15 Matching Annotations
  1. Oct 2018
    1. The seeing machine was once a sort of dark room into which individuals spied; it has become a transparent building in which the exercise of power may be supervised by society as a whole

      Which "seeing machines" today are dark rooms? Which are transparent buildings?

    2. a simple idea in architecture

      This recalls Benjamin's comment about how architecture and buildings become methods for exerting power through habituation. (p. 13 in that PDF)

    3. The Panopticon functions as a kind of laboratory of power

      How are videogames "laboratories of power"? How is Short History of the Gaze?

    4. He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection.

      How does self-discipline operate in reference to the gaze?

    5. The Panopticon is a machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen.

      How does the oculus rift dissociate the see/being seen dyad?

    6. Visibility is a trap.

      How are we "visible" today? How does Short History of the Gaze demonstrate "being made visible" as an exertion of power.

    7. if they are schoolchildren

      Why does Foucault include schoolchildren in this list of possible residents of the panopticon?

    8. The constant division between the normal and the abnormal, to which every individual is subjected, brings us back to our own time, by applying the binary branding and exile of the leper to quite different objects; the existence of a whole set of techniques and institutions for measuring, supervising and correcting the abnormal brings into play the disciplinary mechanisms to which the fear of the plague gave rise.

      How is this "of our own time"?

  2. Sep 2018
    1. What other games, game forms and game elements do they draw on? What player skills from other games will transfer to this game? How exactly is the game played, with how many people, doing what sorts of things? Also, what programming language was the game written in, using what sort of development process? How many people were involved in designing and producing it, and what earlier code was directly incorporated or otherwise re-used? How does the game play with or against the platform on which it was implemented and the history of programming on that platform?

      Good starter questions for a platform-studies analysis.

    2. Combat might somehow be tortured into confessing a story, but what it mainly does is facilitate a particular type of competition, providing an apparatus and context for play, a computer-mediated way of interacting with another player rather than a digital vehicle for an expressive message

      Montfort comes to this conclusion while discussing reception and operation, but to me the version of narrative that he is invoking here is more of an interface than an object of reception and analysis.

    3. This is the technological factor that most directly accounts for the horizontal symmetry of the playing field in Combat. An idea of a fair playing field was no doubt the basis for this hardware decision in the first place

      This is a pretty obvious and traceable influence. What sort of technological factors influence design decisions in more modern games?

    4. the wood-grain plastic front of the case �" the design of which is imitated in the Flashback 2.0 �" made it seem, at the time of its release, more like a piece of furniture or a stereo component than like some piece of esoteric hobbyist electronics, such as a HAM radio or one of the Altair microcomputers that were available before the VCS.

      Why is the context important?

    5. a model that distinguishes five levels

      Where do Dianne Carr's three types of analysis fit among these levels?

    6. by being bundled with the VCS originally it helped to assert that play involving several people was the ordinary use of this system.

      Commercials, advertising, packaging -- these are arguments about media ecology.

    7. the cartridge

      Why does Montfort call this "a cartridge" and not "a game"?