Nerd Arts

A synthespian is any synthetic actor. A portmanteau of the words synthetic, meaning not of natural origin, and thespian, meaning dramatic actor. The dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, for instance, were animatronic synthespians created by Stan Winston Studios. Aki Ross from the movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was an entirely computer-generated synthespian.

The term “synthespian” was created by Jeff Kleiser and Diana Walczak of Kleiser-Walczak Construction Company.[1] When they were assembling a synthetic thespian for their project, “Nestor Sextone for President”, they coined the term “synthespian”. Kleiser and Walczak have gone on to form Synthespian Studios (www.synthespians.net), dedicated to the creation of computer generated characters for entertainment and educational media.

The Last Starfighter is a 1984 science fiction adventure film. There was a subsequent novelization of the movie that year by Alan Dean Foster, as well as a video game based on the production. In 2004, it was also adapted as an off-Broadway musical. The movie was directed by Nick Castle and was marketed with the tagline “He didn’t find his dreams… his dreams found him.”

The film made early use of extensive computer graphics to depict real objects in place of physical models.

The Last Starfighter was the last film role of character actor Robert Preston before his death. The character of “Centauri” was a “lovable-con-man” nod to his most famous role as Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man.

The film’s premise was based on the well-known urban myth that video arcade games were in fact military recruitment tests for fighters.

The Last Starfighter represents the narratavist approach to video game studies. The narrativists approach video games in the context of what Janet Murray calls “Cyberdrama.” That is to say, their major concern is with video games as a storytelling medium, one that arises out of interactive fiction. Murray puts video games in the context of the Holodeck, a fictional piece of technology from Star Trek, arguing for the video game as a medium in which we get to become another person, and to act out in another world. This image of video games certainly received early widespread popular support, and forms the basis of films such as Tron, eXistenZ, and The Last Starfighter. But it is also criticized by many academics (such as Espen J. Aarseth) for being better suited to some linear science fiction movies than to analysis of interactive video games with multiple narratives.

Espen J. Aarseth (born 1965) is a major figure in the emerging field of video game studies. He is one of the most prominent figures among what are called the “ludologists,” a group of thinkers characterized by their insistence on treating video games not as a form of narrative or as a text, but instead simply as games, with the dynamics of play and interaction being the most important and fundamental part of the games.

The ludologists are contrasted by the so-called “narrativists” such as Janet Murray and Henry Jenkins.

In another opinion, the dualism ludology-narratology is quite artificial. Ludology does not exclude the so-called “narratology”. See Gonzalo Frasca’s article “Ludologists love stories, too: notes from a debate that never took place”.

Aarseth’s works include groundbreaking Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature (Johns Hopkins UP 1997) book, which was originally his doctoral thesis. The book introduces the concept of ergodic literature, which is a text that requires non-trivial effort to be traversed. The book also contains a well-known (pre-ludological) theory, “typology of cybertext” which allows ergodic texts to be classified by their functional qualities. (In Aarseth’s later work with Solveig Smedstad & Lise Sunnanå this typology of cybertext transforms into “a multi-dimensional typology of games”, published in the book Level Up conference proceedings 2003 (eds. Copier & Raessens, Utrecht University & Digra)).

Aarseth was born in Bergen, Norway, and completed his doctorate at the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Bergen. He co-founded the Department of Humanistic Informatics at the University of Bergen, and worked there until 2003, at which time he was a full professor. He is currently Principal Researcher at the Center of Computer Games Research at the IT University of Copenhagen

Read Espen’s “The Field of Humanistic Informatics and its Relation to the Humanities”

Excerpt from PBS Online Forum

PBS:Could you begin by explaining what a nonlinear narrative is? Are there different types of interactive stories?

Janet H. Murray responds:

Stories can be “nonlinear” or “interactive” both on and off the computer. Throughout the twentieth century we seem to be turning toward stories told from multiple intersecting points of view (like Faulkner’s “The Sound and the Fury”), stories that have multiple possible outcomes (like Borges’ “The Garden of Forking Paths” or the “Back to the Future” movies). The trend runs through high and low culture as my examples suggest. It has to do in part with the fact that we see our lives as more open to choice and possibility, less controlled by social convention or by what the Victorians called “Providence” than human beings have in other eras.

The computer offers new formats for such open-ended and multi-threaded stories. Hypertext stories let the reader navigate through segments of the tale, following different characters through the same time period or tracing different thematic connections. Interactive games and simulations allow us to replay the same situation in many different ways,observing and savoring the range of possibilities. Although most of these games are focused on battles or clever puzzle-solving, as they absorb more cinematic techniques they are increasingly plot-oriented and less concerned with winning and losing, and they are beginning to be populated with characters who are not just adversaries or puzzle-posers, but interesting in themselves.

Digital storytellers are learning how to let events unfold dramatically in worlds that have their own rules of behavior. For instance, a recent cd-rom game called “The Last Express” puts the interactor into the role of a passenger on the Orient Express railroad just before World War I, and populates the train with characters who speak different languages and walk around on their own regardless of what the protagonist chooses to do. I am charmed by the way the game lets you eavesdrop on the passengers’ conversations as they talk about books or politics, in multiple languages (with some subtitles). It is a satisfying experience that goes beyond the murder and intrigue of the game-like plot, because it is imaginatively compelling to be in a fictional place and to chose which characters to pay attention to as the story unfolds.

Continue Interview

Free PDF Article by Janet H. Murray

Wired’s monthly Jargon Watch feature has listed ludology as new bit jargon alongside fratire, chassis (in a non-automotive sense) and social jet lag. According to Jonathon Keats of Wired, ludology (from the latin word ludus, meaning “games”) is the academic study of videogames. Intellectual sites such as Jesper Juul’s The Ludologist and Gonzalo Frasca’s Ludology.org consistently provide us with thought-provoking material on our favorite entertainment medium.
via Joystiq