The 6th Nordic Interactive Research school 26/8 - 31/8 2002: "Designing expression in interactive spaces"
LECTURE NOTES on “Drama in Virtual Space” & REFERENCES of the lecture relating to logics, languages, rhetoric and participant-actor’s avatar and points of view in digital drama and narrative by Mika Tuomola http://crucible.lume.fi/ref_tuomola.html email.
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The Magic Circle emerges in collaboration and/or by agreed rules between author- and participant-actors. The encounter is dramatic by nature: the participant acts with or within the work and thus drives the whole (temporalspatial) action of it among the other actors (whether authored, as in a stand-alone computer game, or participatory, as in online worlds), and drama is, by definition, narration by the means of character/actor action. On the other hand, due to their real-time processing abilities of large amounts of database material, digital media also enable new forms of (visual) narration, which are not necessarily interactive and dramatic: for instance, artificial life and generative (moving) image collages. All these forms can be contributed to world-wide and real-time by people of various cultures through the means of computer networks. The really new aspects in the "new" digital media are thus their interactivity and weight-point on participantactor's choice (its aesthetic and ethics), their generative nature and multiplicity of points of view, and the possibility of various actors to take a part in media works on global level.
Mika Tuomola UIAH Medialab
”Drama in Virtual Space” August 27, 2002 - Stockholm
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LECTURE NOTES EXPRESSION 1. logic 2. grammar, language 3. rhetoric (ARTISTIC) EXPRESSION by Aquinas claritas (clarity) integritas (integrity) consonantia (“rhythmic” organisation of the integral work of clear, “shining” idea) -> VALUES: Joycean aesthetics and ethics in The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man -> culture dependent: Lara Croft, Cupids INTERACTION "Mutual and simultaneous activity on the part of participants, usually working toward some goal - but not necessarily." (Andy Lippman) 1. mutual (and simultaneous) interruptibility 2. graceful degradation (unanswerable questions handled without a halt in the conversation: "I'll come back to that in a minute.") 3. limited look-ahead (since conversational freedom, a limit to what can be expected to happen) 4. no-default (development through interaction, no pre-planned path) 5. the impression of an infinite database "Play with me!" ELEMENTS of the Magic Circle of Play Objects Attributes Relationships Environment (the Magic Circle) DRAMAtic coherence conceptually ACTOR/agent/character-driven ACTION expressing THOUGHT (claritas) by the chosen LANGUAGE formed by Mika Tuomola UIAH Medialab
”Drama in Virtual Space” August 27, 2002 - Stockholm
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MELODY/PATTERNs (consonantia) of the SPECTACLE (integritas) COMMEDIA’s practise CHARACTER/MASKs of collective/assimilatory image (focus) PROPERTIES for action/communication (symbolism) STAGING (relationships of characters) ACTING OUT: PROPOSITION (“Jo” of Noh Theatre), DEVELOPMENT (“Ha”), SOLUTION (“Kyo”) (made out of battute, concetti and lazzi - event types - in repertorio/zipaldone database) THEMEs: love, money/food, vengeance ("In order to be celebrations , they must be connected with something from another sphere of existence, from spiritualideological sphere. They need a sanction that does not come from the world of facilities and necessities, but from the world of higher aims of human existence, in other words, from the world of ideals. Without it there can be no celebration." Baktin)
REFERENCES
Books and articles Aarseth, Espen: Cybertext - Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. The John Hopkins University Press 1997. Aristotle (1997). Poetics. Dover Publications. Baktin, Mihail (1995). Francois Rabelais: Keskiajan ja renessanssin nauru [Francois Rabelais: The Laughter of Medieaval and Renaissance]. Kustannus Oy Taifuuni. Beardon, Colin & Tuomola, Mika (1998). Multimedia Learning for the Theatre in the InterELIA journal Issue Three, Winter 1997/98 (p. 17-22). European League of Institutes of the Arts ELIA. Beauvoir, Simone de: L'Invitée (1943 - She Came To Stay (1945), trans. Yvonne Moyse and Roger Senhouse). Gallimard. (read in comparison with Sartre) Campbell, Joseph: A Hero with Thousand Faces. Princeton University Press 1968. Campbell, Joseph (with Bill Moyers): The Power of Myth. Anchor 1991. Mika Tuomola UIAH Medialab
