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
Nick Turse will definitely have to publish a new edition of The Complex; it's almost impossible to keep up with the endo-colonisation of civilian life by military culture. I was stunned by this project, not least because its location in the Franklin Mills Mall, Philadelphia, almost brings full circle Virilio's theory of the "military entertainment complex". Indeed, his article on Aliens, which was published many years ago in Incorporations (edited by Kwitter and Crary), now seems even more prescient. Be sure to explore the official site, which really "brings it all back home".
"When it comes to graphics, less is often more. Therapeutic simulations need only be realistic enough to persuade us to play along. The more lifelike a simulation becomes, however, the more we notice its discrepancies with the real thing, says Ari Hollander, who designed the bus-bomb scenario. The goal in therapy is to re-create just enough details so that we engage in the believability, or "presence," of the virtual world, and allow patients to affix their own unique experiences.
But before we start getting too carried away with Philip K Dick style "We Can Remember it for you Wholesale" futuristic scenarios, it is worth reading this sobering analysis:
For twenty years, as an airline captain and licensed therapist, I have worked successfully with people seeking to overcome fear of flying.
When people ask me about the new Virtual Reality treatment for fear of flying, I am tempted to tell them it is fraudulent, but it is safer to say their claims are just grossly misleading. For example, an article in USA Today on August 18, 2000 states, "A new study has found the computer-based therapy . . . as effective as traditional therapy."
Why is this misleading? Consider what they call traditional therapy. "Those receiving the standard treatment went to an airport, sat on a plane and imagined the flying experience."
This is misleading because the "therapy" Virtual Reality is compared with is neither "traditional therapy" for fear of flying nor adequate treatment for treating fear of flying.
The traditional treatment for fear of flying was developed in the 1970s and made available to fearful fliers by Captain Truman Cummings, Dr. Albert Forgioni, The Fear of Flying Clinic, Carol Stauffer MSW and Captain Frank Petee. It included several hours of lecture on how flying works, how fear arises and how to control it. This was followed by exposure to a parked airliner, and finally an accompanied flight. The effectiveness of these programs in the 1970s far exceeded the results claimed by the new "high tech" treatment in 2000.
Subsequently, SOAR, the program I developed in the 1980s, produced still better results, as shown by research at the University of Tennessee. Further advancements have led to a nearly 100% success rate.
Larry Hodges, Ph.D, cofounder of Virtually Better Inc. states as follows: "Nearly all of the SE and VR patients flew within six months (80% of the VRET group and 90% of the SE group), . . . . " (VRET means Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy and SE means Standard Exposure).
More information and research on VRET: http://www.apa.org/releases/flyingfear.html
Thus, by his own statistics, even the lame treatment used for comparison had half as many failures as Virtual Reality. When you consider that most people entering treatment can fly but experience great anxiety when doing it, an 80% "success rate" (success meaning how many later fly) may indicate no success at all.
This becomes more obvious in an article in the Psychiatric Times. Michael Kahan, M.D., of Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, N.Y. states "The criteria for improvement was simply: did the patients fly?" Forty people entered treatment and thirty-one completed it. Following treatment, only twenty-one (68%) flew.
In an attempt to assess if the treatment had long term effects, only seven responded that they had flown, and some of those reported moderate anxiety.
This info is available at the Psychiatric Times web site at:
http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/p000501b.html
Seven out of 40 people is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a good track record for a $1200.00 treatment.
The problem with the Virtual Reality approach is that people who suffer from fear of flying have such a vivid imagination that they easily create realistic images of impending disaster when flying. These images in their mind's eye are so real that the body reacts to the images as the body does to actual danger. Because the physical reactions that result are the same physical reactions one experiences in actual danger, it can become impossible for the person to separate feelings of danger from actual danger.
In addition, the feelings that result are so intense that the person may have no way to control them. On the ground, when one feels anxious, one naturally seeks to gain control of the situation so as to change it in a way that will alleviate anxiety. If that is not possible, escape is sought. In flight, neither control of the situation nor escape is available leaving the fearful flier no way to control his or her feelings.
The need for control or escape comes from feelings of anxiety. Since neither control nor escape is available, the problem can be addressed only by reducing the anxiety.
