Student Area

Idea #1: Cloud

You are a cloud. You have many decisions to make! Both out of necessity and just for fun. Being a cloud, you are moisture in the sky, and if you dry out, POOF! Gone. So, you must make decisions on where to travel to continue existence, for example…

Over the past week or so, you’ve noticed a slight dry spell. You’ve kept on surviving by absorbing smaller clouds in the area, but they’re all gone. There is an arid wasteland beyond, but past that is a storm running parallel to it. You can either wait and try your luck or brave the arid wasteland in hopes of all the moisture you’ll need!

But there are also cloud shenanigans! For example, you see a weatherman having a barbecue. Bet he predicted sunny skies, we’ll see…

Idea #2: Street Garbage

You’re just a lone recyclable bottle on a city street, with the dream that you might be made into another bottle to be used again! You do have the ability to roll, and roll you shall! You encounter many perilous situations, such as convicts with trash bags and dreaded street sweeps… some situations you might get into include:

You see a thirsty homeless person by a recycling bin, this is your chance! You can roll yourself into a puddle and try to look quenching, or roll on your way to a safer place… you can hear them street sweeps a comin’!

You see a girl with a ice cream cone on a bench. Suddenly, a young man in a soccer jersey comes down the road kicking cans. You could position yourself so you could be kicked into the girls ice cream, or roll into the bushes to avoid damage.

CYOA reading:

The one part of the thing that made me think about the reading was that in any reading, the reader wants a resolve and closure, and that not all CYOA endings provide a successful closure. Like if you die without resolving something thanks to a bad decision. That would at least leave me disappointed after taking the time to take the whole adventure, as opposed to a regular book where it has a SAFE conclusion. Hadn’t really considered that before 😛

In the description of Ts’ui Pen’s ‘Garden’ I found it to be a beautiful thought in the same way that solving a really elegant proof is beautiful or piecing together a puzzle is beautiful.  The nice thing about it is that while there are forking paths in the micro end of the ‘Garden’ there’s also the macro end that is a puzzle to uncover the word “time.” Equally great about the story is the fact that Yu Tsun’s being there is a puzzle to uncover the word “Albert.”

Applying thoughts on the reading to our first assignment in class, it seems like a good idea to include one or several ‘meta’ puzzles in the story I create.

The Garden of Forking Paths

As I read this portion of the story, I became more immersed in it. Partly, I think this story achieves this because it narrates the story in such a way that it was easy to identify with the character, he had the desire to share the information with others in order to help those like him. When he reads parts of his ancestors story, you go through his mind as he thinks and converses with Albert and interprets what the reason for the existence of this story is. You get to think as Hsi through the use of narrative as you are placed inside his head and you see how he tries to make sense of what exists in the world and what is being presented to him and you think and feel as he does.

Computer Lib/Dream Machine

I did not get to read the full document but I got a good chunk of it. The idea that when we build pieces of technology we should be building our dreams is very appealing to me. The things we make should be meaningful to us. Seeing the stage in which computers are in today, they have evidently changed to become more friendly and easy to use. It is interesting to me that these designs might have been influenced by the dreams of Ted Nelson and so many others. I share this video which I saw over the Summer about the things we build and the power we should have to create them not to the limits of technicalities but to the limits of our imagination http://vimeo.com/34017777

CYOA

The representation of CYOA books as a form of software was especially intriguing to me in this piece. As someone who experiences art and computer science in such completely opposing forms I often find it hard to recognize computer science ideas in art and vice versa unless I am being beaten over the head with it. The branching decision tree of CYOA books is also found at the core of many high end RPG games today and is an incredibly important data structure that is taught very early on in computer science. Though as is usually the case, the freedoms allowed outside of programming can be used to subvert the system, as in the case of Ultima, the paradise only found if the reader disregards the decision tree completely.

The Garden of Forking Paths

I find this short narrative interesting in that it draws attention to the infinite instances of existence in the future, past, and present in a very elegant way. It manages to discuss it in understandable terms while also maintaining the character’s identities and preserve the plot of the story. I especially enjoyed the foreshadowing wherein Albert kept reminding the narrator that in some parallel time stream they were enemies, when in fact it was the same   instance in time that they were both experiencing.

In the CYOA analysis, the “progression towards linearity” of which the author speaks is something that puzzles me as well. In my opinion, this progression, in conjunction with the video that demonstrates a player completing a Call of Duty mission without shooting a gun illustrates a decline in the freedom that interactive branching narratives grant the “players”. In our ongoing quest to simplify technology (i.e. packaging multiple applications into smaller devices) it would seem that manufacturers/designers favor the best possible result instead of further developing other results. And that has its own pros and cons depending on the intended audience. It would make sense to me that the minds of younger audiences are set on “winning”, whereas more mature audiences are curious to see everything laid out.

