in development: eMerge: software studies community aggregator

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eMerge, the Software Studies Initiative community aggregator, scans social networking web-services for software studies content and publishes them into an open shared space.

Authoring in eMerge is as simple as applying the tag software_studies to your entries to whatever web-service you use. Current supported entries and web-services include images from Flickr and Yahoo, bibliographic citations from CiteULike and LibraryThing, videos from YouTube and Google Video, and blog entries from the entire internet.

Unlike current aggregation web-services such as Plaxo, eMerge community members are not required to create an account and password or change tools - they simply continue using whatever web-services they are most comfortable with, and their contributions are still accepted when they change web-services.

The project website is currently in alpha.

Announcing Jeremy Douglass, Postdoctoral Researcher in Software Studies

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The Software Studies initiative at UCSD is pleased to welcome our new Postdoctoral Researcher, Jeremy Douglass. Jeremy will be researching critical approaches to software and code using the analytic frameworks of the humanities and the social sciences, working on software projects for analyzing (software) culture, and playing a key role in field-building activities for software studies worldwide.

Jeremy is appointed to Software Studies with support from the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) and the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA). He will be working with Lev Manovich (Professor, Visual Arts) and Noah Wardrip-Fruin (Assistant Professor, Communication) to develop models and tools for the cultural criticism of software, establish the field as a complement to existing research in cyberculture and new media, and investigate how next generation cyberinfrastructure technologies can be used by humanists, social scientists, and cultural practitioners.

Jeremy arrives with a Ph.D. from UC Santa Barbara's Department of English. His dissertation, "Command Lines: Aesthetics and Technique in Interactive Fiction and New Media," explores several critical techniques of interest to the software studies field, including the ongoing influence of code and development tools on software genre formation and the use of close-reading techniques on source code. In addition to a history of publications and presentations on electronic literature and software, he creates visualization artworks and writes for the new media art blog Writer Response Theory.

Small Tech - The Culture of Digital Tools

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Small Tech
The Culture of Digital Tools
Byron Hawk, David M. Rieder, and Ollie Oviedo, Editors
Electronic Mediations, Volume 22
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis • London
(forthcoming 2008)

The essays in Small Tech investigate the cultural impact of digital tools and provide fresh perspectives on mobile technologies such as iPods, digital cameras, and PDAs and software functions like cut, copy, and paste and WYSIWYG. Together they advance new thinking about digital environments.

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction: On Small Tech and Complex Ecologies
Byron Hawk and David M. Rieder

Traditional Software in New Ecologies

Data Visualization as New Abstraction and as Anti-Sublime
Lev Manovich

Softvideography: Digital Video as Postliterate Practice
Adrian Miles

Technopolitics, Blogs, and Emergent Media Ecologies: A Critical/Reconstructive Approach
Richard Kahn and Douglas Kellner

Remembering Dinosaurs: Toward an Archaeological Understanding of Digital Photo Manipulation
Karla Saari Kitalong

Cut, Copy, and Paste
Lance Strate

Dreamweaver and the Procession of Simulations: What You See Is Not Why You Get What You Get
Sean D. Williams

Revisiting the Matter and Manner of Linking in New Media
Collin Gifford Brooke

ScriptedWriting() { Exploring Generative Dimensions of Writing in Flash Actionscript
David M. Rieder

Small Tech and Cultural Contexts

Overhearing: The Intimate Life of Cell Phones
Jenny Edbauer Rice

I Am a DJ, I Am What I Say: The Rise of Podcasting
Paul Cesarini

Walking with Texts: Using PDAs to Manage Textual Information
Jason Swarts

Text Messaging: Rhetoric in a New Keypad
Wendy Warren Austin

Beyond Napster: Peer-to-Peer Technology and Network Culture
Michael Pennell

Communication Breakdown: The Postmodern Space of Google
Johndan Johnson-Eilola

Let There Be Light in the Digital Darkroom: Digital Ecologies and the New Photography
Robert A. Emmons Jr.

