Author: sreeragjr

I’m looking at the property Murray speaks about as Digital Environments being Participatory. I think it would be a cop out to leave it at thinking about, well you know XR/VR environments are spatial by definition of most of its function being about the interface between the real and digital environments, and thus arguably can come to existence only once there is a participant. But in thinking about participation, what I really enjoyed was the way he described the functionality of “objects” and moving away from the typical branch based narrative that I’ve been most familiar with. Firstly there is the question of why we don’t have more of the approach Zork takes, which I associate essentially as opting for the game/experience to be spatially aware, and the “space” having objects that function with a certain set of rules. Comparing this aspect, what I find interesting is, in an almost pre-essential way, XR environments ( which I so far have only been able to look at from the context of Unity) exhibit such awareness and functionality. The link I’m seeing is that as a first step, it almost feels impossible to think of creating any sort of XR experience without thinking of the interaction between the user and the environment. The second the interaction aspect comes in, then the question becomes about what objects the user is interacting with. Immediately, this then asks for a set of rules the object/s function by, and thus the question of how the user participates in the experience. 

If we were to rule out the aspect of technical ability (like I might end up not being able to make a box light up when the user approaches it), from an experience/user interaction perspective, I think XR for the most part exists with this pre-condition of being very spatially aware, and requiring the aspect of participation under a set of rules (and these rules ten affecting the narrative of the experience) .

Between page 94 and 95 Calvin talks about Adelma. It’s hard for me to not relate most cities to the lived experience I’ve had with cities I’ve be¡en in, but in many ways Adelma represents a bunch of things I find interesting when looking at/observing a city or a space of function. Firstly it’s the question of a ghost, or rather what it means to be a ghost. With Calvino mentioning the dad, and the appearance and flux of an individual exhibiting multiple persons, many of them dead, perhaps inappropriately I couldn’t help but think of the idea of a ghost and the city. 

In some senses, I was thinking about the idea of haunting, which has come up a bunch this semester for me (in class/philosophical discussion). In this sense of hauntology, the question becomes less about the idea of a literal ghost, but one about (arguably) the materialization of ideas, aspirations, and futures that were not realized. While I could delve into the philosophy of this a lot, my interest was much more in then relating to this city, in terms of how it sometimes feels to be in the city. This is much less true now that I’ve been able to be more in the city and explore it’s spaces, innards, and people more, but especially in the first few years of being here, and in comparison to Dubai (which I used to call home), things felt… dead? 

My father often used to say that this is a city of gloom, slowness, and dead people. I used to be annoyed at how he phrased it, and I still do today, but in an abstracted sense, I wonder how parts of this (conflated with the reflections the book has in looking at this dynamic-shapeshifting-face of the dead) might actually be true. Not limited to Abu Dhabi per se, but if there were a way to glue together A.D and Dubai, create an amalgamated city, I think it would feel a lot like Adelma. 

Of course all of this has mostly to do with thinking of the person/individual, or even collective movement of people/existence of people (communities), but I think what Calvin is also trying to look into is to the environment that allows for such people to exist. Or even if he isn’t, it made me think about what the environment does or enables. Which is to say, Adelma can’t be it without being accommodating to the kind of people it inhabits, right? The things that aren’t in focus are things like (on page 95) “”climbed the steps in a line, bent beneath demijohns and barrels” and “a little toward that crowd that crammed those narrow streets”. Though it isn’t focused, I was enamored to question what it meant for a city to allow, if not make/support a lifestyle that enables it to become this kind of a dying, soul-cycling function of an existence.

This reading really helped me (re)orient agency in terms of creation. Much of my thinking currently revolves equally around our class projects, as much as my introspection into theatrical experiences as my Capstone becomes more of a real thing over time. The things that stood out to me firstly was how Murray spoke about the idea of a world, the role of the player, and comparing it to participatory theater. Looking at what the role of the world might be, and then transitioning into thinking about the world design in context of mazes. To think about how the context of a maze could change wildly based on things like the story, and playing/non playing characters inside said maze. The example I found very exciting was to think about say, in replacing a cloudy happy visual of a maza with “Kafkaesque” characters and wordplay, all of a sudden the “player” could be transported to questioning, and more importantly experiencing an elevated introspection of things they might be already experiencing in their day to day societies. 

Looking at the questioning of the story, it’s unfolding around the use was another aspect I want to take from this reading. Thinking of (under the pretext that gaming seems to be the most clear connection most of the reading takes to think of interaction with the user) how the question might arise as to who is the author, I particularly resonate with how Murray cautions us to not be carried away in thinking that this would make the user an author. That instead,  what might be misinterpreted as authorship is actually (name of the chapter!) agency! 

In the realm of agency the thing that I liked was also thinking of user interface modules. He speaks about how the object we hold in order to “play” the game also makes a difference. This also reminded me of the  Robin Hunicke  video we’d looked at w.r.t the difference of the body and it’s orientation. Murray spoke about how in playing the same fame with a different controller, the simplicity with which he felt connected to the world of the game immediately reduced. This also resulted in him feeling more disconnected, and having a lesser sense of agency.