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Myth, Metatext, Continuity and Cataclysm in Dc Comics’ Crisis on Infinite Earths
WORLDS WILL LIVE, WORLDS WILL DIE: MYTH, METATEXT, CONTINUITY AND CATACLYSM IN DC COMICS’ CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS Adam C. Murdough A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS August 2006 Committee: Angela Nelson, Advisor Marilyn Motz Jeremy Wallach ii ABSTRACT Angela Nelson, Advisor In 1985-86, DC Comics launched an extensive campaign to revamp and revise its most important superhero characters for a new era. In many cases, this involved streamlining, retouching, or completely overhauling the characters’ fictional back-stories, while similarly renovating the shared fictional context in which their adventures take place, “the DC Universe.” To accomplish this act of revisionist history, DC resorted to a text-based performative gesture, Crisis on Infinite Earths. This thesis analyzes the impact of this singular text and the phenomena it inspired on the comic-book industry and the DC Comics fan community. The first chapter explains the nature and importance of the convention of “continuity” (i.e., intertextual diegetic storytelling, unfolding progressively over time) in superhero comics, identifying superhero fans’ attachment to continuity as a source of reading pleasure and cultural expressivity as the key factor informing the creation of the Crisis on Infinite Earths text. The second chapter consists of an eschatological reading of the text itself, in which it is argued that Crisis on Infinite Earths combines self-reflexive metafiction with the ideologically inflected symbolic language of apocalypse myth to provide DC Comics fans with a textual "rite of transition," to win their acceptance for DC’s mid-1980s project of self- rehistoricization and renewal. -
Transmedia Storytelling Hyperdiegesis, Narrative Braiding
Transmedia Storytelling Hyperdiegesis, Narrative Braiding and Memory in Star Wars Comics William Proctor Since at least the turn of the twentieth century, the comic book medium has grown in dialogue alongside other media forms, both old and new, underscored by what is commonly described as adaptation. In basic terms, adaptation refers to a process whereby stories are lifted from one medium and replanted in another. Of course, the process is more complicated than that as different media each bring different creative requirements and, as a result, adaptation is never simply about reproducing a story in exactly the same way—although it is about reproduction, to some degree. Put simply, adaptation refers to the retelling of a story in a new media location. For example, each installment of Warner Bros.’ Harry Potter film series—from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows—are adaptations of novels written by J.K Rowling, each ‘retelling’ the same story in the process from book-to-film. The caveat here is that such a retelling also involves revising narrative elements, and even editing or reframing scenes from the ‘source’ text to better-fit the ‘target’ medium. Variations as well as repetition are key factors to consider, as adaptation theorist Linda Hutcheon notes (2006). The contemporary landscape is brimming with adaptations of all sorts, but perhaps the most common example in the twenty-first century are the bevvy of film and TV series based on comic books, many of them produced by the ‘big two’ superhero publishers, Marvel and DC, as film scholar Terence McSweeney argues: “We are living in the age of the superhero and we cannot deny it” (2018, 1). -
Copyright by Jason Todd Craft 2004 the Dissertation Committee for Jason Todd Craft Certifies That This Is the Approved Version of the Following Dissertation
Copyright by Jason Todd Craft 2004 The Dissertation Committee for Jason Todd Craft Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Fiction Networks: The Emergence of Proprietary, Persistent, Large- Scale Popular Fictions Committee: Adam Z. Newton, Co-Supervisor John M. Slatin, Co-Supervisor Brian A. Bremen David J. Phillips Clay Spinuzzi Margaret A. Syverson Fiction Networks: The Emergence of Proprietary, Persistent, Large- Scale Popular Fictions by Jason Todd Craft, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin December, 2004 Dedication For my family Acknowledgements Many thanks to my dissertation supervisors, Dr. Adam Zachary Newton and Dr. John Slatin; to Dr. Margaret Syverson, who has supported this work from its earliest stages; and, to Dr. Brian Bremen, Dr. David Phillips, and Dr. Clay Spinuzzi, all of whom have actively engaged with this dissertation in progress, and have given me immensely helpful feedback. This dissertation has benefited from the attention and feedback of many generous readers, including David Barndollar, Victoria Davis, Aimee Kendall, Eric Lupfer, and Doug Norman. Thanks also to Ben Armintor, Kari Banta, Sarah Paetsch, Michael Smith, Kevin Thomas, Matthew Tucker and many others for productive conversations about branding and marketing, comics universes, popular entertainment, and persistent world gaming. Some of my most useful, and most entertaining, discussions about the subject matter in this dissertation have been with my brother, Adam Craft. I also want to thank my parents, Donna Cox and John Craft, and my partner, Michael Craigue, for their help and support. -
