In this journal entry I attempt to capture the path I've taken so far with my dissertation, as well as prepare for the defense upcoming in a few month.
I'm in Montréal for six weeks by now, but it feels definitely longer. That might be just my experience of time, filled by all the things I participated in.
Last month I mapped a working definition of game (ludus) and ludeme (conceptual units of a game and play) in preparation for an upcoming article on ludemes and programming video games. I went through many of better know attempts for a definition and asked myself where my own perspective differs and what my approach needs to express.
In the past few months I have been engaging in the exegesis of source code from the 1980ies and -90ies. Serendipity towards the end of last year brought me in closer contact with the concept of ludemes, in which I found a fitting perspective on these magic moments of translation. David M. Berry outlines this processes through the computational image, Hartmut Rosa approaches it through his theories on resonance, Karen Barad talks about inter- and intra-actions, and Luhman also has an opinion on the topic. Either way, ludemes have been utterly fruitful in reading source code against a techno-deterministic grain, and as a lens into programming practices of the past.
I was increasingly unhappy with mypublishing strategy (or the lack thereof), but also increasingly worriedabout the state of the internet, especially the aggressive scrapping ofcontent by AI bots. So, I reconsidered my approach.
Inspired by the silly inquiries of Any Austin and the concept of relational playworld by Melos Han-Tani I figured I'm going to spend some more time in Alba, after I finished it for the second time.
I was chewing on the concept of ludemes lately and needed to map it out, conceptionally. Especially from the perspective of code and programming, there are terms that overlap and differ.
Inspired by the silly inquiries of Any Austin and the concept of relational playworld by Melos Han-Tani I figured I'm going to spend some more time in Alba, after I finished it for the second time.
Right now I do feel a bit lost with my dissertation. But I'm sure that's how it has to be right now. I had a meeting with my supervisor last week that was very giving in terms on how to go forwards. The most important take-away was, that I should speak to all my disciplines.
I finished readingy The philosophy of software last week and went half through Homebrew Gaming and the Beginnings of Vernacular Digitality this week. The two books, on with a philosophical approach and one with a focus on everyday programming practices, are a great match and sparked some fruitful insights.
I've been left with quite some material to think through after the Leisure Electronics conference. My current reading, The Philosophy of Software, is expanding on that. Which leads me to an attempt of capturing the current state of that reflection.
The title is a direct quote from Pierre-Yves Hurrel, one of the organizers of the Leisure electronics Conference in Lausanne conference, which I attended this week. It is also one of my key takeaways from the conference, as well as my own presentation, Programming and Becoming. The conference concentrated on the emergence of video games, that pivotal moment when video game culture started to establish itself.
Next to intensively preparing for a conference talk, I had the chance to attend a preservation-session with people from the Swiss Video Game Archivists association.
I'm interested in video game graphics programming practices. One aspect of that interest is the motivation and intention that these programmers had, back then, when they went about their programming business. Why did they do, what they did? The slightly sarcastic reframing of the question for the proposal comes about from my own experience. It's not a scientific question, but an honest wondering. I experienced learning to code as something very frustrating, time-taking and occupying. And up to this day, I haven't heard from anybody who slid into coding easily and has fond memories of the process.
Although we have a leap year, and were gifted an additional day in February, that month went by rather quickly. I spent the time mostly by either being with friends, or working on my dissertation project. I still try not to engage with any projects or topics that don't fit (can't be made fit) into my thesis, and I believe it pays off.
I had the chance to talk about my expose with my supervisor. He gave me some valuable inputs regarding formal aspects and in terms of writing styles. We also looked at the overall plan of my dissertation project.
Although we have a leap year, and were gifted an additional day in February, that month went by rather quickly. I spent the time mostly by either being with friends, or working on my dissertation project. I still try not to engage with any projects or topics that don't fit (can't be made fit) into my thesis, and I believe it pays off.
I was adding thoughts from my paper notebook to the wiki and engaged with a bit of maintenance, making connections, adding bits here and there. I see that I already have a lot of material and some things that I actually forgot already.
