For Tomorrow

I'm hoping to discuss one or two final projects (ones not in sophisticated electronic media, unfortunately - Joe and Tony are out) in class in some detail. I'll take volunteers - if you're interested, add a comment to this post.

Final Rough Draft - Tiptree's Politics in The Girl Who Was Plugged In

Many of the short stories and essays by James Tiptree, Alice B. Sheldon, reflect his personal experiences and thoughts on situations that were going during his time and life in general.  The politics of Sheldon are heavily present in all of her stories, mostly hidden behind the theme or plotline of the specific story.  The Girl Who Was Plugged In is no exception to this rule.  The main politics that Sheldon conveys in this story concern her thoughts on what it means to be human; specifically what defines humans and their interactions.  She focuses specifically on male and female roles separately and their interactions with each other.  More importantly throughout the story she conveys her thoughts on empathy, which she sees as the best qualities that one can have, and her hopes of human evolution as an ultimate goal.  The Girl Who Was Plugged In conveys Sheldon’s politics about the faults and dark-sides of human life, while she is simultaneously telling the reader about her thoughts on how to overcome those problems and evolve as a species. 

            Sheldon’s personal life was full of lots of confusion and inner turmoil with herself, while she tried to figure out who she was and what her purpose was in life.  She went through periods of questioning herself as a human being and more importantly as a woman with ambitions, goals, and desires that conflicted with her very being.  She was always married to men, but she longed to make love to women and the greatest loves of her life were all women.  She had secret crushes on several women in her life, during boarding school, college and her career in military intelligence.  However, it always seemed to be unrequited love and she never really felt comfortable acting on any of her feelings.  She felt like she was locked inside a body that didn’t fit her true self, so in a way she felt trapped and enslaved by a body that wouldn’t allow her to feel and act on what she truly wanted.  Just as P. Burke is trapped inside the body of Delphi and has to accept this as her only way to live, even though she really wants to be out in the world living her own life as her true self.  Her true self, the ugly carcass, would not be accepted by society, so she is forced to live through a more pleasant appearance in order to live at all.  Sheldon too struggled with the implications of her outer appearance and how it meant she would have to portray herself in society.  It also turned out to be the reason why she started the prank of using the pseudonym, James Tiptree Jr.  This allowed her to write as bluntly and honestly as she wanted without having to worry about being seen as a woman who was stepping out of her place.  During her time women had a very specific role that they were to fill and if they went out of that role they were seen in a very negative light,

“she learned that women who worked outside the home were ‘masculinized’ a condition which endangered their marriage, their children, and sex life…feminism ranked with Communism, anti-Semitism, nihilism, and anarcho-syndicalism as on of the ‘organized movements of the modern world gathered around the principle of hatred, hostility and violence’” (Phillips 170). 

Sheldon struggled with her own sense of masculinity and how much it conflicted with her biological characteristics of being a woman.  Society didn’t help, only adding more pressure by setting strict standards that women were to uphold or have the very sex questioned.  This male dominance society is the same society that P. Burke must survive in.  GTX was composed of mostly men, “five of them technically male and the sixth isn’t easily thought of as a mother” (Tiptree 6).  This is the corporation that runs and controls all of the communication and public relations in the society.  Men are the dominant force once again and they expect to use beautiful young bodies of females, like Delphi in order to promote their ideas and products to the people.  Delphi is to be seen but not heard as she is always monitored and under surveillance.  Sheldon is mimicking the society that she felt pressured by and felt put a limit on her and what she could and should do in life.  When she refers to the men as “technically male” she is alluding to the fact that biologically they are men, but that may be the only thing that defines them as men.  The fact that the only woman isn’t “easily thought of as a mother” implies the masculinity that is pushed on women who work outside of the home and questioning her ability to truly care for her children.  She is thought of as a threat rather than an empowered woman, because of the men that surround her who want sole control.  If women decided to do anything that a man does in the workforce they were seen a hostile and dangerous force during Sheldon’s years.

