[-empyre-] the systemic qualities of media / the artistic qualities of consumption

[Gabriel Menotti]

“[…] most media is that it has a preferred path of being consumed.
You watch a movie from end to end. You read a book from the beginning.
 You look at a picture with your eyes.” [Daniel Cook]

Interesting that you put it in terms of consumption. I personally
believe that the dynamics of consumption restrict medium specificity
(and “language”) much more than the structures of production (the
particular case study of my master’s was projection and film: in
practice, the former defines cinema much more than the later, even
though we have the opposite impression).

However, I don’t really agree with the idea that these “normal”
mediatic objects are just signals whose experience can be “diminished
or tweaked.” To believe so is to reduce them to a mere logic of
representation (according to which they can always be re-represented
with more or less success, always in reference to – to what?).

To watch a movie in a way or situation different from the “ideal”
should be taken as a qualitative different cinematographic experience.
In fact, sometimes, watching a movie from end to end actually means
having a date – in the same way that playing a game actually means
showing off or making friends. How do you transport these particular
qualities?

What I mean is that, certainly, videogames show the limits of media
theory (and production) based on a logic of representation. However,
the epistemological model they ask for should not be restricted to
them – it should be expanded to other consider the situated and
relational character of all forms of mediatic experience.


“When this preservation topic was discussed at Project Horsehoe (a
game design think tank) several years ago, the emphasis was on giving
game design legitimacy.” [DC]

A pertinent point. It reminds us that preservation plays a very
important role on the historicization of things – a process that
always revolve around authority: it both depends on it and builds it
up. Of course, this is a huge matter of debate om the artworld itself
(more to come next week). Now, I want to ask: could videogames suggest
some alternative historiographical model that detaches preservation
from authority?

Just like they promote different modes of consumption, don’t
videogames ask for different criteria of historical primacy, since
their ongoing uses are at least as important as their processes of
engineering? Shouldn’t videogame preservation itself be more concerned
with the continuity of modes of playing than of game rules?

In that sense, can we think of strategies of preservation that give
legitimacy to playing over design? Or playing should always pertain to
the realm of disauthorization?

Best!
Menotti