Stephen Harris
Guest
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 Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2003 1:39 am Post subject: Re: Computer Games and Literacy Performance |
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"kyito" <kyo@mi-mail.cl> wrote in message news:3f16f0de$1@news...
[quote]Hi all:
I>m looking for investigations and applications in development of language
cognitive skills via computer games.
TIA
Ricardo Martínez
[/quote]
"Cybertext: perspectives on ergodic literature" Espen Aarseth (book)
Can computer games be great literature? Do the rapidly evolving and
culturally expanding genres of digital literature mean that the narrative
mode of discourse -- novels, films, television series -- is losing its
dominant position in our culture? Is it necessary to define a new
aesthetics of cyborg textuality?
In _Cybertext_, Espen Aarseth explores the aesthetics and textual dynamics
of digital literature and its diverse genres, including hypertext fiction,
computer games, computer-generated poetry and prose, and collaborative
Internet texts such as MUDs. Instead of insisting on the uniqueness and
newness of electronic writing and interactive fiction, however, Aarseth
situates these literary forms within the tradition of "ergodic" literature
-- a term borrowed from physics to describe open, dynamic texts such as
the _I Ching_ or Apollinaire>s calligrams, with which the reader must
perform specific actions to generate a literary sequence.
Constructing a theoretical model that describes how new electronic forms
build on this tradition, Aarseth bridges the widely assumed divide between
paper texts and electronic texts. He then uses the perspective of ergodic
aesthetics to reexamine literary theories of narrative, semiotics, and
rhetoric and to explore the implications of applying these theories to
materials for which they were not intended.
"In many respects, this is the book I and many others have been waiting
for. I have not seen any work so comprehensive in its synthesis of
previous commentary. Aarseth>s brilliant observations remind me of
McLuhan>s `probes' -- highly condensed, provocative statements meant to
generate controversy and insight. This is clearly the best study of
electronic texts I have yet read"
-- Stuart Moulthrop, University of Baltimore, author of Victory Garden
Espen J. Aaseth is associate professor in the Department of Humanistic
Informatics, University of Bergen, Norway. |
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