            Besides dealing with the pressures that men put on women, she felt that all women in general already had issues and conflict to deal with on their own.  To Sheldon, their sex alone and biological make-up caused problems for them.  She wrote,

“Women are more apart from their bodies than men are; having a woman’s body is quite something; it is like being the owner of a large and only partly tamed animal, day and night the damn thing is being itself, with its own semi-inscrutable operations…It is like being attached to a sleepless, amoebic, oozing, urgent, swelling, welling, vegetable animal, forever slipping out of control and leaking its pseudopod round the corner. An unpredictable, volcanic, treacherous, merry, rather overpowering thing to live with” (Phillips 181).

This description of the bodies that women have describes P. Burke and her experience with the body of Delphi.  She is the owner of the “vegetable animal” that is Delphi.  She is an only partly tamed animal, because P. Burke only owns her mind, but isn’t able to feel touch or enjoy the other physical pleasures that Delphi experiences.  She is in a very literal sense apart from and unattached to the body that she lives through.  Sheldon uses her to illustrate her beliefs about women and she continued to struggle with women and questioning her own identity.  Perhaps she created this weird combination of a human brain and a robot in order to illustrate her confusion about the physical and mental state of women and herself, in particular.  This also could be Sheldon’s expression of wanting to be out of her own skin.  Phillips’ points out that “she never explicitly identifies with men, but she doesn’t feel like a woman either.  She often seems to be trying to get free of gender entirely, as if her scientific inquiry is a way of climbing out of her own skin” (182).  Sheldon believed in human evolution and maybe she thought that creating a gender-free world would allow for that overall transformation.  This would end the distinct roles of men and women and end a male dominant society.  The cyborg that she created out of the character of P. Burke could be a representation of the evolved creature that she hopes for in the future; at least the ideal woman of the future.  As the body, Delphi, evolves towards the end and starts to become independent, with a voice of her own.  Sheldon liked to see women who were intelligent, ambitious and had goals, like her, and the evolution of Delphi represents this woman.  She has gone from a silent, controlled, vegetable, to being able to think on her own and speak out.

            She uses this story to talk about the social problems that existed at the time, and in many ways still exist today.  As Phillip mentions the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam War, among other things were going on when Sheldon was writing and they all influenced her thoughts on human beings and what made them do certain things.  She dealt with the cruelty of human beings and how it had caused some to take over the once glorious, adventurous, and amazing place she knew as Africa in her childhood.  It had become colonized and the Europeans destroyed the rich culture that she had once experienced.  She was dealing with what causes humans to be violent and cruel to one another, which were the basis of all of the social issue going on.  Through her studies in psychology, ethology and research she developed ideas of what is most important to humanity.  Phillips’ writes, “Ethology also demands empathy, which Alli began to see as an important part of negentropy—that force of life, growth, and organization that she felt was our purpose on Earth…She wondered if it [empathy] could be bred or taught. She thought it might save the world” (238).  Empathy was what was lacking in the U.S. and the world with racism, sexism, cruelties of war, etc.  In The Girl Who Was Plugged In there is a lack of empathy, which could be Sheldon’s way of showing how much chaos exists in a society with little to none of it. 

                      

 (I didn't use much reference to Tiptree's CIA or Military career, because according to the biography it really wasn't that much of an important phase in her life, as far as having huge impacts on her thoughts and writings.  The CIA especially was a very short-lived career, so it wasn't that significant to her life.   I'm also not sure if it would be better to use Tiptree or Sheldon in the essay.  I find it easier to use Sheldon because I talk about her experiences as a woman.  Also it ends abruptly because I just stopped writing, it's not an actual conclusion.)

Tony's Rough Draft

http://www.pitt.edu/~adf14/Anthony_Finoli_narandtech_final_rough.pdf

I finished the creative part of my project. I'm hoping not to run into any privacy settings from facebook but if anyone finds one let me know. There's instructions on the title page.

There is going to be an additional 5 page or so critical essay attached to this when its finished but I haven't gotten to it yet. It will discuss how each technology was used with reference to the audience the story is trying to reach. But the main story line is pretty much done. If anything doesn't make sense I'm sure I can add more pieces to clarify it. And towards the end there are a couple entries that only have a description of what will be there...I just didn't get the actual dialog in yet.

