fusionanomaly

xirdalium Posted on by

NooPed, the man from the ↑cyberfield, just unwillingly re-hinted me via e-mail—we’re discussing yet another model of cyberspace ;-)— at ↑fusionanomaly by Atomjack. I’ve been there before several times, but through time it somehow got lost in my mind’s mælstrom. The website is one of the rare manifestations of the original hypertext-idea [see also ↵hypermedia ethnography]. A structured accumulation of thoughts, snippets, ideas, citations, and downloadable files of diverse formats and sizes bound together by countless criss-crossing hyperlinks. The problem of course is, that for the reader the structure quickly gets out of sight. Nevertheless it’s worthwhile to get lost inside fusionanomaly.

Another point of critique may be the site’s design. The choice of colours and background is surely not to everybody’s taste. But in the end the site is kept simple and straightforward. There is hardly anything pretentious, neither in usability nor in the html-sourcecode—granted, the plethora of animated .gifs is an exception.

Just in April this year some protagonists of this part of the anthropological blogosphere made ↑tongue-in-cheek critical remarks on the design of ↑Noah Porter’s website ↑computer-mediated anthropology. My humble self ↵couldn’t resist the temptation, too. Noah wrote a lengthy and quite scholarly response on the ‘criticism’—unfortunately I can’t find it anymore, neither on the net nor on my HDD. Which is a pity, as I remember that it was quite substantial and carried some points I’d really like to discuss now.

Anyway, what i want to say is, that in the creation of websites the visible [design] and the less visible [html-sourcecode] parts of course are culturally shaped. Even ‘cyberculturally’ shaped. Noah Porter and me, we are socialized into different provinces of cyberculture. I go for clean, organised, and W3C-conform html, non-annoying, usable websites without fancy stuff or Java-script. [you judge if I am successful] Thanks for Kerim’s ↑recent note to developers: “Unfortunately, their web designer insists on using awful javascript pop-ups on nearly every link in the site. […] Leave it up to the user whether or not to open a link in a new window!”

↑Biella once courteously ↑wrote about my website: “[…] content and aesthetics [are] in a complementary relationship.” When i started to design the website I wanted that readers and myself do not get lost in its content, and I wanted to emulate the look’n’feel of my modding-community’s tools. Hence the topic-trees in the sidebars of site and blog, emulating the child-parent-up-to-worldspace hierarchy of MaxEd. When I found ↑nullpointer—home of the amazing ↑webtracer—I felt myself assured with the design.

Now to something entirely different [The truth is that I just entirely lost my trail of thought—but what I noted below still somehow matches the header ‘fusionanomaly’]

On ↑fusionanomaly’s start page there is this quote by ↑Werner Heisenberg:
 

It is probably true quite generally that in the history of human thinking the most fruitful developments frequently take place at those points where two different lines of thought meet. These lines may have their roots in quite different parts of human nature, in different times or different cultural environments or different religious traditions: hence if they actually meet, that is, if they are at least so much related to each other that a real interaction can take place, then one may hope that new and interesting developments may follow.

Concerning the novelist’s art & craft, Stephen King is quite of the ↵same opinion.

When once asked in an interview how he developes his pictorial ideas, top-of-the-heap science-fiction illustrator ↑Jim Burns—one of my all-time heroes—basically answered: ‘Knowing where from and how …’ Burns collects all kinds of pictures that strike him. When sifting through glossy magazines while waiting at the dentist’s he now and then rips out a page and pockets it. Maybe an advertisement, a photography, a drawing, whatever. Back at home he files it away in an according cabinet. But way more important: a small scrap of memory is filed away in his mind. There it sits and maybe someday will react or even fuse with another slice of thought.

In the heads of human individuals there is a torrent of consciousness—sometimes becoming a mælstrom. Thoughts, sensations, impressions, and ideas tumbling around, meeting each other, sometimes reacting, fusing, giving birth to something new. When strands of that torrent are shared by a group of individuals we well may call that culture. [?] The anthropologist’s job is to hack into that torrent and create a similar one in his own head. When this project has been succesful? There is a benchmark for anthropological knowledge: Does the ethnographer / participant observator / thick participant succeed in social interaction with his ‘subjects’, or not?