“A Demonstration of Practice”: The Real Presence of Digital Video
Veronique Chance

Buffering Bergson: Matter and Memory in 3D Games
Julian Oliver

Shifting Subjects in Locative Media
Teri Rueb

Future Technologies and Ambient Environments

Virtual Reality as a Teaching Tool: Learning by Configuring
James J. Sosnoski

Digital Provocations and Applied Aesthetics: Projects in Speculative Computing
Johanna Drucker

Dehumanization, Rhetoric, and the Design of Wearable Augmented Reality Interfaces
Isabel Pedersen

Sousveillance: Wearable and Digital Tools in Surveilled Environments
Jason Nolan, Steve Mann, and Barry Wellman

Ambient Video: The Transformation of the Domestic Cinematic Experience
Jim Bizzocchi

Sound in Domestic Virtual Environments
Jeremy Yuille

Getting Real and Feeling in Control: Haptic Interfaces
Joanna Castner Post

16. Digital Craft and Digital Touch: Hands-on Design with an “Undo” Button
Mark Paterson

Grand Text Auto at the Beall Center, UCI

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Grand Text Auto will be presented at The Beall Center for Art and
Technology, UC Irvine, Claire Trevor School of the Arts, 712 Arts
Plaza,Irvine, CA 92697-2775

OPENING RECEPTION: October 4th, 6:30pm-9:00pm
SYMPOSIUM: October 5th, 1:00-5:00pm
PERFORMANCE: October 5th, 6:00-8:00pm

Many blogs have become books - from The Baghdad Blog to Belle de Jour. But Grand Text Auto is the first blog ever to become a gallery exhibition. It opens October 4th and runs through December 15th. The exhibition features the work of Grand Text Auto members (CRCA Researcher) Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Mary Flanagan, Michael Mateas, Andrew Stern, Nick Montfort, Scott Rettberg, and their collaborators.

Grand Text Auto is a blog about the potential of digital media, from literary websites to experimental computer games. At the exhibition, the blog members will put these ideas into practice, showing a variety of cutting edge works. Some use the latest in artificial intelligence technology, such as Mateas and Stern's interactive drama Façade - of which The New York Times says, "This is the future of video games." The Beall exhibition will feature the first public showing of a life-sized "augmented reality" version of Façade, created in collaboration with Georgia Tech's GVU Center. Virtual reality is also on display, as with Wardrip-Fruin's collaborative work Screen, a literary game played with 3D text - never seen before outside of a research lab and presented with support from UC San Diego's Center for Research in Computing and the Arts. On the other hand, some works in the exhibition use decidedly do-it-yourself techniques, such as Montfort and Rettberg's Implementation, an experimental novel distributed around the world on mailing labels. Others are quirky, such as Flanagan's [giantJoystick], a replica Atari 2600 joystick so large that two people must work together to play (this has its North American debut at the Beall show).

In addition to the gallery show, the members of Grand Text Auto are working together with the Beall Center to present a live symposium and performance evening, both on October 5th. The afternoon symposium (1-5 p.m.) will discuss the power of collaborative blogging, new directions for computer games, and the place of language in digital media. The evening performance (6-8 p.m.) will feature the disturbing and humorous interactive cinema experience Terminal Time (which automatically creates outrageously biased documentaries of the past millennium) and a live performance of the award-winning hypertext novel The Unknown (which tells the tale of a rollicking cross-country book tour).

Further information: http://grandtextauto.org, http://beallcenter.uci.edu
(949) 824-4339

Images

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Exemplary images from recent and ongoing projects.