Kevin's Rough Draft

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dc35qpwv_8hgk4xddf


tada

Joe Liu Rough Draft

Hey Everyone!
This is the link for the final rough draft.

http://rapidshare.com/files/108035072/FINAL2.EXE.html

I am going to finish up the other half of it soon hopefully!

For what I am turning in how, no matter how poorly you do on the first calculus pre-test, you will still pass since I didn't finish the "fail" portion of the project yet.

Thanks! I will also turn in a short essay when I turn in the final project.

Joe

House of Leaves

What do you think about this and its possible relationship with the house of leaves:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU

Rough Draft- Dada & Danielewski

I am having lots of trouble figuring out how to post this so that I can get feedback on the paper and the images. I am posting a link in this message and hopefully people will be able to take a look without the formatting being too screwed up.

I do have a question once someone reads the paper- should I put images from Danielewski's book into the paper to provide a direct relationship or should I take it for granted that people have read the book and understand what I am referring to (I give some page numbers for reference). Second question- is there an area that I should expand upon or that does not feel properly "fleshed-out"? I would appreciate any opinions/suggestions at this point...

Also, if anyone has a better suggestion of how I can post the paper intact w/ images into the blog- please advise. Or I can email a PDF...

Thanks!

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgthtmm_0gjxnghr7

Derrida, Deconstructivism & HOL. (rough draft please I would really like some feed back)

House of leaves is a book embedded in layers upon layers of obscurity that cannot be completely unraveled, this complexity is the beauty of the book itself. Derrida is one of the one of the many cited sources in the House of leaves. Derrida a prominent philosopher coined the term Deconstructivism, a tool used here to peel back some of the multiple layers in House of leaves.

Deconstructivism (beyond lay-man definition) failed even in Derrida hands to meet a satisfactory definition, however, it can be defined as (but not limited to) the process through which a ‘subject’ (texts, language and structure) being examined appears to shift and complicate in meaning when read in the light of the assumptions and absences it reveals within itself as well as the dichotomies it expresses.(1) This definition is nothing short of the material foundation on which House of leaves is built. This essay will take a stab at unveiling some of the intricacies via philosophic and linguistic structuralism (the form and function) centering on the use of langue in House of leaves’ textual framework.

It would be sheer arrogance to claim comprehension of Derrida’s work, with that in mind this Derridarean analysis of House of leaves is open to questioning; it is absolutely no testament to an understanding of Derrida’s work rather a review of his work as it may pertain to various aspects of House of leaves.

Philosophic structuralism focuses on the ideas of Logocentrism, Binary oppositions and Mythology. House of leaves in embodies all these concepts, used here as a tool to study the underlying structural body of this text.

The idea of Logocentrism stemming from the words, Logos translated as word/thought and Centrism meaning focal point or center. Derrida in his work, Structure Sign and Play examines the notion of ‘center’ in Deconstructivism, an idea he criticizes, considering its fundamental impossibility since there is a continual shift in what could be or is often deemed the ‘center’ within a text. Derrida argues that such a 'center' is nonexistent given that “the center is not the center”, he also emphasizes that logos in conjunction with the word ‘center’ creates this illusion that there has to be a focal point of reference, which is sought over and over again after in textual analysis.

Finding and analyzing this ‘center’ is translated as a principal understanding of the text. The word does not in any way serve as the center rather the words shapes what the center is or could be, exposing it (the ‘center’) to an infinite number of translations “thus viewed in this way the term ‘deconstruction’ refers in the first instance to the way in which the ‘accidental’ features of a text can be seen as betraying subverting, it purportedly ‘essential’ message”. This is in no way to suggest that House of leaves lack a focus instead this focus continually shifts thus the lack of a ‘center’.

So how does one seek deconstruct House of leaves? Derrida concludes that “there is nothing outside text” this paradox emphasizes that everything lies within the text. Keeping in mind that the words are the structure to be deconstructed, understanding a subject in this case House of Leaves, is a matter of perceptual decomposition with fragments of epistemological beliefs fused together to construct an agonistic support of the Langue.

