Short yet interesting article on "transformative play," by Katie Salen, in association with an exhibit she curated at the Walker Art Center.

"Transformative play occurs when the free movement of play alters the more rigid rule structure in which it takes shape. "

This article specifically focuses on transformative play as a "powerful creative strategy within digital culture," focusing expressly on the way people use tools within the Quake and Sims games to construct their own narratives. Especially interesting is the discussion on "machinima," the use of the Quake demo recorder (or other game tools) as a means of cinematic production.

Labels: game_commentary

Wednesday, July 30, 2003
2:31 PM
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Busy day of making things.

My latest game is layering and manipulating corrosion pictures in Photoshop to create organic abstractions. My Photoshop skills are pretty rudimentary, but I've been happy with some of the stuff I've produced:

I've been taking lots of new pictures, too. Chicago is a gold mine of industrial disintegration. I'll upload some more of my favorite images soon.

Sunday, July 27, 2003
11:06 PM
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"Lose your first fifty games as fast as possible."
Go proverb

I've been getting to play a few games of go lately. I've mainly had to teach my opponents the rules before playing against them, and things might have been easier if I'd first paid closer attention to this useful page on how to teach Go that Nick sent me a while ago.

In any case, I hope my opponents will be willing to indulge my desire for occasional rematches.

In other news, my phone is working again, so if you've been expecting a call from me, it should hopefully come soon.

Labels: game_commentary

Saturday, July 26, 2003
5:36 PM
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I'm updating this from my office.

There have been troubles on my home phone line lately, which has been prohibiting me from maintaining a connection to the Internet for more than thirty seconds at a time.

A technician dropped by today and assured me that the problem will be resolved within the next 24 hours.

The last time this happened, I was without phone service for twenty days.

I've been keeping busy, using the home computer to make Photoshop collages and music... hopefully I'll eventually be able to share some of my recent output with you before twenty days go by.

Is this a sign that it's time to upgrade to a cable modem?

Friday, July 25, 2003
2:13 PM
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Roadkill pictures thumbnail gallery.

Be warned: these are not for the squeamish. They're hard for me to look at, and I'm a person who generally makes a point of looking at things that are hard to look at.

It's also worth noting that I'm not really able to "aestheticize" them. It's easy to look at the corrosion pictures and admire the patterns and textures as abstractions. But the roadkill pictures have an emotional force—when I look at these animals I find myself most struck not by their growing abstraction but by their recognizability, by the way they command me to recognize them as beings not unlike myself.

Monday, July 21, 2003
10:49 PM
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The roadtrip pictures of corroding metals and disintegrating paint now have their own thumbnail gallery here. It is likely that I will continue taking these sorts of photos in and around Chicago, and I will continue to add to this gallery accordingly.

Roadkill photos will get their own page tomorrow.

Also: check out Broken New York, a repository of images of everyday urban decay.

"Broken New York is a visual chronicle of entropy in action--a repository of the chipped, the cracked, the rusted-out, twisted, bent, amputated, sheared, smashed, scraped, munched, scrunched, worn, torn, frazzled, frayed, snapped-off, lopped-off, broken-off, dented, dinged, corroded, crumpled, crushed, crimped, creased and generally clapped-out."

Link via Douglas.

Sunday, July 20, 2003
2:56 PM
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Well, I'm back. Total road travel: 4,400 miles.

I've put nine pictures from my travels up in a thumbnail gallery here. Clicking on a thumbnail will get you a larger pic yadda yadda.

The corrosion pictures and the roadkill pictures (yes, I took some) will be available soon (tomorrow?), on their own pages.

12:56 AM
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I brought my digital camera with me on this trip, and have been taking a lot of photos, some of which I will post when I finally return to Chicago.

Part of the fun of having a digital camera is that you can collect images freely, without having to worry about the expense of developing them. As a result, I've been indulging my interest in the aesthetics of decay by collecting a lot of close-ups of corrosion patterns on metal: old rusted storage tanks in Texas, a patina'd bell in Tucson, etc.

I've also wanted to take a picture of every single roadkill I have driven past (a lot of raccoons in that mix), but it's hard to brake for a dead animal when you're traveling past it at 85 mph. So that photo essay will need to wait for another time, as will my "Vernacular Signage of the Southwest" one.