”Drama in Virtual Space” August 27, 2002 - Stockholm
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Danielewski, Mark Z.: House of Leaves. Pantheon Books 2000. Emigh, John: Masked Performance: The Play Self and Other in Ritual and Theatre. University of Pennsylvania Press 1996. Green, Martin & Swan, John (1986). The Triumph of Pierrot: The Commedia dell'Arte and the Modern Imagination. Macmillan Publishing Company. Hesse, Hermann: Glasperlenspiel (1943 - The Glass Bead Game, trans.) Fretz & Wasmuth, Zürich. Huizinga, Johan: Homo Ludens (1955). Boston: Beacon Press. Huxley, Aldous: Brave New World (1932). Penguin Modern Classics. (Also at http://www.huxley.net/bnw/) Laurel, Brenda: Computers as Theatre. Addison-Wesley 1993. Morningstar, Chip & Farmer, F. Randall: "The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat" in "Cyberspace: First Steps," MIT Press 1991 (Michael Benedikt, ed.) + "Habitat Anecdotes" (1988) and "Social Dimensions of Habitat Citizenry" (1988) at http://www.communities.com/company/papers/ Murray, Janet H.: Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. MIT Press 1997. Rudlin, John: Commedia dell'Arte - An Actor's Handbook. Routledge 1994. Sartre, Jean Paul: Huis Clos (1944 - In Camera (1946), trans. Stuart Gilbert). Penguin. (read in comparison with Beavoir) Stone, Allucquére Rosanne. The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age. MIT Press. October 1995. Stone, Allucquere Rosanne: "Will The Real Body Please Stand Up?: Boundary Stories About Virtual Cultures" in (Michael Benedikt, ed.) "Cyberspace: First Steps, MIT Press 1991. Saarinen, Leena: "Imagined Community and Death," Digital Creativity journal vol. 12 no. 3, Lisse 2001. Saarinen, Leena: CHATTERBOTS – Crash Test Dummies of Communication. 2001. At http://www.mlab.uiah.fi/~lsaarine/index.html
Mika Tuomola UIAH Medialab
”Drama in Virtual Space” August 27, 2002 - Stockholm
Notes & References
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Thomas, Maureen: “Impossible Screen Worlds — Utopias/Dystopias” in Impossible Worlds (ed. Alex Stetter). August Media. October 2000. Tuomola, Mika: "Drama in the Digital Domain - Commedia dell'Arte, Characterisation, Collaboration and Computers," Digital Creativity journal vol. 10 no. 3, Lisse 1999 (a version available at http://mlab.uiah.fi/9events/mika1.html). Tuomola, Mika: “Computer as Social Contextualiser" in :ec/art S: pratiques_artistiques nouvelles_technologies (Eric Sadin, ed.), Vol. 2, pp. 333339, :ec/art S: publishing site, Paris 2000. (a version available at http://mlab.uiah.fi/9events/mika2.html - the Finnish update of the article in AVEKlehti (Juha samola, ed.) 1/2001) Tuomola, Mika (1998). Daisy's Amazing Discoveries: Part I – The Production & Part II - Learning from Interactive Drama in the Digital Creativity journal Vol. 9, No. 2-3, pp.137-152. Swets & Zeitlinger. Turkle, Sherry: Life on the Screen, Touchstone Books 1997. Zimmerman, Eric: “Checkmate: Rules, Play and Culture!” in Merge Magazine #5, 1999. (Also at http://www.ericzimmerman.com/acastuff/checkmate.html). Zimmerman, Eric: “The Rules of the Game” in If/Then 1.0: PLAY, Netherlands Design Institute, 1999. (Also at http://www.ericzimmerman.com/acastuff/ifthen.html)
Interactive Productions Black and White, a strategy game with various dramatic, simultaneous events enabling participant-actor’s avatar’s development as a demonic or blessing deity; participant-actor as the game-world god http://www2.bwgame.com/ Candira, a research production on dramatic web structures and visualisation, participatory digital narrative, character-centred genres between fiction and documentary, short story and homepage, text and moving image; participantactor as herself, browsing web pages http://mlab.uiah.fi/insideout/ Ceremony of Innocence, “electronic theatre of the imagination… conjures up the mystical story of a young English artist and his sphinx-like South Sea Island muse”; participant-actor as herself, reading letters http://realworld.on.net/rwmm/ceremony/
