Espen J. Aarseth | |
---|---|
Born | 1965 |
Nationality | Norwegian |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | University of Bergen , University of Copenhagen |
Academic work | |
Institutions | IT University of Copenhagen , University of Bergen |
Doctoral students | Sebastian Möring, Jill Walker Rettberg |
Espen J. Aarseth (born 1965) is a Norwegian academic specializing in the fields of video game studies and electronic literature. [1] Aarseth completed his doctorate at the University of Bergen. He co-founded the Department of Humanistic Informatics [2] at the University of Bergen,and worked there until 2003,at which time he was a full professor.
He is currently a full professor and Head of the Center for Computer Games Research at the IT University of Copenhagen, [3] [4] [5] and principal investigator of a €2 million ERC Advanced grant for the project Making Sense of Games. [6] Aarseth is also the Editor in Chief of Game Studies, [7] the oldest peer-reviewed journal in the field of game studies,and member of the advisory board of G|A|M|E, [8] a journal of comparative videogame analysis.
Aarseth's works include groundbreaking Cybertext:Perspectives on Ergodic Literature (Johns Hopkins UP 1997) book,which was originally his doctoral thesis. Cybertext focuses on mechanical organization of texts by placing the medium as a critical part of literary exchanges. The book introduces the concept of ergodic literature,which is a text that requires non-trivial effort to be traversed. The book also contains a well-known (pre-ludological) theory,"typology of cybertext" which allows ergodic texts to be classified by their functional qualities. (In Aarseth's later work with Solveig Smedstad &Lise Sunnanåthis typology of cybertext transforms into "a multi-dimensional typology of games".) [9]
Aarseth also wrote an article,"Nonlinearity and Literary Theory",which was published in Hyper/Text/Theory and The New Media Reader . The article discusses the concept behind nonlinear texts,stepping away from the category of hypertext and delving into different types of media which can also be considered nonlinear. He identifies nonlinear texts as objects of verbal communication in which the words or sequence of words may differ from reading to reading. He also outlines the different categories and varieties of nonlinear texts. Additionally,he talks about how writing is more than just signs and symbols. Writing can be broken down into two units which are called textons and scriptons. The essay also discusses hypertext fiction in depth as well as works of interactive fiction,such as Colossal Cave Adventure,and MUDs. [10]
Hypertext is text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks,which are typically activated by a mouse click,keypress set,or screen touch. Apart from text,the term "hypertext" is also sometimes used to describe tables,images,and other presentational content formats with integrated hyperlinks. Hypertext is one of the key underlying concepts of the World Wide Web,where Web pages are often written in the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). As implemented on the Web,hypertext enables the easy-to-use publication of information over the Internet.
Gonzalo Frasca is a game designer and academic researcher focusing on serious and political videogames. His blog,Ludology.org,was cited by NBC News as a popular designation for academic researchers studying video games. For many years,Frasca also co-published Watercoolergames with Ian Bogost,a blog about serious games.
Hypertext fiction is a genre of electronic literature,characterized by the use of hypertext links that provide a new context for non-linearity in literature and reader interaction. The reader typically chooses links to move from one node of text to the next,and in this fashion arranges a story from a deeper pool of potential stories. Its spirit can also be seen in interactive fiction.
Narratology is the study of narrative and narrative structure and the ways that these affect human perception. It is an anglicisation of French narratologie,coined by Tzvetan Todorov. Its theoretical lineage is traceable to Aristotle (Poetics) but modern narratology is agreed to have begun with the Russian formalists,particularly Vladimir Propp,and Mikhail Bakhtin's theories of heteroglossia,dialogism,and the chronotope first presented in The Dialogic Imagination (1975).
Ergodic literature is a term coined by Espen J. Aarseth in his 1997 book Cybertext—Perspectives on Ergodic Literature to describe literature in which nontrivial effort is required for the reader to traverse the text. The term is derived from the Greek words ergon,meaning "work",and hodos,meaning "path". It is associated with the concept of cybertext and describes a cybertextual process that includes a semiotic sequence that the concepts of "reading" do not account for.