Thursday, July 17, 2003
11:29 AM
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If you're ever traveling through northern Arizona, you could do worse than to travel on Arizona State Highway 89a. First you'll pass through some of the most staggering desert landscape you'll ever see (I soundtracked it with the Boredoms' Super AE and came close to having a mystical experience) and then you'll rise into Kaibab National Forest. On the Kaibab Plateau you can stop in the tiny town of Jacob's Lake and have a cup of coffee and a slice of pie at a motel cafe staffed entirely by cheerful, wholesome-looking teenagers. Be careful driving out of town, however: there are deer.

Wednesday, July 16, 2003
12:00 PM
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Tonight's reading got a nice write-up in the Tucson Weekly. (Scroll down, we're beneath the "xtreme fighting" cage match.)

Over the past few days, I've seen dust storms and grain silos and forest fires. I've held a live chicken and made a potato curry. I've eaten at about a dozen greasy spoons and had long conversations with at least two strangers. I've been pulled over for driving 43 mph in Utah and I've run out of gas in the Texas panhandle.

It is worth noting that the Mountain Goats' All Hail West Texas is, indeed, an excellent soundtrack to driving through Texas. You can locate the place names on your map. I remember that once Laura sent me a link to a strange Mountain-Goats-related website: it featured a map of Texas that you could click on to be rewarded with weird little fiction-like chunks of John Darnielle's writing. I can't find it again, so instead I'll send you here, which is equally good.

My heart is also breaking a little bit this week, but that is a story that will probably not be told on this site. Ask me over a beer.

Labels: personal

Saturday, July 12, 2003
6:23 PM
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No updates for a week? Well, I have been having some exciting adventures. I will write about them later.

For now, more Go links:

Toriyama's World (information about Hikaru No Go, a go-themed manga)

Go Problem of the Day

Thanks to Nancy P. for these links.

PS: Arizona Raccoon readers, take note: I will be reading from Imaginary Year on Saturday, July 12, at Biblio, 222 E. Congress St., Tucson, with poet Deborah Bernhardt. 7 pm.

Labels: personal

Thursday, July 10, 2003
4:09 PM
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Go tutorial links still in my bookmarks list from the last time I tried to learn how to play:

The Interactive Way To Go. Java-based interactive tutorial.

The Magic of Go. Archive of over two hundred Go columns from Japan's Daily Yomiuri newspaper. The later ones are quite advanced, but the early columns are oriented towards the neophyte.

Column One: How go is played / Four basic rules.

Column Two: The origins of go / The rule of capture.

Labels: game_commentary

Thursday, July 03, 2003
8:42 AM
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I've been really busy doing fun summer stuff lately. Here's a partial list:

I saw The Fall on Saturday, and last night I saw psychedelic metal band Comets on Fire, with psychedelic folk singer Ben Chasny (aka Six Organs of Admittance) opening. Tonight: the White Stripes.

On Sunday I went out to the Lakewood Forest Preserve with Ray to make field recordings for our audio project, Who Loves The Forest. You can read her write-up of the day's activities here.

Sunday night I had a letter-writing party. This is something I've been doing for a while, an idea that my good friend Lulu Savage came up with. The basic idea is that everybody wishes that they spent more time writing letters, but if faced with a choice between staying at home and writing a letter, or going out and socializing with friends, everybody will choose the option to socialize. So we decided to set up an evening where writing letters was part of the socializing. It's met three times now, I think, and each time it's worked out pretty well. I've also been making decorative envelopes again; I really should have scanned scan some in before I sent them all out.

I've been playing (and losing) lots of games of backgammon, and thinking (once again) about learning how to play Go (so that I can finally use the Go board I bought two years ago).

I've been listening through a pile of great CDs sent to me by various people participating in the Mix Exchange.

I contributed a set of sound files to the Opsound Sound Pool—they are downloadable here and are licensed under a Creative Commons License.

I've been reading Karen Armstrong's exhaustive A History of God, and thinking a lot about theology and mythology.

I've also been thinking about love, and desire, and the different forms that relationships can take, and I've been trying to answer the following question: what does it mean to say that you love someone?

Labels: personal, writing

Wednesday, July 02, 2003
11:06 AM
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