E-Literature & Gaming-Relations

What is E-literature you may be asking yourself? Well a definition offered by the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) states electronic literature “refers to works with an important literary aspect that takes advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the stand-alone or networked computer.” [1] However, it can be much more than that. Of course E-literature refers to your Kindle or reading a digital news article on the train on your iPad but it also offers new depths for stories to explore.

E-literature to me also revolves around new ways of showing a story. Be that through game-play elements such as [2] Pry (2016) allowing you to see into the mind of the protagonist ever step of the way and understand their motives and decisions vividly unlike the pages of a novel could express. It could also be like in [3] Journey (2012) where you are initially a mere wandering wayward vagabond learning small tidbits of the world as your explore a wasteland and find little pieces of information along the way that tell a story unlike any novel could express without words.

Stories are developing beyond the medium of pen and paper. Many mediums are looking towards creating video-stories such as in interactive Youtube videos such as Hell Pizza’s Zombie Attack. Videos like this craft  a story with some different outcomes depending on the viewer or reader. E-literature is a medium where you do not merely read and enjoy a novel but instead interact with it, explore it and absolutely become a part of the story yourself.

I’ve been a firm believer in anything being able to create a grandiose story when people come together to put it together. As a Dungeons & Dragons (I’m gonna get nerdy for a second, just let it happen!) player and long time Dungeon Master, I know that crafting a story, setting and world can take months of work to pull off. However, that world would go nowhere without the players to push the story forward. I understand that this is not entirely E-Literature as it is not online but it does connect people together to create a collaborative story. Together the players work to craft their story.

It might be a little irrelevant but Roll20 is an online place for D&D players to find each other and play online as well which, in my opinion, is the pinnacle of E-literature as you craft your own story online with other people, the possibilities of these tales are endless.

I hope this was an enjoyable read! Thank you for making it to the end!

Bibliography :

[1] Electronic Literature Organization – http://eliterature.org/

[2] Pry 2016 – http://prynovella.com/

[3] Thatgamecompany – Journey 2012

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E-Literature & Gaming-Relations

Visual Analysis of “Artemis Fowl”

As my final Digital Humanities assignment of this semester, I was tasked to analyse any publicly available text using some visualization tools such as Voyant 2.0. I chose to analyse Artemis Fowl (2001, E.Colfer) in this way as it was the first book I read as child and nostalgia drew me back to it. There will be spoilers to the plot of this book beyond this point! Consider yourself warned should you wish to delve further.

A-D

So, just what does this jumble of text tell us? At first glimpse it looks pretty meaningless, like a kid just scribbled all over his parents’ walls. However, we can see all the main (and even most of the side characters) names appear in this block of words.

First, we have our main characters:

-Artemis Fowl (His name appears 748 times in total): Our protagonist, the boy genius who kidnaps our second main character, Holly and holds her at ransom.
-Captain Holly (Her name appears 429 times): A fairy and captain to the armies of fairies who live just below our feet.
-Commander Julius Root (His name appears 269 times): Commander of the fairy armies, his mission is to save Holly from Artemis.
-Butler (His name appears 229 times): Artemis’ most loyal and deadly servant, military-trained man but with a soft side for his younger sister.

and our secondary cast:

-Foaly (184 appearances): A centaur who is an expert in all things computing, he is allied with Commander Root.
-Mulch (149 appearances): A convicted criminal Dwarf with a nack for burrowing into places no one else can get to. He is reluctantly recruited by Root when it looks like he may be Holly’s only hope of escape.
-Juliet (84 appearances): Butler’s sister who he cares about above all else, even Artemis.

Now, using Voyant’s Trend tool, we are able to see when and where each character is mentioned in the story. This* is a link to a trend page of voyant which compares the frequency of characters appearing in the story. We can see from it, Artemis is always a character in focus, being the protagonist. However, Holly spikes in importance at chapter two and then is pushed to the side in a way by chapter four while other characters see more of the spotlight. Comparing mentions of characters in this way can show their importance to the story line at that moment (such as Commander Root receiving no mention in chapter one, due to this chapter primarily focusing on the kidnapping of Holly.)