This entry is quite chaotic, I know—it’s a fusionanomaly …

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DGV05: cyberanthropology going mobile

xirdalium Posted on by

anthropological perspectives on mobile communication
by Castulus Kolo

Parallel to the diffusion of the Internet’s utilisation the mobile phone as a means of communication has spread all over the world even faster, and still unhampered. Diverse Internet services meanwhile have established themselves in the focus of social and cultural academic disciplines—even different currents of research are noticeable, like e.g. cyberanthropology. Yet mobile communication has been widely neglected—at least in the German-speaking part of academia.

Seen from a sociocultural anthropological vantage point not the technology itself is especially interesting, but the charging of the end devices with cultural meaning, and the appropriation of this global technology within local contexts. The integration of mobile services into everyday life does not stop cold in front of patterns of acting and meaning. This is in particular true for the creation and maintenance of social relationships, and also for the stance towards space, time, and physicalness. On the other hand the structure of virtue is not solely directed from the technological artefact towards the user. Quite to the contrary, the users are an essential element of the development of new services and applications.

By using examples like SMS-communication and mobile gaming the presentation at first aims to make clear the specifica of mobile communication compared to PC-based communication. Based on that links between sociocultural academical approaches and the formation, adoption, and diffusion of information and communication technologies will be discussed. Finally phenomena of mobile communication will be presented, which seem prone to be grasped by anthropological perspectives and ethnographical methods.
 

Abstract of a presentation to be held at the ↵workshop ‘cyberanthropology’ during the ↑Conference of the German Anthropological Association (GAA aka DGV) – Halle / Saale, 4th – 7th October 2005.
translation of the German abstract by zeph—put the blame on me
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DGV05: the zapatista effect

xirdalium Posted on by

Actors, representations, and networks of the Chiapas conflict on the www
by ↑Julia Pauli and ↑Michael Schnegg

More than ten years ago, on 1 January 1994, the EZLN (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional) stormed and took official buildings and Municipios in Mexico’s federal state Chiapas. Ultimately war on the government was declared. At that time only few observers and actors understood the tremendous virtual and media potential this seemingly locally bounded conflict had. Only one year later US transregional newspapers like the Washington Post and Newsweek reported on the Mexican rebels with high tech weapons, fighting history’s first Internetwar. Different factors contributed significantly to the transformation of a local civil war into a global event. One has to mention: the Zapatista’s notedly charismatic doyen Subcommandante Marcos; the chronological coincidence with the beginning of NAFTA; and the general increase of anti-global movements since about the mid-1990s. But equally important is the virtual networking accompanying the uprise. In this presentation we will mainly deal with the structure of the conflict’s virtual representations. Our analysis shows that above all two important aspects of the Zapatistical virtual linking-up were decisive for the public success: The scrutinized homepages (N=72) are tightly linked. Besides the structural cohesion there is a significant topical overlapping. Most homepages connected to the conflict carry similar information, e.g. an archive of the Subcommandante’s messages, or collections of photographies documenting the uprise. Nevertheless this common virtual core leaves enough space for diversity. In consequence different groups (like human rights organisations or local NGOs) could be activated to spread the agenda of the Zapatistas.
 

Abstract of a presentation to be held at the ↵workshop ‘cyberanthropology’ during the ↑Conference of the German Anthropological Association (GAA aka DGV) – Halle / Saale, 4th – 7th October 2005.
translation of the ↑official German abstract by zeph—put the blame on me
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DGV05: digitised everyday life?

xirdalium Posted on by

The significance of computer-mediated communication for the development of transnational communities
by Heike Greschke

More and more the Internet is used by transnational populations. For instance in order to maintain relationships to affiliates, to get up-to-date information on the region of origin, or to to exert political influence as a diaspora. Nevertheless we know comparatively few about the social consequences of this growing integration of electronic media of communication into the everyday life of transnational populations.

This presentation is based on data from a still running ethnographical study on an Internet discussion-forum. Said forum is used by people stemming from Paraguay, who now are living in diverse regions of the globe. The communication inside this socioelectronic nexus constitutes itself inside a field of tension between a virtually shared space and local embeddedness in divergent, non-shared Lebenswelten. Hence—in terms of “multisited ethnography”—the data mapping the communicative action on the virtual level is analytically tied to the data on some of the local levels in Paraguay, Argentina, and California, which was gained by participant observation.

