge fan of their work, with part 2 of MGS subtitled "Substance". He also adores Stanley Kubrick).
This got me thinking about the possible cross-overs with film proper, particularly anime, so I then came across the work of Matt Hanson, which appears to challenge my preconceptions of these relationships. In his book The End of Celluloid, Hanson chronicles how filmmaking is being superseded by a "spectrum of moving image...The book presents an insight into these new styles infiltrating the mainstream, taking in film, animation, FMV and machinima (computer gaming animations), digital tv, pop promos, websites, PDA and PVP devices."
Ckeck out the roster of featured artists in the book:
Jonas Åkerlund (Spun) Roger Avary (Rules of Attraction) Matthew Barney (The Cremaster Cycle) Danny Boyle (28 Days Later) Chris Cunningham (Flex, Windowlicker) Mike Figgis (Hotel, Timecode) Grant Gee (Meeting People is Easy) Lars von Trier (Idioterne) Peter Greenaway (The Tulse Luper Suitcases) Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear Solid series) David Lynch (Rabbits, The Third Place) Koji Morimoto (Noiseman Sound Insect) Hideo Nakata (Ringu) Marc Evans (My Little Eye) Ken Thain (Rebel Vs Thug) Mark Neale (No Maps for these Territories) Mamoru Oshii (Avalon) Kinematic (9-11 Survivor) Bill Viola (The Greeting, The Passions) Kieran Evans & Paul Kelly (Finisterre) C-Level (Endgames: Waco Resurrection) Strange Company (Eschaton, Steelwight) Richard Linklater (Waking Life) Simon Pummell (Bodysong) Fumita Ueda (Ico) Shynola (Radiohead blips & music videos) Kasuhisa Takenouchi (Interstella 5555) Sabiston & Pallotta (Roadhead, Snack & Drink) Janet Cardiff (The Telephone Call) Andy & Larry Wachowski (Animatrix, The Matrix trilogy)
I don't know at present to what degree Hanson's work touches on the theoretical concerns of someone such as Sean Cubitt (not sure if he is like Ken Wark or not), or even, much to derridata's horror, the itinerant academic career of "Moodle", but anyway, here is a link to Hanson's blog, and below that, a quite lengthy lecture he delivered (poor audio quality though, so it requires patience to sit through it):
Finally, here is a taste of how Linklater's adaptation of A Scanner Darkly is treated as symptomatic of an emergent form of subjectivity, with reference to Arctor's speech, delivered while wearing his scramble suit (I suspect the gist of this approach is comparable to Scott Bukatman's recent book on special effects and subjectivity):
"There are a number of different ways to argue that the mind-game film is symptomatic of a relatively new conception of subjectivity - one that has emerged over the past 10 years and under the influences of technological restructurations and scientific preoccupations. This notion is usually assembled under the header of ‘the posthuman’, although it in fact has little to do with not-being-human-anymore. Posthumanist issues such as artificial intelligence and consciousness lead to a conception of the human individual that does not pose a break from humanity, but rather a move away from a historically-developed and culturally distinct sense of humanism which involves individuality, uniqueness, truth, objectivity, embodiment, freedom, will, and agency. Very much in line with the posthuman, Garrett Stewart proposes the term “postsubjective virtuality” for what happens in films akin to those I have mentioned, though for the underdetermination of images, perspectives, and validity that I take as determinants in my corpus, I prefer the term “transsubjective”. This choice is partly in order to avoid confusion with the Lacanian and Lyotardan understanding of intersubjectivity as a social phenomenon of communication and meaning-production, and partly to emphasise the transferable, borderless, and unstable nature of subjectivity amidst the technological and psychological distortions of mind-game films. Identity is the key arena for all these distortions to be played out: like many mind-game films, A Scanner Darkly is riddled with doppelganger motifs, counter-identities, amnesia, and split personalities. Without entering the realm of cyborgs, the questioning, fragmentation, and splitting of identities in A Scanner Darkly establishes a similar discussion of human identity, consciousness, and subjectivity. Arctor finds his identity muddled not only by the surveillance of himself he is forced to process, but also by the dwindling of his mental faculties due to the drugs he has himself become addicted to during his undercover narcotics investigation. All these internal and external influences contaminate any clear-cut, coherent sense of self; Arctor perfectly illustrates the posthuman notion, here phrased by Slavoj Žižek, that: At the level of material reality (inclusive of the psychological reality of “inner experience”) there is in effect no Self: the Self is not the “inner kernel” of an organism, but a surface-effect. A “true” human Self functions, in a sense, like a computer screen: “What does a scanner see?” what is “behind” it is nothing but a network of “selfless” neuronal machinery. In a fitting scene, Arctor delivers a work speech in his scramble suit, but suffers extreme discomfort halfway. His perceptions of the audience are truly caught in the prism of filmic representation: before the blur of his scramble suit, we see the markings “Live” and “HQ” within what is supposedly Arctor’s vision. Arctor’s subjective perceptions appear filtered by the panoptical reign of his employer; our perceptions of the film are filtered by its logic of surveillance and mediation".
“What does a scanner see?” Techno-fascination and unreliability in the mind-game film Laura Schuster
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"Defects of empirical knowledge have less to do with the ways we go wrong in philosophy than defects of character do; such as the simple inability to shut up; determination to be thought deep; hunger for power; fear, especially the fear of an indifferent universe" (David Stove The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies 1991: 188)