So viewing House of Leaves perceptively, it is hard to come to a conclusion regarding the its 'center', thus we are forced to continually revisit and reevaluate the innate and underlying meanings within the book as a whole by investigating, scrutinizing and analyzing its textual contents, which offers a different conclusions each time. It is fair to assume the there is no singular message within the House of Leaves, but as it is revisited new connections are made between passages, chapters and above all its words.

i feel am still all over with this paper, please any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
I plan on expanding on logocentriasm, binary opposition and mythology.
**The sources have not been cited as this is an incomplete project

Rough draft update

I thought I'd post a facebook/myspace of two of my characters.

MySpace.com - ******* - 22 - Male - Columbus, Ohio - www.myspace.com/370214779

This is the writer.

LaurenMalleyfb.jpg 640×711 pixels

and this is the victim.  Its just a .jpeg file.

I'm having trouble filling them out completely.  Making a very 3D character is tough.

Blog, first rough draft

Many societal trends have shaped various aspects of our entertainment, ranging from music to the television and even video games. These changes are more prominent in certain forms of entertain than in others and cause and effect is not always clear – whether society has changed because of entertainment or whether entertainment has changed because of society. However, what is clear is that video games have undergone significant changes in the past two decades, not in concerns with technology and visual complexity but in theme and content. Adventure games have been decreasing in popularity while FPS games have underground radical evolutionary changes (meanwhile sports games and “fun” games like Mario have maintained a steady place in sales). These changes in video games are mimicking some of the major trends in society which are reflected in other forms of the media such as in the film industry.

Adventure games concern themselves with riddle solving and narrative. This type of game was very popular in the early 1990’s. Prime examples of these games were the original Indiana Jones series and the Monkey Island series, both by Lucas Art. These games revolved around a major protagonist and their respective quests for glory – for Guybrush Threepwood (from Monkey Island) it was becoming a pirate and marrying the local town’s governor and for Indiana Jones the main quests concerned themselves with archeological findings of treasure (such as Atlantis or the Holy Grail) and the ultimate defeat of the Nazi Regime. The player of these video games always went about his quest in the same way, by solving riddles, puzzles and by communicating with computer controlled scripted events. These riddles would include things such as finding certain items and using them to progress or get out of certain problematic situations, such as being stuck in a jail cell or being able to find ingredients required for certain tasks. Communication was important, as the right things had to be said in order to be able to progress. These types of games were filled with subtle humor, too, and a large part of the entertainment can be attributed to this humor. Finally upon conclusion of these games a clear narrative element had become apparent: A fictional had unfolded in front of the player’s eyes. However, unfortunately this type of game is now almost all but extinct.

This type of adventure game competed with early sports games and for our analysis primitive FPS games such as Castle Wolfenstein and Doom. These competitors of early adventure games were almost a polar opposite in nearly every regard. There were no narrative elements and the games consisted of running through a maze and slaughtering whatever crosses ones path, may it be soldiers of the Third Reich or aliens, everything had to be destroyed in ones path (or the player himself would be killed). These games had no essentially no narrative elements at all although any intelligent human could figure out that in Wolfenstein the player is trying to escape from a castle filled with Nazis and in Doom it can be concluded that some sort of aliens have invaded where ever the player is and that the player has to kill them and reach elevators until the player is finally safe. There is no dialogue and it is not possible to interact friendly player controlled character – the linear progression of the game cannot take anything into account besides how the opponents are killed. There is no humor, only slaughter in these early FPS games and FPS games such as these are also almost all but gone…they have evolved.

Modern FPS games have taken over the narrative elements from old adventure games and the perspective and old FPS games – a strange hybrid that has perhaps caused the extinction of adventure games. Today’s FPS games such as Bioschock and Half Life 2 have very strong narrative elements and they even have some riddle and puzzles to be solved – however they remain in the first person perspective and progression throughout the games is impossible without a bloodbath and violent slaughter. In Half Life 2 the narrative elements are presented in a nonlinear way where the players puts bits and pieces together from things he witnesses and media he finds while in Bioshock players learn what has happened in a similar way. Half Life requires puzzle solving in ways that require the player to use the environment to defeat enemies that are otherwise invincible and in Bio Shock the player has to solve the same sorts of puzzles and sometimes even has to make decisions of morality regarding the path the game (and the story) will then take. One thing remains clear, in this type of modern FPS slaughtering your enemies is the most important things required to beat the game and these games are more FPS than adventure.

