The last conference of this week (I hope), the bi-annual meeting of cultural studies in Finland takes place today and tomorrow in the University of Tampere. Aki Järvinen gave an interesting Goffman-inspired talk exploring the concept of ‘context’ from within the framework of his thesis-in-progress. Listening, it occurred to me that we need a theory of insignification, as much, or more, than we need signification theories. Among infinite polysemy, you need to know where not to watch.
Category: media
media, culture and society
gaming comics online
There is an obvious subcultural and popular cultural overlap between the world(s) of comics and the world(s) of games. 1up.com has published a nice feature exploring this frontier. See: Will Strip For Games: Gaming Comics Online from 1UP.com. Have run out of your daily doze of Penny Arcade already? There is more out there.
digital humanities quarterly
A humanist, and interested in digital culture and media? You might find this interesting: “Digital Humanities Quarterly (DHQ), an open-access, peer-reviewed, digital journal covering all aspects of digital media in the humanities”: see their website.
Nikunen on fans
Again in Finland; another doctoral defense in Media Culture. This time, Kaarina Nikunen has written a book about fans, including the “cult” fandom of Xena: Warrior Princess. Well worth reading (in Finnish).
 |
two kinds of fan films
Looking for a moment wider from the player created game content into the broad fields of “user created content” (in terminology where even culture is a victim to the all-dominant producer/consumer model), there are couple of interesting recent fan films worth comparing. The other one is Star Wars: Revelations by Shane Felux and the (semi-professional) team, and the other Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning by Samuli Torssonen and his team of Finnish fans. I still need to see both in full (only trailers so far for me), but where the first appears as an attempt of “serious” mini-film in the Star Wars universe, the latter is an example of the common burlesque or ironic attitude among fan-fic makers: a parody set in Star Trek aesthetics. Somehow I feel that the latter is more typical to the fandom sensibilities as I know them: the object of love is as often also the target of loving laughter.
See:
- SW: Revelations in TheForce.Net
- Star Wreck home page.
arrivals (big brother meets psp)
The Big Brother, the pinnacle of peeping television, has finally arrived to Finland. Even if you try to escape from the channel, there are still the street-side adverts, and they are even selling candy with the BB brand in every store. The Internet is of course filled with sleazy web camera content, but when a major broadcaster goes to all the effort needed for a Big Brother style operation, is just makes you feel dirty. Industrialized prostitution barely disguised, anyone?
In contrast, YLE, the national broadcast network is on strike today. What they have — five channels, and nothing on? The issue being of course that they are laying off jobs at the same time it seems reasonable to invest into new concert hall and digital networks. Go figure.
We have now both of the new hand consoles, Nintendo DS and Sony PSP in our lab. PSP is one flashy gadget, I must admit. I was particularly charmed by the networking capabilities; it even logged into my Wi-Fi network, and scaled web pages more or less effortlessly into its browser window. More complex scripts do not seem to work, though. And, did I mention: it plays some games, too. (Still waiting most for that Nintendogs for our DS, though. Those cute, cute puppies.)
Here is the PSP website, if you are interested.
mirrormask
This is so going to be one of those fantasy films I am going to see – I just hope they’ll put it into a big screen over here. See: the MirrorMask home page. Neil Gaiman. Dave McKean. The Jim Henson co.
changing visuals
We all would definitely do well with a little more colour; me too. Decided to do two things: change the template for this blog, and take a walk with my camera in the evening sun. Well… I am still not certain about this colour scheme, and like these
video clips prove, there is probably much more to movie making than a tiny Ixus camera which can record some bouncing pixels.
On the marketing research corner, eMarketer recently put together some data to claim that about one-fourth of video game players watched less television last year, and the trend seems to be continuing. “Game Over for TV” is their title, but I would not go so far. Rather, we will just see more and more of mixed media forms. A virtual telly night with you favourite in-game buddies, anyone?
sex in the (sin?) city
While going through the blog post from the previous week (I think there was c. 750 on those few blogs that I currently subscribe to), I came across this discussion in WaterCoolerGames.org on Ian’s critique of the new “Sex & Games SIG” IGDA has helped to put into motion.
Sex, violence, oh well. Certain old topics keep up stirring the minds, and provoking discussions from year to year. Human nature? I used to study classical tragedies in the past, and many of those took up themes from history and mythology that can easily remind you from the tabloids (or reality tv) of today. But, you must admit, the artistic execution does have certain differences here. That being the key issue here, I am of course in favour of allowing the full spectrum of human emotion and condition to figure as the the starting points for interactive cultural forms, too, but what I am really interested to see is that what new the developers can come up with from these themes.
tv's going digital
Digitalization of television became a major national project in Finland some years ago, when a decision was made to abandon all analogue tv transmissions, and provide only digital broadcast content. There were reasons of ‘cost efficiency’ (=money) behind the decision, but also the general techno-utopian spirit of our country is behind the whole Lets Be the Top Information Society in the World thing, or at least that is what I suspect.
Even as a self-admitted technophile, I have postponed the transfer into digi-tv to this point because of the ridiculous quality (or lack of it) digital set-top boxes provided. When television, the supreme and ubiquitous media terminal gets stuck every half-an-hour, when even switching channel can take 15 seconds, all subtitling is missing or erronous, it was very hard to believe in the future of this whole thing.
The latest generation of boxes finally seems to have crossed the boundary where they are “usable enough”, “stable enough” and the genuine benefits of digitalization become apparent (primarily the better quality of image and sound, combined with an accessible electonic programme guide and hard-disk recording). I got mine yesterday – Topfield TF5100PVRc model – and currently I am mostly satisfied. But the basic situation remains, complex broadcast-networked & computer-like systems are released in ‘beta’, the various national “standards”, networks and programs create a mess, which is resolved (or not) piecemeal, as users act as beta-testers, report the endless bugs and firmware updates fix something – and possibly introduce new bugs.
Link: the Finnish DVD Plaza Topfield TF5100PVRt May04 Bug report thread.
frans goes blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.