Electronic literature or digital literature is a genre of literature where digital capabilities such as interactivity,multimodality or algorithmic text generation are used aesthetically. Works of electronic literature are usually intended to be read on digital devices,such as computers,tablets,and mobile phones. They cannot be easily printed,or cannot be printed at all,because elements crucial to the work cannot be carried over onto a printed version.
A Thousand Plateaus:Capitalism and Schizophrenia is a 1980 book by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the French psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. It is the second and final volume of their collaborative work Capitalism and Schizophrenia. While the first volume,Anti-Oedipus (1972),was a critique of contemporary uses of psychoanalysis and Marxism,A Thousand Plateaus was developed as an experimental work of philosophy covering a far wider range of topics,serving as a "positive exercise" in what Deleuze and Guattari refer to as rhizomatic thought.
afternoon,a story,spelled with a lowercase 'a',is a work of electronic literature written in 1987 by American author Michael Joyce. It was published by Eastgate Systems in 1990 and is known as one of the first works of hypertext fiction.
George Paul Landow was Professor of English and Art History Emeritus at Brown University. He was a leading authority on Victorian literature,art,and culture,as well as a pioneer in criticism and theory of Electronic literature,hypertext and hypermedia. He also pioneered the use of hypertext and the web in higher education.
Humanistic informatics is one of several names chosen for the study of the relationship between human culture and technology. The term is fairly common in Europe,but is little known in the English-speaking world,though digital humanities is in many cases roughly equivalent.
The Center for Computer Games Research is located at the IT University of Copenhagen,Denmark and was one of the first academic departments entirely dedicated to the scholarly study of digital gaming. Originally a part of the Department of Digital Aesthetics and Communication and spun off into its own independent unit in 2003,the Center was notable at the time for its sole specialization in gaming. It has historically been a multidisciplinary unit with faculty from fields ranging from literature to sociology to computer science. It has hosted a number of key conferences over the years including Other Players (2004),the 2005 iteration of the Digital Arts and Culture conference,and the IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games in 2010.
Cybertext as defined by Espen Aarseth in 1997 is a type of ergodic literature where the user traverses the text by doing nontrivial work.
The term literatronica,also literatronic,was coined by Colombian mathematician and author Juan B Gutierrez (2002) to refer to electronic literature. According to Gutierrez (2006):
A word that describes digital narrative,that is,narrative designed for the computer,is literatronic. It comes from the Latin word litera -letter- and the Greek word which gave birth to the word electricity,electron -Amber. Literatronic means letter that requires electricity,or by extension,letter that requires a computer. Literatronic works could not be reproduced on paper except,perhaps,as a reading path at a given moment.
Jamie Thomson is a British writer,editor and game developer,and winner of the Roald Dahl Funny Prize 2012.
Mary Ann Buckles is widely credited as the first academic to research and speculate about the emotional and cultural impact of videogames.
Critical code studies (CCS) is an emerging academic subfield,related to software studies,digital humanities,cultural studies,computer science,human–computer interface,and the do-it-yourself maker culture. Its primary focus is on the cultural significance of computer code,without excluding or focusing solely upon the code's functional purpose. According to Mark C. Marino,it
is an approach that applies critical hermeneutics to the interpretation of computer code,program architecture,and documentation within a socio-historical context. CCS holds that lines of code are not value-neutral and can be analyzed using the theoretical approaches applied to other semiotic systems in addition to particular interpretive methods developed particularly for the discussions of programs.
Astrid Christina Ensslin is a German digital culture scholar,and Professor of Dynamics of Virtual Communication Spaces at the University of Regensburg. Ensslin is known for her work on digital fictions and video games,and her development of narratological theory to encompass digital narratives. Ensslin is known for her critical scholarship on digital fictions and video games,and her development of narratological theory to encompass digital narratives.
Rasmus Pagh is a Danish computer scientist and a professor of computer science at the University of Copenhagen. His main work is in algorithms and data structures,and he is particularly known for the cuckoo hashing algorithm and for co-founding the Basic Algorithms Research Center,BARC,in Copenhagen.
34 North 118 West by Jeff Knowlton,Naomi Spellman,and Jeremy Hight is one of the first locative hypertexts. Published in 2003,the work connected Global Positioning System (GPS) data with a fictional narrative on an early tablet PC connected to Global Positioning devices to deliver a real-time story to a user.