Cultural Analytics research environment: relationships map	Cultural Analytics research environment: long tail view	Cultural Analytics research environment: geo view	Cultural Analytics research environment on the Calit2 HiPerSpace
2000 art images on the HiPerSpace	UCSD undergraduates exploring data on the HiPerSpace	Interactive analysis of Mark Rothko's paintings on the HiPerSpace	Interactive analysis of Mark Rothko's paintings on the HiPerSpace
Visualization of the complete text of "Anna Karenina"	SIGGRAPH poster - visualization of patterns in films, motion graphics, cartoons and political TV ads	SIGGRAPH poster comparing 20 video games from 1988-2009	Image analysis of 19th and 20th century European painters
Mark Rothko's career - 160 paintings organized by saturation and dominant colors	Visualization of Mark Rothko's career: changes in paintings' saturation over time (1934-1970)	Evolution of modern art (1840-1920)	The continuity of realism and modernism in painting (circa 1930).
Automated analysis of screen regions for segmenting gameplay modes in "Fatal Frame 2"	Exploration of world-map in "Legend of Zelda" on the HIPerWall	Montage of sampled frames from speed-run of "Fatal Frame 2" (white frames corresponds to combat sequences)	Timeline showing the rhythm of gameplay in "Knights of the Old Republic"
Use of medical imaging techniques for cultural analysis: a slice through an art video (each pixel row corresponds to one frame)	Comparing editing patterns in Russian, French and American films, 1900-2008	Keyframes from a music video clustered by brightness and number of shapes in an image	visual signatures: Betty Boop cartoons (1930s) vs. Bjork's music video
All Google logos (1998-2009): analysis of variability over time	Branching structure of an interactive novel	Variations from the standard template in all of Google logos (1998-2009)	"FreakAngels" web comic panels clustered by brightness and hue

EVENTS

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Cultural Analytics workshop @ FILE 2009

DAC 2009: chamada para área de Estudos do Software e Plataformas

National University of Singapore awards a grant for Cultural Analytics research

Software Studies Brazil at PARALELO: Technology & Environment

Software Art at CFAV, Recife (Brazil)

software studies course @Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico)

Eventos do Grupo de Software Studies em São Paulo

"Deep Search" Symposium

Cultural Analytics @ ISEA 2008

SoftWhere 2008 | international workshop in Software Studies at UCSD, May 21-22, 2008

Publications in Software Studies:: Second Person - Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media

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Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media
Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Editors
The MIT Press
February 2007

Games and other playable forms, from interactive fictions to improvisational theater, involve role playing and story--something played and something told. In Second Person, game designers, authors, artists, and scholars examine the different ways in which these two elements work together in tabletop role-playing games (RPGs), computer games, board games, card games, electronic literature, political simulations, locative media, massively multiplayer games, and other forms that invite and structure play.

Second Person--so called because in these games and playable media it is "you" who plays the roles, "you" for whom the story is being told--first considers tabletop games ranging from Dungeons & Dragons and other RPGs with an explicit social component to Kim Newman's Choose Your Own Adventure-style novel Life's Lottery and its more traditional author-reader interaction. Contributors then examine computer-based playable structures that are designed for solo interaction--for the singular "you"--including the mainstream hit Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and the genre-defining independent production Façade. Finally, contributors look at the intersection of the social spaces of play and the real world, considering, among other topics, the virtual communities of such Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) as World of Warcraft and the political uses of digital gaming and role-playing techniques (as in The Howard Dean for Iowa Game, the first U.S. presidential campaign game).

In engaging essays that range in tone from the informal to the technical, these writers offer a variety of approaches for the examination of an emerging field that includes works as diverse as George R.R. Martin's Wild Cards series and the classic Infocom game Planetfall.

Second Person features three complete tabletop role-playing games that demonstrate some of the variations possible in the form: in John Tynes's Puppetland, players take on the roles of puppets in a land ruled by the villainous Punch; Greg Costikyan's Bestial Acts imports the techniques of Bertolt Brecht's theater of alienation into a dark role-playing structure; and in James Wallis's The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, the gameplay revolves around spinning elaborate tales in the style of the famous raconteur.