WRT: Writer Response Theory

We’ve long followed Google’s evolving toolset, whether to ponder philosophical points about digital text or learn practical lessons for developing our own research tools… or just for fun.

Here is a quick roundup of some recent Google developments that might aid the research blogger, with helpful instructions and tips:

• Google Books: Full-text downloads
• Google News: History
• Google Scholar: Library integration, citation export

Continue reading ‘Research Blogging with Google’

An upcoming issue on theories and practices of blogging requests submissions of papers/projects/manifestos by October 6, 2006 to guest editors Michael Benton and Lauren Elkin of the journal Reconstruction: studies in contemporary culture. From the CFP:

We are especially interested in the experiences, theories and perspectives of those who actually blog. We are looking for longer theoretical essays and shorter statements/manifestos about blogging–including pieces that have already been posted on your blogs. We are also soliciting reviews of books about blogging and your favorite weblogs. Deadline for submissions is October 6, 2006. The issue is scheduled to be published as 6.1 (Winter 2006).

Has it really been almost two years since we kicked off WRT with a mini-festo defining the title?

What I bought was a game; what I found was an authorware-sim-game. “The Movies” by Lionhead Studios falls into the grey area between authorware and video game. Players of the game can use it to make and share content. What can we as electronic authors make of this new genre?

The Movies: Exemplary CPG

“The Movies” was brought to us by Peter Molyneux of Lionhead Studios (acquired by Microsoft in April 2006), the makers of “Black & White,” the entertaining and literal “god game, and “Fable” (over 2 million units solid). (Molyneux, who is the head in Lionhead, has been called the “inventor” of the “god” game.) Despite its sales, Fable seemed to fall short of expectations. Nonetheless, the lions have certainly found a new audience and potentially a new genre with the addition of a deliverable, distributable content. (“The Movies” was the highest selling IP over the most recent Christmas period). So here is the latest stab at interactive storytelling, a program that provides opportunities for generating stories interactively: what I will call a Content-Producing Game (CPG).

Continue reading ‘The Content-Producing Game (CPG) — The Movies’

“Literatronica” is an adaptive hypertext system that transforms the delivery and experience of literary hypertext.  Earlier in the year, WRT posted about the system.  Now it offers this interview with Literatronic programmer Juan B. Gutierrez, who is also author of the literatronic adapative hypertext Condiciones Extremas or Extreme Conditions. 

WRT: You started your hypertext career with Condiciones Extremas? What inspired you to write that work? What did you learn from writing it? 

JBG: I actually started my hypertext career with a novel called “El Primer Vuelo de los Hermanos Wright” (The First Flight of the Wright Brothers) for which I won the National Grant for Artistic Creation of the Ministry of Culture of Colombia in 1996. [The above link connects to a revised literatronic version of that tale.] The project itself started in 1995. I wanted to write a novel about the social vices of Latin-America. The grant proposal read: “This project aims to create a hypertext that reconfigures itself based on reader’s interaction.” The challenge proved beyond my technical ability at that time and I ended up writing a traditional static HTML hypertext.

Continue reading ‘Literatronica: an interview with creator Juan B. Gutierrez’

The online hypermedia humor mag Bunk Magazine (http://www.bunkmag.com) has published a new issue, iBunk, taking up an iTunes/iFilm/iNfinitum theme. To this end, the magazine has a spiffy new iLook and a host of iContent that suggests that its iEditor is done with his dissertation.

In this issue the content, you will find:

• Celebrity Playlists (Sauron, Harry Potter, Thomas Jefferson, the Donald and more)
• A novel: beginning of serialized novel Sex, Revenge, and Insanity by TV’s Scott Odom
• Live White Guilt, a blog from abroad by Dustin Stevenson
• iStory: Encrypted Lovers by Mark C. Marino
• Copyfight Humor: “Your Songs in Stock” by Remy
• Short Films: “22 Short Films about Grammar” created using Lionhead Studios video game “The Movies”
• Bunk-O-Forms, picture mashing website (http://grouchhouse.com)
  Continue reading ‘iBunk takes on iWorld’