While these new FPS games are hybrids of old adventure games and old FPS games they clearly represent the genre of FPS and adventure games have disappeared and it seems as though the adventure genre was pushed out of popularity by FPS games. Games such as Mario and Sports games have always been at a constant popularity, but the FPS genre has changed and taken elements from a now extinct genre. It is important in order for us to understand society and its changes to understand why these changes in the video game industry have happened and what caused them. Why have all narrative elements shifted to FPS games and even included some riddles that have to be solved but they kept absent from games such as Mario which have always remained on a constant level of popularity. So why have the very important narrative elements from video games shifted to the bloodiest of all genres? Why do stories have to be presented bloodstained accompanied with slaughter? Other societal trends have to be explored to gain a full understanding of these changes and what these changes mirror (especially in the film industry).

-----

This being a rough, rough draft I have not really checked spelling or grammar yet. Although, I would like to point a few things. This is the core explanation of my argument and at this point I am thinking continuing comparing this trend that i show to other trends in society where things have become more violent. Other then that, I am not sure what else to add for substance. I am still looking for some research on games sales and I am thinking of including some other trends such as today's games of senseless violence (GTA) and RPG violence such as WOW. Waht do you think of the early beginnings of this?

Sorry for the grammar and spelling!

final project proposal - a few more details

For my final project I am going to attempt to figure out why Danielewski/Karen decided to pick the interview subjects that they did in chapter 15. Some of them are obvious, such as the architects and psychologists. The ones I would like to possibly look at are Douglas R. Hofstadter and Steve Wozniak.

Both Hofstadter and Wozniak are in the computer fields. Hofstadter studies computers(more research needed on him), and cognitive science. He teaches abstract ideas, but tries to make them as concrete as possible. I thought this was interesting because some questions in House of Leaves cannot have a concrete answer. Wozniak is a computer engineer. He is the co founder of Apple Computers.

I thought it was interesting that Danielewski chose these people for the interview section because I am still not sure how they relate to what is going on in the story. Why would he choose people that deal with computers among others that are involved in psychiatry, architecture, and writing? I was hoping to try to come up with some sort of idea as to why they are included here because they just don't seem to fit.

Two other people I could try to figure out are Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick. These may be easier to explain because Stephen King writes about horror, science fiction, and strange happenings(like the house). Kubrick makes films like this and has even turned one of Stephen Kings novels into a movie(The Shining).

Any other suggestions?

Fianl Project Proposal, Revisted, Again....

So I decided that I would do my final project on viral storytelling. Recently there has been a lot of use of viral campaigns on the web. One campaign that certainly compelled me was the one that the Cloverfield movie used. They used a lot of fake sites, created fake newscasts, and overall just had a ton of information out there that complimented the movie and gave a deeper understanding. Anyways I wrote a rough draft so far, someone please check it out and let me know if it is any good I really want to do well on this project since last time I just didn't

Cloverfield: The New Way to Tell a Story

The tradition of story telling can be traced back to the origins of human civilization. Humans have always been caught up in stories, from the cave paintings of our ancient ancestors; to the Native American oral traditions stories have captivated humans for the entirety of existence. Due to this fascination with the story, people have always been trying to design better and more complex means of distributing them through the use of technology. When the set type printing press was designed, it made books easily printable and widely available, The advent of the camera enabled the use of images as new way of telling a story, the radio brought the radio play, the first cameras allowed us to use the means of video and silent film, further down the road integrating that video with audio to create the movie experiences. All these advances enabled storytellers a new method to distribute their content, a new way to engage their audiences through the use of technology. The advent of the internet has brought us yet another way to create stories and a new way to engage audiences in a story with bits and pieces. These stories force the subject to dig and search, poke and prod, in what could be called a modern day mystery story. What is this new way of telling as story? The Viral Way. A perfect example of the viral technique can be seen in the clever marketing techniques used by the movie Cloverfield. But Cloverfield’s use of viral is not just a new means of putting up ads, these hidden messages buried in false web sites and hidden mock new clips are pieces of the larger story, left out of the film. For the audiences to get the full experiences they must search and look, follow links, and hints to complete it. This is the true viral encounter.

