GSSB - Hamlet on the Holodeck Episode
Janet Murray’s Hamlet on the Holodeck remains one of the most widely read texts on virtual worlds and video game-like digital experiences in the fine art world. However, 25 years have passed since its idealistic—or even outright utopian—vision for the potential and form of digital works of interactive art. MMOs, like the now venerable World of Warcraft, had yet to appear, and Facebook did not exist, let alone be in a position to pivot to “Meta” to embrace a corporate version of the virtual reality that had been dreamt up in dystopian cyberpunk novels in 80s. Furthermore, academic game studies’ had barely dabbled in examining video games. Co-hosted by media theorist Cameron Kunzelman and literature scholar Michael Lutz, the third episode of the incredibly useful but silly-named Game Study Study Buddies podcast takes a deep dive into the legacy of every visual arts professor, researcher, and curator’s default textual lens for games. As is their mission, they both try to explicate what is interesting/problematic about the text for a non-academic audience, but also go on regular digressions into the fractal academic conversation and lineages of the book. I won’t spoil their insights, but needless to say, there is a great amount of research and new artistic and social developments that has happened since, and this critical podcast episode is a fantastic trailhead for expanding toward the contemporary context.
Creators: Cameron Kunzelman and Michael Lutz
Link: http://rangedtouch.com/2018/08/17/3-murray-hamlet-on-the-holodeck/
Connections:
Janey Murray - Hamlet on the Holodeck
Espen Aarseth - Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature
Various - Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives