MEETING NOTES, October 16, 2001
General discussions of possible identities for this working group:
"projects" that should be included
-ivanhoe
-biblioludica
-time modelling
-dotty graphs
-andrea's dissertation
-steve's dissertation
Aldona from IBM will be here next week. We will have a 15-minute presentation, a recap of where we've been, for her. Then a regular meeting. Nathan, Andrea, and Geoff will each talk for 5 minutes.
Nathan: Epiphany in a dream. Orientation is key. Problem with what we looked at last week--hypertext novels and communities--was that the reader had no way to orient herself. No clear point of entry. No clues as to where one is once one has entered.
The first function of representation is orientation. Players must know "where" they are. How will we orient our players?
In an interview, Johanna says that a book provides immediate orientation. You know when you reach the final 15 pages of the book, you know that there are certain things that won't happen. Hyperspace doesn't necessarily provide this orientation.
Nathan proposes that we might somehow reconceive the game-play diagram as the actual interface for play. Severe technical limitations here, of course, but this might help orient the players.
***What followed was discussion of how players should navigate and access the various texts and tools. We drew lots of things on the whiteboard. The following account is grossly inadequate as it doesn't attempt to represent those.***
JM: how do you see yourself when you read? how do you enter into the book space? how do you imagine the book space? (he draws a picture on the board of the page and the reader looking through the page to some other space. how do we represent that space? what is that space?)
Two planes or worlds of existence in the game: role and readings. Different "views" on the game--the game you're playing; the entire game; the fictional/textual world as you imagine it?
Highly speculative here. Not sure exaclty what "the fictional/textual world as you imagine it" is. Steve and Jerry argue about this, primarily about the possibility of a pre-linguistic world "behind" the text.
JM: discourse field = double helix of reception and production histories
SR: text = double helix of reception and production histories
JM: not text, but maybe "work"
GR: what will the computer know? what will the players know?
NP: will different types of moves be represented differently? how about challenges?
Next week: points and challenges. Andrea will compile a list of possible models, much like she and Geoffrey did for game play and game path. Then we will choose one next week. Again, this is for the sake of practicality. We may decide later to change models.
After deciding on points we'll discuss challenges.