Theorising the Practice of Expressing a Fictional World Across Distinct Media and Environments
Transmedia Practice: Theorising the Practice of Expressing a Fictional World across Distinct Media and Environments by Christy Dena A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) School of Letters, Art and Media Department of Media and Communications Digital Cultures Program University of Sydney Australia Supervisor: Professor Gerard Goggin Associate Supervisor: Dr. Chris Chesher Associate Supervisor: Dr. Anne Dunn 2009 Let’s study, with objectivity and curiosity, the mutation phenomenon of forms and values in the current world. Let’s be conscious of the fact that although tomorrow’s world does not have any chance to become more fair than any other, it owns a chance that is linked to the destiny of the current art [...] that of embodying, in their works some forms of new beauty, which will be able to arise only from the meet of all the techniques. (Francastel 1956, 274) Translation by Regina Célia Pinto, emailed to the empyre mailing list, Jan 2, 2004. Reprinted with permission. To the memory of my dear, dear, mum, Hilary. Thank you, for never denying yourself the right to Be. ~ Transmedia Practice ~ Abstract In the past few years there have been a number of theories emerge in media, film, television, narrative and game studies that detail the rise of what has been variously described as transmedia, cross-media and distributed phenomena. Fundamentally, the phenomenon involves the employment of multiple media platforms for expressing a fictional world. To date, theorists have focused on this phenomenon in mass entertainment, independent arts or gaming; and so, consequently the global, transartistic and transhistorical nature of the phenomenon has remained somewhat unrecognised. -
Entertainment Architecture
Entertainment Architecture Constructing a Framework for the Creation of an Emerging Transmedia Form by Adalbert (Woitek) Konzal Dipl.-Kfm. European Business School, Oestrich-Winkel, Germany A dissertation presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation Creative Industries Faculty Queensland University of Technology Brisbane, Australia 2011 Adalbert (Woitek) Konzal Entertainment Architecture Keywords film movie transmedia entertainment transmedia storytelling pervasive games ubiquitous games agency form evolution entrepreneurship business industry creative destruction marketing promotion — II — Adalbert (Woitek) Konzal Entertainment Architecture Abstract This thesis investigates the radically uncertain formal, business, and industrial environment of current entertainment creators. It researches how a novel communication technology, the Internet, leads to novel entertainment forms, how these lead to novel kinds of businesses that lead to novel industries; and in what way established entertainment forms, businesses, and industries are part of that process. This last aspect is addressed by focusing on one exemplary es- tablished form: movies. Using a transdisciplinary approach and a combination of historical analysis, industry interviews, and an innovative mode of ‘immersive’ textual analysis, a coherent and comprehensive conceptual framework for the creation of and re- search into a specific emerging entertainment form is proposed. That form, -
A Sense of Presence: Mediating an American Apocalypse
religions Article A Sense of Presence: Mediating an American Apocalypse Rachel Wagner Department of Philosophy and Religion, Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY 14850, USA; [email protected] Abstract: Here I build upon Robert Orsi’s work by arguing that we can see presence—and the longing for it—at work beyond the obvious spaces of religious practice. Presence, I propose, is alive and well in mediated apocalypticism, in the intense imagination of the future that preoccupies those who consume its narratives in film, games, and role plays. Presence is a way of bringing worlds beyond into tangible form, of touching them and letting them touch you. It is, in this sense, that Michael Hoelzl and Graham Ward observe the “re-emergence” of religion with a “new visibility” that is much more than “simple re-emergence of something that has been in decline in the past but is now manifesting itself once more.” I propose that the “new awareness of religion” they posit includes the mediated worlds that enchant and empower us via deeply immersive fandoms. Whereas religious institutions today may be suspicious of presence, it lives on in the thick of media fandoms and their material manifestations, especially those forms that make ultimate promises about the world to come. Keywords: apocalypticism; Orsi; enchantment; fandom; video games; pervasive games; cowboy; larp; West 1. Introduction Michael Hoelzl and Graham Ward observe the “re-emergence” of religion today with a “new visibility” that is “far more complex and nuanced than simple re-emergence of something that has been in decline in the past but is now manifesting itself once more” (Hoelzl and Ward 2008, p. -
Play Chapter: Video Games and Transmedia Storytelling 1