Viral storytelling, being as new as it is, does not have an exact definition, but it does have quite a few examples. Viral Storytelling can be summed up as such, telling a story through the use of media whether it be film, music, print, or internet sources. The sections of said story are split up and spread around. Typically these stories spawn on the internet and a large majority only use this platform. Viral stories function like an interactive detective mystery. A video or word will pop up somewhere and the interactee will have to follow that clue to proceed further. The clues begin building off of each other and branch out in a web that connects each part of the story to the previous and the next. Usually there is no predetermined order that must be taken in a viral story, mainly due to the nature of information contained. The clues can be arranged in any way and the story understood irregardless as long as the proper connections are made. Many of these stories involve false companies, fake news reports, and mock first-hand accounts usually posted on websites created specifically for the story.

The Cloverfield viral made use of both film and internet in telling its viral story. The Cloverfield project began way back in July 3 2007 on that day the film Transformers was released, produced by J.J. Abrams, the producer of Cloverfield. Before the film began, a preview was shown. The preview was brief and looked like it was shot on a home video camcorder and depicted a monster of some sort ravaging New York City. After the trailer ended no title was given, only a website and a release date. After the films midnight showing the website given, www.1-18-08.com received one of the highest hit counts for a web site during the late night hours. That is how the story began, followed by the re-launch of the Slusho! companies website, previously used by JJ Abrams for his Alias series, which was supposed to be a Japanese soda company. On the website for Slusho!, which, on the surface, seems like a completely legitimate business, there were references to a drilling company by the name of Tagruato specifically in the distribution section. Doing some research around the web regarding Slusho! a fake science report on the effects of sea nectar, the special ingredient in Slusho!, can be found which claims that seabed nectar can cause super effects including: accelerated growth, increased strength, and better digestion just to name a few.

After searching for Tagruato Corporation one can find a website for the Japanese company, the website resembles the typically company site with information about the company on the main page, a top bar that includes the standard about us and contact us sections, and a side bar on the right featuring recent company news. After reading several of the informative news stories, the reader discovers several references to an incident that occurred at a drilling station Tagruato owns, Chuai station. (Chuai station is later revealed to be off the coast of the U.S. in the mid-Atlantic region) The website claims that there was an incident at the station, gives no further information, and blames the incident on an unnamed eco terror cell.

Upon typing Chuai station into practically any search engine a fake a number of fake news clips in several languages including: German, Russian, English, Italian, Korean and Japanese can be found. All these clips depict the same event, a helicopter video of Chuai station very rapidly crumbling and sinking into the ocean. Subsequent to close viewing of the video footage, a tentacle can be distinguished in bottom left corner, clutching the left front post of the drilling station. Another interesting part of the clip depicts survivors escaping the rig and shows a number of pod-like structures launching into the air, the new reporter claims that the reason for this debris is yet unknown. Another clue is also supplied to the viewer in the form of the eco-terror cell earlier referenced but unnamed, T.I.D.O wave.

The TIDO wave site opens with a mock up of the Tagruato intro video where upon the hands turn into claws and gauge the earth, simultaneously crushing it and bleeding out all of the oil. The main portion of the site contains a mission statement bashing Tagruato claiming that they are “bleeding Mother Earth dry” . This site gives a plethora of opinions on why Tagruato is evil and how they are destroying sea eco-systems as well as providing yet another clue a reference to another extremist group, Les Guerriers de Mère-Terre. After searching around for awhile an AOL group can be found for these French revolutionaries, unfortunately most of the site is in French and only the declaration of principles can be read in English and is of no use furthering the story.

After some further research readers can find 3 Japanese manga tie-ins to the film which depict the Cloverfield monster attacking a Japanese city. The third of these manga’s give a fairly good picture of what the creature looks like. Unfortunately these manga’s read like all Japanese writing does- from right to left -so it is fairly difficult to read the story, although Wikipedia summaries can be obtained.