Other words being used such as “Fairy”, “Troll” and even “Human” to an extent in context show us a little of the world in which Artemis Fowl resides. It is a fantasy world where ages ago, humans evolved and pushed fairies (who were weaker bodied but technologically superior) under the Earth, where they stayed and were forgotten about except in myths. Artemis believed in these myths and lures Holly – which is where the story begins, however it shows that in the ancient past of this world humans and other mythical creatures were at war, setting up a resentment of one another bringing racism into the novel as a theme (which is developed on in further installments of the series).

It also allows Colfer to write about fantastical creatures such as Dwarves with the power to burrow miles into the Earth, Trolls – mindless but powerful and dangerous creatures which dwell beneath our feet and so much more which gives this series a real flavour of that “fantastical but almost believeable world” one can truly immerse themselves in.

So, in answering, Voyant allows us to quickly glimpse and assemble the image of an entire book, it’s characters, main themes, genre and even the frequency of characters appearing in one amazing tool. It is a fantastic way to covert raw data into visual text and particularly great at turning novels and texts into one “bite-sized” chunk.

*Link to trending voyant page : http://voyant-tools.org/?corpus=d7d717b6b78e14ed7a0d3f081d420657&query=artemis&query=holly&query=root&withDistributions=raw&docId=799701add56d38cc81a7f6df42c2b527&mode=document&view=Trends

Bibilography:

Eoin Colfer,  Artemis Fowl (2001),  Viking Press

Visual Analysis of “Artemis Fowl”

On the Topic of Emojis

It seems our module has really taken a shining to this topic. From Andrew Wiggins’ post (which I believe to be the first on this, correct me if I’m wrong) to the most recent presentations with Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen being converted to Emoji by a member of my course. It’s pretty apparent this topic really brought some emotes to our group 😉 .

While it’s pretty much old news by this stage and no longer a hot topic of debate, I thought I’d close this blog (well, the necessary posts for this semester) out with the topic that so many of us started off with.

So, we all know what emojis are and there general usage is to make some feel an “emot”-ion from viewing them. What I’m here to introduce to us all today is the various and cultural differences emojis have around the world. We all know the general smilies and emoticons we see on Android or Iphone everyday. (Little picturing listing them below)

all-emoji.png

But did you know in Japan there exists a huge variant to emojis, the kaomoji. They’re slightly more complex than ours (they require 2bits where our emojis only use one and can not be replicated by an English keyboard.) An example : (｡=◕‿‿◕=｡)

kaomoji

These kaomoji are understandable without the necessity to tilt your head. (for example : =) and (　＾∇＾) ). Both represent a happy emotion, but the kaomoji is clearly this without having to tilt your head (though nowadays, applications will often correct emojis to pictures.)

Then this type of kaomoji developed into a western style. This is when kaomoji is replicated on western keyboards. (<(o_o<)) Though, not many kaomoji are imitable.

Beyond Kaomoji from Japan, Korea also have a variant to our standard emojis by using Korean Hangul letters. They’re called Jamo emojis as jamo is the korean word for letter. An example is : ㅠㅠ which represents a crying face.

Eventually the styles of emoji and then there imitations lead to the creation of 2channel style emojis. Essentially, the internet as a culture created their own variant of emojis.Originally appearing on the internet forum board 4chan it combined many different languages (such as Kannada) to create an even greater variety of emoji to be used. An example of a 2channel style emoji would be : ಠ_ಠ which is supposed to appear as a disapproving look.

To me, seeing the vast variety and cultural differences of emoji from around the globe really makes me believe emojis are a new way in which we express ourselves. I don’t believe it possibly to see quite so many variations and nuances from culture to culture if they were not important to us as individual beings. Personally, I like to try replicate kaomoji with my western keyboard. I do this I believe because I’m showing both that I have an interest in the Japanese culture while also noting I’m from a western society.

