Twisty! A response to a response…

Something of a stream of consciousness post; sitting down on a Saturday night to do a bit of catch up as it were for Uni, and I decided to start off with Networked Media. Here’s what I’m listening to while writing (a 30 minute EDM mix by Knife Party, some ripper tracks in there).

So I started by catching up on the subject blog, and as per mentioning in my blog assessment I stated I wanted to do more of the networking thing, so I endeavoured to engage with somebody else’s blog and right off the bat I found something wonderful! Something I hadn’t thought about before either, as the network is best as revealing.

This post by Alois Wittwer responded to the question put to us last week, “What would it be like to read a story that changed it’s shape every time you read it?” with some observations on the “toxic notions” of a portion of society that like to ‘get something’ out of their lives. I’d agree that this is a rampant desire for pretty much everyone; it can be boiled down to the Meaning of Life thing. No, it isn’t 42 – 42 was the computational error by the Earth of 6 multiplied by 9 and not the answer to the ultimate question – I fancy Douglas Adams was making fun of arbitrary end goals we set ourselves in life when, and as is my main point; the concept of nihilism.

I am a self-proclaimed nihilist and I identify with the ideas of nihilism very closely. I am very curious to see if any others may identify with this mode of thinking too, seeing as most people who have it posed to them reply with blank expressions, or a hint of anxiety at the idea of no inherent meaning. What Alois touched on suggests just these kinds of ideas: while a large portion of society strive to ‘find’ that meaning – a resolution – they neglect the possibility that what they are trying to ‘find’ doesn’t naturally occur. The resolutions in the ‘narratives’ we set up for ourselves are contrived at best.

Perhaps this is a cultural tradition dating back to society’s reliance on religion and belief – although atheism and similar ideas seem to be prevailing nowadays – but for your consideration (or not, however you like) Frederich Nietzsche puts forward two states of Nihilism: passive and active. The passive nihilist is the one who takes the first step and acknowledges the negation of any objective kind of meaning; refute any idea of naturally occuring, inherent meaning to a particular object physical or abstract. “He states that there is at least the possibility of another type of nihilist in the wake of Christianity’s self-dissolution, one that does not stop after the destruction of all value and meaning and succumb to the following nothingness”. This is the active nihilist, the one who takes a second step past negation of meaning and asks, “Well, what can I do with this perspective?”. My own personal take on this is that the active nihilist has the ability to better identify current belief systems, situations, ideas and approach them pragmatically. I like this idea, and I certainly identify with this in particular.

Now surely this has something to do with hypertext and stories, right? Well sure, if I want it to (the boons of active nihilisim, huzzah!). If an author, before writing a story, begins by neglecting the idea of any presupposed meaning, what sort of story would this create? I could posit some kind of Supreme Hypertext Story that is a shining example; a story that allows for any decision and accommodates any outcome. Could engaging with hypertext stories be engaging with meaninglessness? In a world that can be considered meaningless, but ready for meaning to be applied, what sort of motivation would there be to write a story with wavering form? As I’ve said time and time again video games present a delicious fusion of agency and guided narrative through conversation branches and outcomes.

Take Peter Molyneux – a master of design fiction, amateur in execution – who proudly touts magnificent ideas, just fails to execute them properly, if at all. But lets ignore that last bit. In this recent interview with Adam Sessler, Molyneux explains concepts for a game being developed by his independent studio 22cans known as Godus. Sessler astutely notes that Molyneux, is essentially, pitching Chaos Theory in games; through decisions made effects will occur no matter how small the decision is. You might think, “Wow! So I can pretty much do anything I like?”. Well, no, immediately you are restricted by the medium: there are digital memory restriction. You are also limited by the developer’s vision which as human beings cannot be infinite. Our minds are vast definitely but not infinite. And immediately some endings or resolutions are removed from the equation. Which ones I cannot say but as a hypertext it is limited by nature.

A small note I’d like to make directly about the structure of this subject, which by the sounds of it is teaching us the possibility of our ideas within a networked world, however in itself the course material is – I am assuming – being directly shaped by the interests of Adrian Miles himself who performs his own, “academic research on hypertext”. Nothing against this from myself, just a humble observation I feel is worth sharing, and that again no structure is shapeless. There are always limits and influences. In this sense, I do not believe we are within sight of this Supreme Hypertext Story. Even our own lives are influenced and restrained culturally, socially, financially, even physically. We cannot eat another human lest it damage our social or cultural status, let alone the potential health effects. Hypertext in this vein is – at least at this stage of society – abstract. A story that might* To build an ultimately unlimited story would be outside of our current mental, societal, cultural, financial, digital etc. etc. constraints. This leads me to my next point.

The closest thing we’ve come to this kind of story is the open-ended story. Back to Alois’ blog post which references BioShock Infinite in shape of this very impassioned article by Daniel Golding that tears into the game’s use of racism and historical events to make itself seem ‘artsy’ – which, after reading the article, I can totally agree with having been totally ignorant of the uses of the stuff beforehand. While I’m not entirely sure what Alois was getting at, I know that I have a deep respect for how the narrative in BioShock infinite is constructed which reflects various Quantum theories namely the Many Worlds theory. While I now have reservations influenced by Golding’s criticism of the game’s ‘themes’, the structure of the narrative perfectly encapsulates the idea of a story with multiple interpretations and if you feel like googling them go for it because there are a lot of fan theories. The ending of the game then infers that as the player we are only privy to one particular storyline, with the addition of Elizabeth’s backstage pass in the form of a dimensional portal power thingy, hence opening itself up to multiple interpretations.

Now…where was I going with this? Oh yes. Whether a hypertext story allows for direct influence – choices presented to you in the storyworld – or allows for external influence – it’s interpretation – there are always limiting factors. BioShock Infinite is open-ended but very, very linear. Godus on the other hand – or Molyneux’s vision of it at least – has less narrative but an extremely fluid, dynamic world. Sure, there are varying levels of decision making involved in the process of the story but ultimately there are limits. The story may change shape with each reading but you will come to a point where there are no more different shapes because the medium’s factors are influenced by nature itself which – as far as we can verify – is finite. Is this a flaw in our worldy perception? Are we restricting ourselves by thinking this? I’m not sure but as far as I’m guessing the morphing story is not as ideal as I first assumed. We are restricted by our mortal coils, the fun part is seeing how far within the boundaries we can go.

*At this precise point I got distracted accidentally for 15 minutes reading stuff online and lost my train of thought. The wonders of the internet ladies and gentleman.

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