As far as I found, the trail goes dead around here, with the exception of reading the rest of the articles featured on the Tagruato and TIDO wave pages. These articles give a little more insight into the background on the movie, including a few interesting articles on the Tagruato page that hint at the incredible effects Slusho! can have on fish.

Combining the viewing of the Cloverfield film and doing the background research, those who are engaged in the Cloverfield story are treated to a modern mystery story unraveling before their eyes. The story allows the detective to decipher riddles, sort through articles, and pick out clues that shed light on how the monster was created and why it came to attack New York. This viral experience gives the person who interacts with it something very few things can offer in this information age, something to be discovered.

Final Project Proposal

I've been pondering this project for a really long time..and it's been really bothering me. I'm going to write what I have so far and then I'd appreciate some input from you guys because I plan on getting it done early next week. I really like the idea of telling a narrative in different creative ways. I think I somehow want to incorporate all of the different kinds of narrative we have studied in class, or maybe just House of Leaves and Jimmy Corrigan into my own narrative, if that makes sense. I want to do a sort of House of Leaves thing where I tell it from different perspectives, and include also different ways of telling it. I hope that makes some sense because it makes sense in my head I just have a hard time putting it on paper. When I find a better way of wording it, I'll be sure to post.

And let me just say, House of Leaves is getting crazy. It's getting even more confusing and harder to read. Sometimes I can't even find the footnotes, and like what Brian said, the missing text also makes it difficult..not to mention how we have to keep turning the book upside down and such. As frustrating as I might be reading it sometimes, I still really enjoy it and that is why I wanted to incorporate it into my final project. I'm excited to see the discussions it brings about tonight.

Final Project: New Direction

After multiple, repeated attempts to complete my project with little to no satisfaction I have decided to do a research paper. I want to look at the changing nature of story telling in American history from the oral tradition to today.

Sean Rough Draft

Here is what I have thus far.  The .pdf isn't 100% functioning, because its just a word export.

pdf

All in one proposal and draft

I was trying to decide what I wanted to work on for my final draft, and when I was thinking about 'Narrative' and 'technology', something popped into my head. Tracy Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine. I read this book a while ago, and absolutely loved it. Apparently many people did, and from what I understand it's quite the classic.

For those of you who haven't read it, Kidder follows around a group of engineers in the 80s who are designing a new computer. He manages to explain the technical aspects of this creation in laymans terms, and it's amazing. However, the drama of the story is created by the politics and group dynamics at work. This creates more of the story than anything.

So, since I am involved in a similar activity, I figured that it would be interesting to attempt to write a story in a similar vein. This would be first person and not third, however. Kidder wasn't an engineeer, yet I write code.

To give you an idea, I wrote a rough draft based on a program I had to write earlier in the semester. However, for my real paper, I'd write more about a larger group project. This shows more of what I mean with technical details in layman's terms, and smaller on the drama of me attempting to get done before the deadline.

Check it out, and any comments or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfg2rp5v_15hpdkrsfq

[ missing letters ]

Considering the amount of the book that is completely fabricated and has no factual basis I find it hilarious that sections that are completely decipherable are left out in place of brackets. [ ] He says that he is retelling a story that was partially destroyed by ashes (which I assume are from a candle because he doesn't smoke?) and wants to preserve the actual text by leaving out the parts that were destroyed by the burn marks. The weird part is that some sections are completely obvious and are only one letter in the middle of a word. But other sections are missing a lot of letters and words and it become really frustrating to try to read.

