Arki (http://arki.mlog.taik.fi/) is a multidisciplinary research group that is part of the Media Lab Helsinki (http://mlab.taik.fi/) of the Aalto University’s (http://www.aalto.fi/en/) School of Art and Design (http://www.taik.fi/en). It focuses on the co-evolution of digital technology and the practices of everyday life with a design perspective. Arki’s activities include researching people’s media practices and experimenting with the opportunities provided by new digital tools in the context of audiovisual media. One of Arki’s recent experiments is TestiKaista (http://arki.mlog.taik.fi/2010/05/21/testikaista-boxee-application-prototype/) application prototype, which was built for studying how TV experience could expand to include media from Internet and computers at home. The prototype is built with the Boxee (www.boxee.tv) media center open-source platform, and provides Finnish TV content, using the feed from TVKaista service. As Boxee enables viewing media from a variety of sources from the couch using a remote control, the experiment has enabled studying how more traditional and online media content and practices get mixed in current media ecosystems. The work carried out is part of the FinLab project, co-funded by TEKES.

The TestiKaista source code is published in Google Code (http://code.google.com/p/tvkaista-boxee/) with MIT Open Source license, so you are free to explore it. In case you are interested to know more about TestiKaista, please contact Aapo Rista (aapo.rista[at]taik.fi).

Single-player character-driven games are a popular contemporary genre. These games typically involve action (action as in action movies) or exploration. Notably, use of social relations between characters in (big budget) character-driven titles have been marginal. Recently, games (such as Sims series, Baldur’s Gate series, Dragon Age, Grant Theft Auto IV Mass Effect series) include romances and friendships. Importantly, how these romances and friendships develop depends on player’s choices, but the execution of these social relations is rather simplistic. The approach of modeling social relations as gameplay in these games is good to add flavor to the game, but it might not be enough to bear as the main content. I believe that it is possible to develop games revolving around social relations. Exploring possibilities of gameplay of social interaction between game characters in single-player games is a challenging but worthy goal.

In my doctoral dissertation “Character-Driven Game Design: A Design Approach and Its Foundations in Character Engagement” I propose that game designers can learn from the writing methods from the dramatic writing, especially from Lajos Egri’s character-driven method. However, games and drama differ. To utilize the Egri’s method, we must understand where it is usable and where it is not. For Egri, the conflict originates from the natures and goals of the characters. He asserts that characters needs to want something so badly that there is no room for the compromise. Clearly, this conflict design part can be applied to the game design, but to apply it to game design we need to understand how games reveal and communicate the personalities of game characters. Especially, we need to understand how player-controlled characters do this. I propose that, in addition to perceivable features (such as face, voice, body) of player character, how the game set goals and action possibilities of the character are important in constructing the personality of the character. Importantly, these all are implementable from the character-driven design.

My study includes a design experiment Lies and Seductions. The role of the game has been two-folded. First, the draft version of the character-driven game design has been used in the design, and the experiences are used to refine the approach. Second, the ideas of implementing social conflict in the level  of game system have been tested with the game. Even if the game is based on the novel Dangerous Liaisons, the design approach including character design, has been utilised in the design process.

I claim that games can invade new territory by utilizing nonviolent character–character conflicts. There is much unexplored design space there, and I hope that design space will be in use in the future.

Petri Lankoski

Lecturer in Game Design and Production
Aalto University/School of Art and Design/Department of Media

References:

Lankoski, 2010. Character-Driven Game Design: A Design Approach and Its Foundations in Character Engagement. D.Arts dissertation, Aalto University, School of Art and Design. Available at http://www.taik.fi/kirjakauppa/ (as printed book and free PDF).

Lies and Seductions, www.liesandseductions.com

Today over half of the global population owns a mobile phone. And an increasing number of those mobile phones contains a camera. One estimate is that camera phone shipments will exceed one billion units per year in 2011.

As a consequence, photography is becoming quite a ubiquitous activity: in addition to stand-alone cameras, it is possible to take photographs with phones and other electronic devices as well. When the camera is incorporated into a mobile phone, it becomes a pervasive extension of the eye. People can snap all the time, as much as they like. Shooting pictures is a way of being.

This “chronic” photography is more convenient than ever before, as the camera in the phone follows practically everywhere. The camera phone is, thus, not reserved only for special moments, as has been the case for most personal photography before. Photography turns more into photographic observation, capturing the everyday.

The camera in a modern camera phone can also be used to access information without taking a photograph, as, for example, when using augmented reality applications. The camera provides an informational connection to the physical surroundings of the user. The camera in the phone is then not only about photography.