LONG / PLAY CHAPTER: VIDEO GAMES AND TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING 1 PLAY CHAPTER: VIDEO GAMES AND TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING Geoffrey Long April 25, 2009 Media in Transition 6 Cambridge, MA Revision 1.1 ABSTRACT Although multi‐media franchises have long been common in the entertainment industry, the past two years have seen a renaissance of transmedia storytelling as authors such as Joss Whedon and J.J. Abrams have learned the advantages of linking storylines across television, feature films, video games and comic books. Recent video game chapters of transmedia franchises have included Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Lost: Via Domus and, of course, Enter the Matrix ‐ but compared to comic books and webisodes, video games still remain a largely underutilized component in this emerging art form. This paper will use case studies from the transmedia franchises of Star Wars, Lost, The Matrix, Hellboy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and others to examine some of the reasons why this might be the case (including cost, market size, time to market, and the impacts of interactivity and duration) and provide some suggestions as to how game makers and storytellers alike might use new trends and technologies to close this gap. INTRODUCTION First of all, thank you for coming. My name is Geoffrey Long, and I am the Communications Director and a Researcher for the Singapore‐MIT GAMBIT Game Lab, where I've been continuing the research into transmedia storytelling that I began as a Master's student here under Henry Jenkins. If you're interested, the resulting Master's thesis, Transmedia Storytelling: Business Aesthetics and Production at the Jim Henson Company is available for downloading from http://www.geoffreylong.com/thesis. -
The Sense of a Beginning
THE SENSE OF A BEGINNING: THEORY OF THE LITERARY OPENING A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Niels Buch Leander January 2012 © 2012 Niels Buch Leander THE SENSE OF A BEGINNING: THEORY OF THE LITERARY OPENING Niels Buch Leander, Ph.D. Cornell University 2012 This dissertation is the first comprehensive study in English of the literary opening and its impact on modern literary criticism. It thus fills an astounding gap in Anglo-American criticism, which has neglected openings and instead focused on endings, as exemplified by Frank Kermode‘s The Sense of an Ending (1967). Through a study of the constant formal challenges of novelistic openings, primarily during modernism, this dissertation illustrates the significance of the opening in literary creation and in literary criticism. Chapter 1 analyses how openings attempt to lend authority from natural beginnings as well as from cosmologies, which leads to the conclusion that the beginning of a story is also a story of the beginning. Chapter 2 examines literary openings more closely from a formal and narrative point of view, thereby outlining a theory of openings based on linguistic considerations such as pragmatic conventions and cooperative rules. The chapter establishes a taxonomy of openings based on five ―signals‖ of the opening. In particular, the chapter develops the concept of ―perspectival abruptness‖, which is to be differentiated from the temporal abruptness known as in medias res. ―Perspectival abruptness‖ is presented as a tool for the critic and the literary historian to understand the particular nature of modern fiction. -
Transmedia Storytelling and User-Generated Content
GUERRERO-PICO, M. y SCOLARI, C.A. Transmedia storytelling and user-generated content CUADERNOS.INFO Nº 38 ISSN 0719-3661 Versión electrónica: ISSN 0719-367x http://www.cuadernos.info doi: 10.7764/cdi.38.760 Received: 04-15-2015 / Accepted: 03-23-2016 Transmedia storytelling and user-generated content: A case study on crossovers Narrativas transmedia y contenidos generados por los usuarios: el caso de los crossovers Narrativas transmídia e conteúdos gerados por usuários: o caso dos crossovers MAR GUERRERO-PICO, Departamento de Comunicación, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, España [[email protected]] CARLOS A. SCOLARI, Departamento de Comunicación, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, España [[email protected]] ABSTRACT RESUMEN RESUMO The aim of this article is to analyze a El objetivo de este artículo es analizar un O objetivo deste artigo é analisar um tipo special type of textuality: crossovers. tipo especial de textualidad: los crossovers. especial de textualidade: os crossovers. A The analy¬sis focuses on user-generated El análisis se focalizará en los contenidos análise se centra nos conteúdos gerados content in the transmedia storytelling generados por los usuarios de las narrati- pelos usuários de narrativas transmídia. context. The study follows a series of vas transmedia. Para ello, se toman como Para isso, 25 produções derivadas das 25 productions derivative of ABC’s Lost caso 25 producciones derivadas de dos se- séries de televisão Lost (ABC, 2004- (2004- 2010) and FOX’s Fringe (2008- ries televisivas: Lost (ABC, 2004-2010) y 2010) e Fringe (FOX, 2008-2013) são 2013). After describing the scenario where Fringe (FOX, 2008-2013). -
How Do Readers Understand Character Identities