Right now I do feel a bit lost with my dissertation. But I'm sure that's how it has to be right now. I had a meeting with my supervisor last week that was very giving in terms on how to go forwards. The most important take-away was, that I should speak to all my disciplines.
I had the chance to discuss my exposé within the context of the IDR colloquium, which is a format where all PhD students of the institute can hand their things. Since I had plenty of opportunities to discuss my project with people from the digital humanities and video games studies, I needed to have feedback from the design research crowd. In the following I clustered some takeaways from the session.
As the title implies this will be a larger entry. I'd love to briefly cover my participation at the DHCH 2023, the summer school/conference of the Swiss Digital Humanities.
I had the chance to discuss my exposé within the context of the IDR colloquium, which is a format where all PhD students of the institute can hand their things. Since I had plenty of opportunities to discuss my project with people from the digital humanities and video games studies, I needed to have feedback from the design research crowd. In the following I clustered some takeaways from the session.
As expected, the study semester is taking a toll on time, energy and focus. It seems easier, and more relevant, than last semester. Besides that, I feel that the productivity from the summer came to a halt.
It's summer and I can finally concentrate on all things related to my dissertation project. On the agenda is playing video games, working on a representation of masculinity in old games' subproject, working on my Image Corpus, and, of course, getting some reading is done.
The Games and Literature conference at the German Literature Archive in Marbach was intense. I counted 30 talks on the program, from which I attended 25 and gave one together with Eugen Pfister.
Today I'm attempting to close read the code base of the VICE emulator. I already made some attempts at this through going into the source code author's comments.
As the title implies this will be a larger entry. I'd love to briefly cover my participation at the DHCH 2023, the summer school/conference of the Swiss Digital Humanities.
I have a basic assumption after a rather broad reading of texts. There seems to be an invisible rift between the research image of the video game and its material base, a border between the visuality and technology.
Right now I do feel a bit lost with my dissertation. But I'm sure that's how it has to be right now. I had a meeting with my supervisor last week that was very giving in terms on how to go forwards. The most important take-away was, that I should speak to all my disciplines.
Since I am the graphics-person, I'm also collecting images, of course. I try to do as many screenshots as necessary and scrape the internet for additional material.
Although we have a leap year, and were gifted an additional day in February, that month went by rather quickly. I spent the time mostly by either being with friends, or working on my dissertation project. I still try not to engage with any projects or topics that don't fit (can't be made fit) into my thesis, and I believe it pays off.
The last two weeks I was playing a few video games by Golden Gate Crew as well as Linel. They were all developed and published for the Amiga system. In order to play them, I had to work with an emulator.
I'm interested in video game graphics programming practices. One aspect of that interest is the motivation and intention that these programmers had, back then, when they went about their programming business. Why did they do, what they did? The slightly sarcastic reframing of the question for the proposal comes about from my own experience. It's not a scientific question, but an honest wondering. I experienced learning to code as something very frustrating, time-taking and occupying. And up to this day, I haven't heard from anybody who slid into coding easily and has fond memories of the process.
I'm in Montréal for six weeks by now, but it feels definitely longer. That might be just my experience of time, filled by all the things I participated in.
The title is a direct quote from Pierre-Yves Hurrel, one of the organizers of the Leisure electronics Conference in Lausanne conference, which I attended this week. It is also one of my key takeaways from the conference, as well as my own presentation, Programming and Becoming. The conference concentrated on the emergence of video games, that pivotal moment when video game culture started to establish itself.
Right now I do feel a bit lost with my dissertation. But I'm sure that's how it has to be right now. I had a meeting with my supervisor last week that was very giving in terms on how to go forwards. The most important take-away was, that I should speak to all my disciplines.
I was adding thoughts from my paper notebook to the wiki and engaged with a bit of maintenance, making connections, adding bits here and there. I see that I already have a lot of material and some things that I actually forgot already.
I had the chance to talk about my expose with my supervisor. He gave me some valuable inputs regarding formal aspects and in terms of writing styles. We also looked at the overall plan of my dissertation project.
Next to intensively preparing for a conference talk, I had the chance to attend a preservation-session with people from the Swiss Video Game Archivists association.