However, a more significant shift brought about by camera phones is that photography can become a widespread and common activity also among the people in the less developed world. For us here in Finland owning a camera is nothing new, but for many people living in developing countries the first experience of taking pictures is likely to be on a camera phone. This is suggestive of how in India or Africa most people will connect to the Internet for the first time with a mobile phone, rather than a PC.

Mikko Villi, Media Factory

Mikko Villi defended his doctoral thesis “Visual mobile communication: Camera phone photo messages as ritual communication and mediated presence” on the 20th of May at the Aalto University School of Art and Design.

The thesis can be acquired via https://www.taik.fi/kirjakauppa/index.php?cPath=14&sort=1a&page=2&language=en. It is available also in PDF format at https://www.taik.fi/kirjakauppa/product_info.php?cPath=23&products_id=172

Why I have chosen Mashup Cultures as the title for my book has basically two main reasons: one is connected to the definition of mashup, which in Web developments denotes a combination of data or functionality from two or more external sources to create a new service (in the case of this compilation hopefully new insights), and the second reason puts the cultural dimension into the foreground, as these developments permeate through almost all cultural techniques and practices on a global scale. If we consider mashup as a metaphor for parallel and co-existing ways of thinking and acting rather than exclusionary, causal and reductionist principles of either or instead of as well as, then we might gain a broader understanding of the unique characteristics of the plural in mashup cultures.

A historical comparison might also be helpful to find distinguishable and discernable criteria for sometimes confusing terminologies using the example of remix practices. In retrospect we can ascribe these practices certain kinds of techniques (collage, montage, sampling, etc.) and different forms of appropriations within specific socio-cultural contexts, for example John Heartfield’s political photomontages in the 1930’s, or James Tenney’s early sampling of Elvis Presley’s “Blue Suede Shoes” in the 1960’s. Yet how these cultural practices significantly differentiate from today’s mashup cultures could be outlined in the following:

•    Collage, montage, sampling or remix practices all use one or many materials, media either from other sources, art pieces (visual arts, film, music, video, literature etc.) or one’s own artworks through alteration, re-combination, manipulation, copying etc. to create a whole new piece. In doing so, the sources of origin may still be identifiable yet not perceived as the original version.

•    Mashups as I understand them put together different information, media, or objects without changing their original source of information, i.e. the original format remains the same and can be retraced as the original form and content, although recombined in different new designs and contexts. For example, in the ship or car industry standardised modules are assembled following a particular specific design platform, or, using the example of Google map, different services are over-layered so as to provide for the user parallel accessible services.

•    Remix and mashup practices in combination can be considered as a co evolving, oscillating membrane of user-generated content (conversational media) and mass media.

Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss
Professor Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss, PhD
Head of MA ePedagogy Design-Visual Knowledge Building
Aalto University / School of Art and Design

Excerpt from my Introduction in “Mashups, Remix Practices and the Recombination of Existing Digital Content” (p. 8-9)

The nature of online discussion is currently a hot topic of public discussion in Finland. For some, online discussion is a synonym for hate speech. Others regard it as the savior of democratic participation. Both sides seem to agree on one thing: the quality of online discussion, in actual actuality, is unacceptably low. People do not bother to build solid arguments. Instead, they resort to mockery and profanity; they use dirty words and make too many grammatical errors. In short, online discussion lacks sophistication, eloquence, and class.

In an ongoing empirical study with Merja Porttikivi and Johanna Moisander, we seek an alternative approach to the democratic potential of online discussion. By comparing representations of a factory shutdown decision in newspapers vis-à-vis online discussion forums, we come to the conclusion that online discussion bears social significance not in spite of its characteristic discursive practices but in fact thanks to them.

Our analysis shows that the news press puts up a relatively coherent representation of the factory shutdown, which is largely in line with the neo-liberalist view on business-society relations. In online discussion, no such coherence may be found. The discussion entails comments that openly celebrate the factory shutdowns in terms of share price boost; comments that evoke historical class differences; comments that put the blame on consumers; comments that preach against greed and avarice. Partial, fragmented, markedly subjective comments – which nevertheless manage both to subject the dominant discourse to critical appraisal and to surface alternative discourses.

Rhetorically, online comments employ – in more or less sophisticated ways – tones of irony, humor, and cynicism. It is customary to swear, to moralize, to polarize, and to use casual language. In such a communicative atmosphere, concerns may be voiced without relating them to some bigger picture, and without presenting a solid chain of arguments. And this may be the best thing about online discussion. Building a sound argument, namely, is damn hard; often when we try, we end up resorting to – and thus reinforcing – easily available, dominant discourses. (more…)