Adequate treatment to reduce the anxiety requires neutralization of the images the person already has in the mind. Additional frightening images presented in Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy may only add to the problem. VRET fails because, instead of neutralizing the images the person is already dealing with, it provides even more.
But I make no excuses for the soldier in the following clip. Did he have some inherently sadistic proclivities prior to his tour of duty in Iraq, or was his personality predominantly shaped upon his arrival?:
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."
In social science, for example sociology, attempts are made to interpret actual events. The stories constructed by sociologists and anthropologists are argued to be more than mere abstractions, and more than statistical predictions - they are held to convey something that is really taking place 'beneath' the surface of events. Thus, for example, an uprising may be interpreted and argued to be a manifestation of class tensions around economic entitlements. Understanding global economic relations as intangible but powerful 'virtual' relations frames our attitudes and actions towards national economic instability and the popular experience of change in the job market. 'The virtual' becomes a template for understanding and reacting to events in everyday life whenever societies face a situation in which distant events (a corporate merger) have local impacts on a related but quite a different register (prices for a service).
Table 2.1 The virtual and the concrete Real (existing) Possible (not existing) Ideal virtual (ideally real) abstract (possible ideal) Actual concrete present (actually real) probable (actual possibility)
The real qualities of the virtual, such as a memory of an event, distinguish the virtual from the unreal, or even surreal, qualities of the abstract. But the strength of Table 2.1 is that it allows us to both distinguish the virtual from - and relate it to - worlds of material existence, the mathematical worlds of probability and possible occurrences, and the abstract world of pure idealizations. These relationships are mediated by human agency, the flow of time and concurrence of place - something that is captured in the everyday language of surprise at transformations, the calculation of risk and the invoking of spirits. A risk or myth, an event or dream draws on all aspects of the real and possible. Contemporary cognitive science and neurology shows Proust to be incomplete: in any dream one could find not only the virtual but the concrete present of neurochemistry, hormones and the electrical exchanges of brain cells. A caution against reducing to one element or another is therefore in order. None the less, the table has an analytical and heuristic value: we can learn by considering social action in terms of each of the four aspects of the tetrology and in terms of their exchanges with each other. Walter Henry in a trenchant analysis points out that all communication involves the concrete (voice, inked letters), the virtual (coded meaning), the abstract (ideas), and the probable (author's intention) (Henry, 2001). These categories are woven together in everyday cognition and interaction. Thus it is not a matter of drawing on one single category - we rarely find pure examples of the virtual - but an assemblage of the terms. This explains how in imprecise everyday speech it is often difficult to demarcate where a naming of materiality, such as a useful product, stops and a projection of probability, shaded with abstract belief and glossed over with virtualities such as a brand name begins.
There is thus an axis of realization between the possible and real, and an axis of actualization between the ideal and actual that are characterized by very different relations. Above all the performative relations of actualization challenge us to rethink identity relations characteristic of the process of realization (Rob Shields: The Virtual pp32-33).
Virtual↔Concrete • Déjà vu exemplifies the sensation that the present has already been experienced in a dream. The actual-real present is lived in a surreal, dreamlike state as virtual, or ideal-real. • Ritual actualizes latent possibilities, conjures the past with a view to altering the present. Virtual↔Abstract • Symbols represent and thus make present abstractions by giving them a form. • Myth formulates the past as an idealization, purifying it of factuality in favour of moral and ethical ends. Abstract↔Probable • Chance is the abstract idea of the play of probability. • Predictions formulate the abstract ideals into calculations of the actually possible. Concrete↔Probable • Risk is our pragmatic approach to probability - we take risks on the chance that a computable probability will not actually occur. • Fate describes a present or an outcome as a future prescribed as an actuality.
Concrete↔Abstract • Miracles are said to occur when the non-existing ideals suddenly materialize. • Abstraction conceptualizes the concrete present as a pure (non-existing) idealization. Virtual↔Probable • Premonitions are visions of probabilities in the felt form of emotional sensations. They are real idealizations of actual possibilities. • Foretelling the future casts a calculated, possible outcome as something that has already been conceived, imagined and possibly represented.
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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)
