#lecture response

At last Friday’s lecture at the Beckman Institute, Judith Pinar gave a presentation where she talked about interactive fiction--particularly gaming--with a focus on hodology and meta-hodology. The talk was surprisingly entertaining, refreshingly unpretentious, and, in my opinion, one of the best academic lectures I’ve ever attended. The lecture itself was accompanied by a hilariously self-aware PowerPoint presentation full of randomly placed pictures of dragons, and phrases like “bullet points are the ramen noodles of ontology.”

In terms of content, Pintar set out her discussion points right off the bat, taking apart the mouthful of a title on her intro slide: “The Appeal of an Endless Horizon: Collaborative Game Design as Meta-Hodological Play.” She kicked things off explaining to her audience exactly what “meta-hodological” meant, describing it as an “awareness of the contexts that shape the paths through which methods are created.” She mentioned structural inequalities, such as Robert Moses’s design of the Long Island bridges, and how that had the effect of giving objects (the bridges) agency.

In the next section of her talk, she discussed game design--collaborative game design, in particular. He described hodology from the player’s perspective as the path they take through the game (this can be referred to as a “desire path”). Meta-hodology--from the game designer’s perspective--would be the awareness of every potential path the player could take. Pintar also mentioned Richard Bartle’s four player types: killers (acting upon players), achievers (acting upon the world), explorers (interacting with the world), and socializers (interacting with other players). One real-world example she referenced was the “Quad Game” she has her students work on.

In the section of her talk about “endless horizons,” Pintar explained that “social context of narratives, relations, practices are often invisible except to designers, dedicated players, and game critics.” An important part of how a game is perceived is the manner in which it’s presented--or, if you’re creative enough, the manner in which you think about it. She used the example of dodgeball; it’s supposed to be this great childhood game, but a lot of kids actually hate it because it’s an easy opportunity for bullying, and some kids just want to hide. But if you change the narrative from “hiding is weak, get out there and throw balls at kids!” to one where different people have different jobs--some kids throw balls, others shield people, etc, then the narrative becomes very different.

LANGUAGE - LECTURE

Today’s lecture discussed the importance of symbols and signage used as language, discussing the semiotics of symbols to communicate across languages. Symbols and signs are almost a coding system in which we can internationally understand regardless of language barriers. 

Signs / Semiotics are compiled of two ideals - 

‘SIGNIFIER’ - What is shown visually, for example, the Ampersand. ‘SIGNIFIED’ - What is meant, for example, ‘and’ is shown.

Signs / Semiotics portray meanings, one or both meanings from the following - 

‘DENOTED’ - Direct meaning, ie. ‘and’ ‘CONNOTED’ - Further meaning, ie. and what? ‘example’ & co, Lists, And on and on (never ending)

There are three kinds of Semiotics -

‘ICONIC’ - It is what it is, subject is represented visually as it would appear ‘INDEXICAL’ - Points to the subject ‘SYMBOLIC’ - Does not visually show subject, but is commonly related to such.

The use of Narrative in Fashion editorials and Advertising campaigns

Lecture 1, 18/04/2016 : Exploring meaning through narrative

This lecture discussed the definition of narrative as well as the different types of narrative expressed in fashion editorials and advertising campaigns. When creating a narrative it is very important to know , where this work is going to be used, your audience and to consider the country or culture that it will be applied to. In this lecture we talked about Surrealistic, Historic, Literary, Fantasy, Contemporary cultural and Filmic themes.

The first one that interested me the most was the contemporary cultural themes, exemplified  with Steven Meisel’s series of photographs called “SuperMods Enter Rehab”. They depict different scenes and scenarios that happened in today’s pop culture and described by tabloids. It is a critique on media and the public’s obsession with addiction and madness and how it is perversely portrayed as decadent and glamorous.

The second type of narrative that intrigued me was the surrealistic themed one. Mainly because the lecturer featured one of my favourite fashion designers Alexander McQueen but also for the variety of styles and creativity involved in surrealist paintings and artwork observable in Rene Magritte’s works such as “The Lovers” and “The Lovers II”.

Extending Basic HML  Images and External CSS

In this lecture, the first part was differentiating a vector graphic from a bitmap graphic. Vector Graphics contain a lot more clarity, because apparently it's defined by "mathematical objects and relationships called vectors." It creates a more crisp image, even when you zoom up to the image, it will continue to keep that quality. Whereas in Bitmap, if you zoom up, it will clearly be made up of pixels, and made for a lower resolution (number of pixels displayed in each unit of printed length of an image). Both these graphics will affect the size of the file itself, as a vector graphic will probably be bigger, due to it's better resolution.

You're waiting for class to start. Everyone has their phone out. Your fellow classmates are texting, surfing the web, checking updates on social media, and playing games. It's normal. This is how everyone goes about their business. Following this norm, you pull out your phone, just like everyone else. 

Isn't it strange how engrossed we are with our electronic gadgets? We forget about everything around us when we pull out our cellphones. We forget to relate with others. Human beings are a social species; we've been dependent on interacting with others since our beginning years. It's an ingrained need to converse and interact. Unfortunately, western societies, like the US, are raising younger generations that have little social and communication skills. This addiction to staring at a small screen at all hours of the day and night is creating alienated individuals in society. This sort of alienation to those around us can be extremely detrimental, both for the individual and the society they reside in. A society cannot advance unless the members of a society are working together to create the advancements.

I hadn't even really seen much of Catherine Opie's work before I attended her lecture, briefly, but not enough to consider myself an 'Opie fan'. The lecture was more than I thought it was going to be, Opie talked a lot about personal experiences and how she paired those experiences with her work. Maybe the talk was sentimental for some, but for the most part she proved that she made the best out of what life had thrown at her and moved on. One of the things that got me most was the timeline of her work. I'm not dumb, I know that usually photographers work for up to a decade and maybe more before they're even recognized but for some reason Opie really put things into perspective. 

I walked out of that auditorium feeling liberated. I was free again to work and to produce without the burden of my thoughts. I had realized fully that if I had to work for decades, I would and that looking back at my work twenty-five years from now would be a lot more fulfilling than looking back at ten years - of course neither is guaranteed. I was content with my life, and I agreed with myself that it wasn't that I had fallen out of love with photography but I just wasn't as enthusiastic about it as I used to be - and this was mostly because of the subject that I used to be shooting. It came almost instantly, the thought of wanting to shoot something differently, although I didn't know what I knew I had to change that or I'd always be stuck in the mental rut that I had been stuck in for so long.