Final Project- analyzing quotes in House of Leaves

For my final project, I want to analyze the quotes in the beginning of each chapter of the House of Leaves and explain their relationship with the chapters that follow them. Since reading the book, I’ve noticed that each quote either foreshadows what might happen, or somehow ties into the chapter. Some are more difficult to analyze than others, and some are pretty straightforward and obvious.
The quote that particularly interested me, was the one about animals at the beginning of chapter six.
“[Animals] lack a symbolic identity and the self-consciousness that goes with it. They merely act and move reflexively as they are driven by their instincts. If they pause at all, it is only a physical pause; inside they are anonymous, and even their faces have no name. They live in a world without time, pulsating, as it were, in a state of dumb being…The knowledge of death is reflective and conceptual, and animals are spared it. They live and they disappear with the same thoughtlessness: a few minutes of fear, a few seconds of anguish, and it is over. But to live a whole lifetime with the fate of death haunting one’s dreams and even the most sun-filled days- that’s something else.” -Ernest Becker
Animals are driven by instinct, while humans, although also driven by instinct, have knowledge and common sense that animals lack. Truant realizes this and seems to envy animals. They don’t dwell on issues or analyze life and death because they do not have the capacity to do so. Truant, for nearly two full pages, rambles without stopping, about Zampano’s cats, the Pekinese that he can’t discuss, the man with the beard and “hands harder than horn”, who he also does not want to discuss, and Thumper. He, unlike animals, is constantly thinking about his past, which have a great effect on who he is and how he lives his life.
Truant talks, or should I say rambles on, about how Zampano and the cats in the courtyard interacted. “They live and they disappear.” This is exactly what happened after Zampano’s death. The cats were always around him, rubbing up against his leg, while he spoke to them. Zampano probably envied them, according to Truant, just as he does. Zampano was never married and had no family or friends, so he spent his time talking to the cats. Cats have “very little to remind them of themselves or their past or even their tomorrows”, which is why Truant, and most likely Zampano, envy them. Once he died however, the cats disappeared. They have no concept of death, like humans do, and therefore, were not even aware of his death.
Truant also mentions the Pekinese and the man with the beard, who he avoids talking about. (He does however talk about this man in a later chapter.) This man clearly haunts him and still plays a part of his current life even though he is from the past. While animals have no perception of time, people do, and Truant seems to wish that he didn’t have this concept.
There is even a very strange relationship between the house and Mallory and Hillary that the author does not go into. Neither Truant nor Navidson go into detail about the dog and cat, which leaves the reader with many questions regarding this. “Zampano also fails to comment on the inability of animals to wander those corridors.” Maybe it is simply insignificant, but it could be for other reasons that I am unaware of. Maybe since animals do have good instincts, their instinct is to stay away from the darkness and strangeness of the house.

Really rough draft

I doubt... this will even begin to brush the surface of what I'm doing... I'm playing around with a story... some concepts and an engineer to run this thing. I had a great idea... but I can't do it. I wanted to create multiple IM windows to interact with a script I create and tell a story. I just don't have the time. Hopefully, I can create something neat out of this.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd3trsps_3cgbmzvfs -- the script story file... it's gonna change.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dd3trsps_232nrbtnt&hl=en -- the script file to fun the story file


The script file doesn't work completely. I'm so burned out from programming. I don't want to fix it tonight. Besides I have to implement some features (SARCASM_ only _SARCASM about 10 or so).


And expect the actually story to be re-written.

If you want to run this... you need perl.... I'll try to embed this into a web page so it's not a hassle for everyone. You also need to change the welcometohell.txt file to welcometohell.pl as well as Final Script.txt to Final Script

Enjoy... or at least laugh.

House of Leaves as Interactive Fiction: Final Project Proposal

As I stated in class I plan on writing an essay about House of Leaves as a form of interactive fiction. I will address the ideas of decoding messages, moving the book to read text, the shape of the text ect. I plan to do this by first briefly addressing what makes something interactive fiction, I understand that this alone could make a very long paper so I’ll only touch on the subject in order to establish a definition to base my paper on. As for a counter argument I will address how House of leaves is not truly interactive fiction.

I haven’t begun researching yet, but I believe my thesis will be something roughly “House of Leaves is a complicated book that does much to interact with the reader. For reasons X, Y and Z House of Leaves can be considered a form of interactive fiction.

I’ll probably start my research with House of Leaves and find points in the book that involve the reader on level that is not simply reading the text. I’ll probably look at the CYOA books we had and compare them as well as maybe a comparison to video games. I don’t plan on doing much with the video game references in the book and plan instead to focus more on how the book makes you interact with itself.