[…]85, 86 , 89): the first time to say that he is planning it, the second and third to describe his working conditions (unable to type continuously because of disturbing neighbours, and so writing by hand and making lots of notes), the fourth to describe the “incredible slowness” of his progress on it, working from midnights to 4am. He discusses further struggles with it months later in a letter to Charles Socarides: though it “fits so insanely well with facts of life,” “I watch myself ruin it” through “bad writing,” an example of which he extracts for proof (Letters 97). […]
[…]of their designer and players. Pennyís and Frascaís approaches could be characterized as Critical Technical Practices (CTP) ñ procedures incorporating the working methods of both technical research and cultural critique ó though neither essayist uses the term. Phoebe Sengers, in this sectionís final essay, characterizes her work explicitly as CTP. Sengers attempts to formulate new designs for AI agents; such agents, although central to much AI practice (and to many cyberdramatic visions), have customarily engaged in intricate internal behavior that can be difficult for an observer to interpret. Sengersís solution to this problem may be viewed as the inverse of […]
[…]in First Person in the first person, trying to make sense of what happens when simulation becomes critical, and trying to make sense of it in the sinewy suspensions of First Person. What does it mean for simulation to become critical? In Penny’s conception, it relates to how criticism becomes embodied, how it encompasses and accounts for physical interactions with a work. Penny rightly points out that if embodied involvement in military simulations trains soldiering, then embodied involvement in desktop shooter games must also train something. Another way to frame this idea is like this: if we want to claim […]
[…]Repair: A Reply to John Bruni, by Stefan Herbrechter Works Cited Badmington, Neil. “Cultural Studies and the Posthumanities.” New Cultural Studies. Ed. Gary Hall and Clare Birchall. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2006. 260-72. Biskind, Peter. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ‘N’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Experience.” The Portable Emerson. Ed. Carl Bode and Malcolm Cowley. New York: Penguin, 1981. 266-90. Harvey, David. Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism. Oxford and New York: The University of Oxford Press, 2014. Herbrechter, Stefan. Posthumanism: A Critical Analysis. London and New […]
[…]the editorship of Stacy Alaimo, who encourages inquiry and debate on new materialisms, animal studies, posthumanism, and science […]
[…]framed by Ruberg and Shaw’s comprehensive introduction, which bears inclusion in any queer studies, games studies or even cultural studies class. The authors establish the significant academic contributions to the study of queerness in games, in tandem with broader queer developments in the industry and the emergence of distinct queer game cultures. Tracing the developments of queer theory and games studies, and stressing their points of intersection, their introduction expands queer game studies beyond investigations into explicit LGBTQ content in games. Queer Game Studies makes its case by sheer accretion of ideas. Cumulatively, the contributions suggest the liberatory possibilities of […]
[…]writing, est. 2020) are proud to announce their first collaboration: a special double issue on “Critical Making, Critical Design” that pairs digital works of making or design with critical and scholarly mediation. See the Table of Contents of The Digital Review issue as well. From prose and art installations to craftwork and video games, creative works are often released without giving artists the opportunity to explain their processes, contexts, and motivations. Else, creative works may be examined through through separate forms of static, print-based scholarly publishing that risk isolating works from their creative impulses and taking works out of their […]
[…]account of these sorts of speculative and critical practices can be found in Daniela K. Rosner’s Critical Fabulations: Reworking the Methods and Margins of Design. Although it is more about industrial design than about labs, Rosner’s work also performs a critical reading against the historical grain to focus on speculative possibilities by recentering innovation around those who have been pushed to the margins of design. And for anyone looking for other examples of these practices beyond those already mentioned in The Lab Book: Allied Media Projects represents a network of scholars, community organizers, hackactivists, and citizens raising critical awareness about […]
[…]from the hope that it might be possible to organize mass behavior otherwise. In other words, “code, communication, computing, feedback, and control…embodied an effort to develop more enlightened analytics for the force wielded by science and the state” (2). This impulse (or temptation) is to achieve the ends of the colony, asylum, and camp without resorting to their grisly means. At the risk of editorializing too aggressively, this is the main tension that persists in me upon finishing the book: To achieve submission to authority without violence and to obviate politics though technology (a recurring point within the book) are […]
[…]Superpositions: Laruelle and the Humanities (forthcoming; with Rocco Gangle). Greve is currently working on the concept of nature in the novels of Cormac McCarthy and on nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophies of nature, in particular those of Friedrich W. J. Schelling, Lorenz Oken, and Gilles Deleuze (including the ideas these thinkers have spawned in contemporary philosophical speculation). His further research interests encompass the tradition of intermediality in American cultural practices and the history of critical […]