On the Polyphonic Method
A couple of months ago Micheal Benton approached us at Writer Response Theory to participate in the Reconstructions issue on blogging. We’re Really Thrilled about the idea — who wouldn’t want to blog about blogging?! But when the time came to write, we three researchers kept weaving in and out of approaches. Should we have a single voice? That is always a good approach, but a collaborative document isn’t written with a single voice in the first draft. It begins as a mixture of voices that synergise and become one (either with poetic ease or a crow-bar). We haven’t reached that chorus point yet. Don’t know if we ever will. And, to be frank, we like the idea of pulling back the curtain and revealing what a collaborative-text-in-formation looks like. Indeed, it is emblematic of our collaborative blogging at WRT.

So, why do we blog…together?

TADS 3, a “robust, modern programming environment specially designed for creating Interactive Fiction,” is officially out in General Release 3.0.12. The freeware release comes in author and player kits for Windows, Unix, and Mac OS X, and is complemented by an admirably packaged bookshelf of documentation, including Getting Started, a Tour Guide, and system, technical, […]

There are some histories of new media around, such as Stuart Moulthrop’s Subjective Chronology of Cybertext, Hypertext and Electronic Writing; and D. DaCosta’s Influences, which juxtaposes some key technological points in time with installation, video and performance art; and how about the long-overdue Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology. But I haven’t seen a […]

11:13 pm: The dark highway rolls out before you. In a few hours you’ll be heading out of town with a sweet young thang. As you drive, all you can think about is — WHOMP-CRERR-FLONK — a body-shaped object smashes the windshield and when you look up the car is in a ditch. All you […]

When a digital artwork, game, or story exists in many forms across many hardware and software systems, what is the ‘real’ work, and do we experience it differently?
Right now I’m thinking about that ur-interactive fiction, Adventure (a.k.a. ADVENT, Colossal Cave Adventure, etc.) - which through its complex history has been both massively cross-platform and massively […]