Mika Tuomola UIAH Medialab
”Drama in Virtual Space” August 27, 2002 - Stockholm
Notes & References
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Daisy’s Amazing Discoveries, the first audiovisual and spatially navigable web drama-comedy on the Internet; participant-actor as herself, wandering through landscapes in which time has stopped http://daisy.uiah.fi/ Descending Armies of Light, “a kind of Rorschach test for your soul… your answers are used to synthesize a symbolic, abstracted painting”; participantactor as herself, confronting questioning aliens http://www.hyperbole.com/full/attic/attic.html The Joye Skaggs hoaxes at http://www.joeyskaggs.com/ (fictional “real” events that constantly break major news – Joye’s performance art lives in the news world) Max Payne, a shoot’em-up vengeance story that creates a comic book out of the played events; participant-actor as Max http://www.maxpayne.com/ Message quests, “allowing you to send personalized interactive adventures to any number of web users”; participant-actor as herself http://www.messagequests.com/ The Residents’ Bad Day on the Midway, a freak show of multiple points of view; participant-actor as various characters http://www.residents.com/mmedia/midway.html Shift, a research production on computer-generated performance; participantactor as herself, associating http://mlab.uiah.fi/myth/ Timecode, a split screen multiple viewpoint semi-interactive movie happening behind the Hollywood scenes; participant-actor as image-browser and/or audio editor http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/jump/timecode.html
Social and playful avatar worlds Active Worlds at http://www.activeworlds.com/ blaxxun interactive at http://www.blaxxun.com/ http://www.iceborg.com/ http://www.cybertown.com/ OnLive! Traveler at http://www.onlive.com/ Mika Tuomola UIAH Medialab
”Drama in Virtual Space” August 27, 2002 - Stockholm
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The Palace at http://www.thepalace.com/ Ultima Online at http://www.ultimaonline.com/ VZones at http://www.vzones.com/
Filmography After Hours (dir. Martin Scorsese). US 1985. (see in comparison with The Wizard of Oz) Barry Lyndon (dir. Stanley Kubrick) (1975) Warner Bros. Pictures, UK. (see in comparison with Daisy’s Amazing Discoveries) Blue Eyed (dir. Bertram Verhaag, with Jane Elliott) (1996). Denkmal-Films Ltd., Germany. (at http://www.denkmal-film.com/abstracts/BlueEyedSyn.html) Casablanca (dir. Michael Curtis), Warner Bros. Pictures. US 1942. (the moments, particularly the “supplementary” scenes supporting the theme, in Rick’s Café formed much of the spatial scenic structure in Daisy’s Amazing Discoveries) Dark City (dir. Alex Proyas). US 1998. Existenz (dir. David Cronenberg). US 1999. Groundhog Day (dir. Harold Ramis). US 1993. La Jetee (The Jetty)(dir. Chris Marker). 1962. The Lady in the Lake (dir. Robert Montgomery). US 1946. Matrix (dir. Wachowski Brothers). US 1999. Rashomon (dir. Akira Kurosawa). Japan 1952. Sliding Doors (dir. Peter Howitt). GB/US 1997. Strange Days (dir. Kathryn Bigelow). US 1995. Tron (dir. Steven Lisberger). US 1982. 2001: A Space Odyssey (dir. Stanley Kubrick). GB 1968. 12 Monkeys (dir. Terry Gilliam). US 1995. Mika Tuomola UIAH Medialab
”Drama in Virtual Space” August 27, 2002 - Stockholm
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Westworld (dir. Michael Crichton). US 1973. The Wizard of Oz (dir. Victor Fleming). US 1939. (see in comparison with After Hours) Zerkalo (Mirror) (dir. Andrei Tarkovsky). USSR 1974.
Institutions CUMIS – Cambridge University Moving Image Studio http://www.arct.cam.ac.uk/cumis/ Digital Creativity Journal by Swets and Zeitlinger http://www.szp.swets.nl/szp/ m-cult – the Finnish Association of Media Culture http://www.m-cult.org/ UIAH Medialab http://mlab.uiah.fi/
“Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others.” -Shakespeare: Hamlet III, ii
Mika Tuomola UIAH Medialab
”Drama in Virtual Space” August 27, 2002 - Stockholm
Notes & References
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