How do readers understand the different ways that characters behave when they appear in both the text and paratext of the same comic? Mark Hibbett, PhD student at University of the Arts London. Comics characters have a long history of being used for advertising purposes, perhaps most famously in the long-running series of advertisements for Hostess fruit pies, in which superheroes thwart evildoers through judicious use of processed confectionaries. A great example of this appears in "Fury Unleashed," a strip which appeared in Marvel comics dated April 1982. In it, Captain America realizes that neither his shield nor his superhuman strength can save Nick Fury, so instead throws Hostess fruit pies at his friend's captor, distracting him long enough for the heroes to escape. However, when Cap faces a similar scenario in Captain America #268, published that same month, he chooses to surrender himself to save his friends rather than simply providing a dessert option for his enemies. How are readers of Captain America #268 meant to understand what is going on? Are they expected to view these two versions of Captain America as different characters who just happen to look the same, or is something else going on? Another example of this tension between text and advertisement paratext appears in Fantastic Four #200, a double-length issue featuring a duel to the death between Mr Fantastic and Doctor Doom, with a center-spread advertisement in which Doom implores his own fans to enter a competition run by a candy company to ensure that fans of superheroes don't win instead. -
Realistic Fantasy Or Fantastic Realism: on Defining the Genre in Susanna Clarke´S Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Carl-William Ersgård Supervisor: Eivor Lindstedt EngK01 6 Januari 2010 Realistic Fantasy or Fantastic Realism: On Defining the Genre in Susanna Clarke´s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Table of contents: 1. Introduction 1 2. Mirroring the world – Realism 2 3. Summoning the otherworld – Fantasy 9 4. Beyond reality – Fantasy and mimesis 15 5. Conclusion 18 6. Works Cited 20 Ersgård 1 Introduction: ”He hardly ever spoke of magic, and when he did it was like a history lesson and no one could bear to listen to him.” (1) With these, the first words of her novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2006), Susanna Clarke might as well have been describing the entirety of her work, not only one of its protagonists. The character described is Mr Gilbert Norrell, the first practical magician in England for centuries. He is one of a pair of magicians working side by side, and against each other, in the novel. The other, Mr Jonathan Strange, is Norrell´s opposite in every possible way. Where Norrell thinks all magic should be learnt from century-old-books, Jonathan Strange wants to experiment; where Norrell finds fairy-magic appalling and quite detestable, Jonathan Strange sees it as intriguing; and, perhaps most importantly, where Norrell wants to destroy all traces of the Raven King, the great magician- king of northern England, ever having existed, Jonathan Strange secretly houses a want to bring him back from the otherworld of Faerie. The quote above, together with the duality of the two main characters, create an excellent symbol for the whole novel. Whether or not the reader can “bear to listen” to Susanna Clarke´s narrative is, of course, a completely different question. -
Cinematic Transmedia: a Physiological Look at Engagement with Marvel’S Cinematic Universe
Running head: CINEMATIC TRANSMEDIA 1 Cinematic Transmedia: A Physiological Look at Engagement with Marvel’s Cinematic Universe as Measured by Brainwaves and Electrodermal Activity Tabitha Cassidy Liberty University CINEMATIC TRANSMEDIA 2 Dedication: This thesis is dedicated to my dog, Shakespeare, who sacrificed many trips to the park, and had to deal with my odd hours at night. Acknowledgements: Thank you to my committee members, Drs. Carey Martin and Stuart Schwartz, for helping me through this process. Special thanks to Dr. Fred Volk for providing me with the necessary equipment to complete my study. Particular thanks again to Dr. Martin for introducing me to the concept of transmedia and working with me through my meanderings. CINEMATIC TRANSMEDIA 3 Abstract This study looks at engagement levels within the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) at physiological and neurological levels, and with self-reported measures. One show or movie in each of three categories of Marvel media (a movie, television show, and streaming show) were shown to participants who then had their brainwaves and galvanic skin response recorded to determine whether or not they were engaged with the transmedia aspects of the MCU. Results showed that participants were consistently engaged with the transmedia throughout all three media types, with brainwaves varying only slightly between each content. The Marvel movie, “The Avengers” was most engaging to participants who had their brainwaves and galvanic skin response rates recorded, while participants in a control group consisting of only a survey agreed with the finding that movies in the MCU were the most enjoyable and were able to keep their interest the longest.