The strong focus on everyday life inside the group of people—who at first are unknown to each other—obviously leads to a kind of glocalisation of the Lebenswelten. On the one hand the virtual relationships are translated to local contexts where possible. The forum is e.g. used for networking with people stemming from Paraguay living at the same geographical location or nearby. But in a second step the local relationships are connected to the virtual level in order to be able to share local events with the global community. Thus an Internet-based global community has been created out of an anonymous socioelectronic network. The community rests on nationality, but has detached the latter from territorial locatedness.
 

Abstract of a presentation to be held at the ↵workshop ‘cyberanthropology’ during the ↑Conference of the German Anthropological Association (GAA aka DGV) – Halle / Saale, 4th – 7th October 2005.
translation of the ↑official German abstract by zeph—put the blame on me
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DGV05: cybercommunities and cyberspace

xirdalium Posted on by

Online games as an example
by ↑Michel Nachez and ↑Patrick Schmoll

The presentation aims at depicting a cybercommunity inside which we have done participant observation. The community’s members have organised themselves online and have created a shared description or account. Some of the peculiarities of this community are to be found again in others.

The community’s pecularities in turn hint at peculiarities of social interaction online: dematerialisation of the concept of physical territory in favor of virtual territory, absence of the body, anonymity, the problem of masks, multiple ‘personalities’, now and then amibuity of gender, transportation of specific shared norms and values, more or less spontaneous manifestations of organisation and interaction, and interplay with artificial agents in hybrid cybercommunities.

This leads to the following questions: is cyberspace—wherein the players “move” and “act”—a means of escapism, or does it lead to an augmented reality? What influence does cyberspace have on society in so far as the players lead a “double life”? What are the boundaries between social simulation and real society concerning ↵MMORPGs—wherein tens of thousands of players meet in a game that never ends? And finally, which reality are we looking at? The reality of the players’ world, or the “reality” of the game, respectively of cyberspace?
 

Abstract of a presentation to be held at the ↵workshop ‘cyberanthropology’ during the ↑Conference of the German Anthropological Association (GAA aka DGV) – Halle / Saale, 4th – 7th October 2005.
translation of the ↑official German abstract by zeph—put the blame on me
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DGV05: free software as an anthropological field of research

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by Frauke Lehmann

Free software (also Open Source) is a comparatively uncommon subject of research for sociocultural anthropology. Those ‘into’ free software constitute a social formation which almost exclusively is to be located on the Internet. The individual members are dispersed all over the globe, their shared core interest is the production of the post-industrial commodity software. But nevertheless this field promises interesting and enriching knowledge for sociocultural anthropology. The latter in turn is able to contribute crucially to the understanding of said field.

When looking at free software’s fabric of property, the organisation of particular projects, the economic system, and the creation of identity,
every now and again social formations are observed which can be grasped by known anthropological concepts. For instance the project organisation can be understood by concepts like democracy, chiefdom, Big Man, and non-hierarchical systems. Concerning the economical system one encounters familiar phenomena, too: gaining reputation by giving, the just marginal importance of money, or even its complete absence.

On the other hand sociocultural anthropology itself can tremendously gain by dealing with this field. Analysing the mentioned concepts—mostly to be found in non-industrial societies—in a new context may well lead to an advancement of theory.
 

Abstract of a presentation to be held at the ↵workshop ‘cyberanthropology’ during the ↑Conference of the German Anthropological Association (GAA aka DGV) – Halle / Saale, 4th – 7th October 2005.
translation of the ↑official German abstract by zeph—put the blame on me
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strong

xirdalium Posted on by

Only The Strong Survive
 

Since mid-August the ↑team of ↑Rogue-Ops has a ↑new member: Jason I. Choi aka ↑Crack 6K. In the community he is well known for his ↵machinima ↑Only The Strong Survive (OTSS) [download links & mirrors | .wmv & divX | diverse qualities | from 72MB to 224MB]

Today morning I read a long interview Peter Bogdanovich recently has done with Clint Eastwood. Among many other things Eastwood related that one day an executive from the studio visited the set of “Dirty Harry” and watched a scene wherein the killer slides down some handrail, enters a car and drives away. After the very first take the director Don Siegel was satisfied—the executive could hardly believe it, as from visiting other directors on the set he was used to at least ten takes or more. Eastwood, who stood next to him, just said: “That’s the difference.” There’s a difference in OTSS, too: “[OTSS] relies heavily on pre-scripted sequences, but there are shots that are done live and puppeteered, and even some where both methods are used simultaneously.”