“The Garden of Forking Paths” gives a very abstract concept of time that may seem convoluted in how it is presented, but surprisingly obvious underneath. The existence of multiple universes and timelines, the majority in which we as entities do not exist, makes sense given the multiple choices one can make and how that shapes their own personal universe. This is vividly demonstrated when Tsun kills Albert, drawing out entirely new possible futures for the both of them – a timeline in which Tsun exists and Albert does not, and the one in which neither of them do – of course, this recollection is headed towards the latter.

Idea 1:

The world is made up on inanimate food stuff objects: soup cans, milk jugs, raman packets, etc. These objects interact like people and live in a world of advanced technology where they can we reused/rejuvenated and essentially live extremely long lives. Each characters’ interactions with the world are governed by their limitations as an object, however they for some reason inexplicably hold objects and use all the senses humans have. As the protagonist, the guest follows a detective who is investigating a case that has been cold for over 100 years, but has suddenly received new evidence.

Idea 2:

The guest lives the life of a tree. They must find the path to the upper canopy, weather great storms, choose when to drop their seeds, and so on. As they do so they observe how the world changes over centuries of existence. They see the rise of cities and suburban sprawl, and the destruction of their fellow trees.

The two ideas I had sprang from a common thread of following the paths of molecules/atoms.  Bang is about the first atom to escape into space after the Big Bang.  Drip Drip follows a water droplet from a leaky faucet all the way through many uses of water and its power on our planet.

Bang

Emptiness, nothing and everything at once.  You decide to break the silence.  It all began…with you.

Bang

BANG – Accelerating as fast as possible, the brink of light, time stops around you as your journey begins.

Alone                                    Collision Course

ALONE – The edge, surrounding particles speed farther and farther away.  You can see it now all set in motion.  You won’t be part of it.  Their brilliant light fades to a dim and then darkness.  Can you find something new…you wont see any of them again.

COLLISION COURSE – Fusion, together with a counter part.  Mass times two and growing exponentially.  Transforming from gas to solid.  Growing to a new energy state.

Internal                        External

The idea I am exploring here is the possible journey of the very first atom out of the big bang.  Does your atom fly into nothingness or can you grow into a devouring black hole, resetting the events that you began.  There is always the option to stay small.  Maybe initiate life on a new planet or spend your eons radiating as a giant red dwarf.  Choose your path.  Combine with your surroundings.  Slow down or keep your energy up.

 

Drip Drip

The sink is leaking again.  Drip drip.  Where do you fall?

Down the Drain                        Onto the Floor

DOWN THE DRAIN – Thru the pipe works and out the house.  You are swept away into the filthy sewer system churning.  The stream diverts.

I smell salt                        I smell chlorine

ONTO THE FLOOR – You splash there resting for hours.  Slowly you loose weight and eventually drift upwards and out the window.  The suns warm rays pulling you higher.

Into the Stratosphere                        Caught in the breeze

The life of a water molecule.  Think about it, water does not have one life, it is versatile.  Liquid form, gassy clouds, frozen polar caps.  Or it can be filthy, fresh or salty.  Water can be destructive, corrosive and erosive.  While also nourishing and beneficial.  Water is a powerful element that could potentially have many narrative elements if applied to a game structure.

My name is Ryan Murray, a junior in the BFA program at Carnegie Mellon University. I concentrate in print-based media. Being an avid gamer, I am very interested in learning how to design games and hope to gain a lot of knowledge from this class that will expand my knowledge particularly in the digital arts world, as that is an area I do not frequently visit.

Computing skills include Photoshop, Illustrator, Arduino, Processing, and a bit of Rhino.

The Garden of Forking Paths was an amazing piece of literature, especially given the eight pages it was written on. The narrative of Yu Tsun is periodically and beautifully interrupted by Yu Tsun’s thoughts at the time, perhaps my favorite one being “The night was at once intimate and infinite.” There was something captivating about Albert’s story – the effort that Albert took to solve the problem, the simple idea that most people were mistaken about the book and the labyrinth, perhaps mere curiosity – which had me hooked after the third page. I hope to be able to draw in my readers just as quickly.

Computer Lib/ Dream Machines was an interesting albeit somewhat confusing read. I was confused about whether we had the entire Computer Lib section of the book, as it was only two pages and did not enlighten me much at all about how computers worked as I was expecting. I find the Dream Machines portion to be creepily insightful. Not only does our author predict various future technologies like the internet, he is able to analyze effects and prescribe philosophical approaches to programming for it as well as describing at length features which it should provide, like the Xanadu version control machine which resembles today’s Git. I only wish the author was alive today so that he could predict the next 40 years of computing.