Perhaps I’m looking at this too philosophically but I do honestly believe there is a tie in with culture, our own personal passions and the emoji. What do you believe? Does it have something to do with cultures wanting to express themselves through 1 or 2 bit expressions? Leave a comment to discuss! Until next time, this stream is going offline and in case I do not write again until after the holidays, Merry Christmas everyone!

References:
To generate Kaomoji’s I use http://japaneseemoticons.me/

 

 

On the Topic of Emojis

On The Topic of Creative Commons

cc-licenses-terms

Recently, we were tasked to watch a documentary on the life of Aaron Swartz in our course. (Link Below) It was noted in the video that Swartz was one of the first architects of creative commons, a different type of copyright on the internet. Swartz believed information should be more open and free to the world, and while in the beginning of the internet this was very much the case, today almost all major nations follow the Berne copyright convention. [1]

The © (Copyright) symbol has so much power today. It can completely disallowed someone from interacting with a wealth of human knowledge or using pictures from sources. In general, if you unknowingly took something from a copyrighted source it could cause massive uproar such as copyright infringement charges and a en-slew of legal charges for accidentally using a copyrighted piece in your work

While there was the concept of “Fair Use” on the internet for copyright law was created to allow things such as commentary, parody, news reporting, research and education about copyrighted works without the permission of the author. [2] Basically, In reproducing an article, it would only be deemed fair usage if you were to use it to criticize or highlight the quality of said article. If it was used because you couldn’t find time to write your own story, or didn’t want your readers to have to register at a web site it would most likely not be deemed fair use.

Swartz aimed to change this with the concept of Creative Commons and liberate copyrighted data. You might be asking, well what IS Creative Commons? Well, Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools. He hated how copyright felt like an iron-clad lock against the distribution of knowledge. Creative Commons is helping to realize the full potential of the Internet, allowing universal access to research and education, full participation in culture and is trying to drive the world into a new era of development growth, and productivity. [3]

The (cc) (Creative Commons) logo in contrast to copyright allows a publisher to options on how there content is used. There are six contracts (as seen in the image above) which allow a publisher to control the access the public has to their content. Not only does Creative Commons allow more control for the publisher, usually it gives more access to the reviewer, researcher, etc. who are using the publisher’s work. It refines your copyright and streamlines how you give permission.

There are several symbols (or rules) to every creative commons contract. A link to a great video for understanding Creative Commons can be found here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YkbeycRa2A

-Attribution : The original source must be Acknowledged
-Non-Commercial : Only the original source may make money from the content
-No Derivatives : The image, video, etc. can not be altered from original publication
-Share Alike : New creations that use the original source must follow the same license as the original.

It’s evident to see that Creative Commons allows more diverse control for the publisher and is shown to increase sales (as the work can be used by the buyer) if the original source is to be monetized. [4] Remember, Creative Commons is actually a license that is applied to a work that is protected by copyright. It’s not separate from copyright, but instead is a way of easily sharing copyrighted work. Creative Commons allows us to use works on the internet even through copyright protection. So remember, next time you’re using a source to check it’s creative commons license and if your using it correctly.

I believe this sums up the majority of what I needed to say on the concept of creative commons and how it improves on current copyright laws. My next post should be Thursday, on the topic of Openness, which will combined elements from our classes’ recent Twessay. Until then, This stream is going offline.

References :

[1] – Current Berne Convention text : http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/index.html
[2] – Notes of Fair Use Copyright Law – https://w2.eff.org/IP/eff_fair_use_faq.php
[3] – Creative Commons’ Goals – http://creativecommons.org/
[4] – Publishing a Commercial Book with Creative Commons – http://www.technollama.co.uk/publishing-a-commercial-book-with-creative-commons
Image used from : http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu
Aaron Swartz Documentary – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL182y-5iIY

On The Topic of Creative Commons
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