In 1911 British actor, producer, director, scenic designer, and theatre theorist Edward Gordon Craig (1872-1966) wrote in his book “On the Art of the Theatre”:

And who knows whether the puppet shall not once again become the faithful medium for the beautiful thoughts of the artist. May we not look forward with hope to that day which shall bring back to us once more the figure, or symbolic creature, made also by the cunning of the artist, so that we can gain once more the ‘noble artificiality’ which the old writer speaks of? Then shall we no longer be under the cruel influence of the emotional confessions of weakness which are nightly witnessed by the people and which in their turn create in the beholders the very weaknesses which are exhibited. To that end we must study to remake these images no longer content with a puppet, we must create an Über-marionette. (Craig 1912[1911]:84)

Computer-generated 3D-characters are the prototypical Craigian perfect actors, his ‘super-puppets’. In OTSS they partially are animated live, improvisation—another point strongly emphasized by Craig—is re-introduced. It seems that in artistical expression the human ↵new gods are far from being dispensable. ↵“A Dream Within A Dream” already is a strong metaphor for all that—and it emerged from within the community.
don’t miss Henryk Jurkowski’s ↑Craig and Marionettes and ↑the machinima faq

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gamesmuseum

xirdalium Posted on by

The website of the ↑Elliott Avedon Museum and Archive of Games at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, meanwhile exists since 12 years and consists out of 700+ pages. It offers a ‘virtual visit’ to the museum and much more, like ↑Ethnography & Games.
 

The establishment of a museum is a natural outgrowth of academic research about games and game playing behaviors. Games reflect the cultures in which they are developed and played, and illustrate the cultural diffusion and interaction of people throughout human history. In addition to understanding the role and function of games in the field of Recreation and Leisure Studies, research concerning games is conducted in such disciplines as Anthropology, History, Psychology, Mathematics, Systems Engineering, Military Science, Languages and Literature, Rehabilitation Medicine, and more. ↑[…]

via entry at EVIFA

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dreamscream

xirdalium Posted on by

A Dream Within A Dream
 

The game ↑Alan Wake still is far away from going gold—therefore it quite naturally can not be modified yet. Nevertheless the community already has come into existence and its members don’t idle the day away. The until now released material on and from the upcoming game plus the dreams and visions about it fuel the future Alan-Wake-modders’ creativity. The artistical appropriation of the till now mainly imagined Alan-Wake-universe manifests itself in artefacts—see the ↑Fan Art section at ↑AlanWAKE.Net. Two recent pieces strike me the most: ↑Uisor’s interpretation of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”, and ↑Awaken’s video [.avi | 29.1MB] “A Dream Within A Dream”. The latter is an excellent piece of ↵machinima, featuring an Alan-Wake puppet reciting ↑Edgar Allan Poe’s poem in a surrealistic setting and ambience. Believe me, it sends shivers down your spine.
 

Scream
A Dream Within A Dream
by Edgar Allan Poe
(1827)

 

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow—
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

 

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand—
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Note the multiple associations packed into Awaken’s creation: The immortal Poe being a horror-fiction writer like Alan Wake [EDIT: Poe is the horror-fiction writer], the poem ‘taking place’ at an ocean shore—maybe like the one at Bright Falls, the protagonist parting from, or loosing someone, and then the overall theme of the menacing problem of dream and reality …
via entry at AlanWAKE.Net

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no comment

xirdalium Posted on by

The last weekend was dedicated to dealing with rubbish. The flood in Munich—have a look at the ↑photos by 2R—had powerfully hit our basement, too. But till Friday the hip-high waters had been pumped off. So, on Saturday morning I did a review of our cellared items and decided to throw nearly everything away. Shortly after noon it was done. A friend dropped by and took me along to ↑Heavens Gate, a phantastically relaxed indoor-climbing facility. When the first wave of exhaustion came we took a break, withdrew to the sofa-corner, and had a coffee. Right next to us I spotted a comp with Internet-access and checked my weblog … just to find my poor blog’s cellar—that is the comments-section—littered with rubbish, too. Comment-spam again. In consequence I took the blog offline and went back climbing. Today morning I brought xirdalium back on air and ↵again decided to take the commentary-function offline. It will remain offline untill we have found a solution.

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