I think the best way to achieve what I want from this project is to use a trusty Arduino board. As for inputs I think with the time scale I have and for simplicity I think I will use simple push to make buttons for different functions. I want to embed the elctronc ‘gubbins’ inside the Shandy book and use it as an interface for the program I am planning to write in processing.

Building on the last example of my text usage mapping app. I have created a version that maps the text used in a particular document or text rather than real time mapping through the keyboard. It reads the text straight out of a .txt file and maps the usage of each individual character in the same manor as the previous example. The image below shows the map produced when I ran the text from my previous post through the app.

Ive got my hands on a copy of Tristram Shandy for my project. Its quite a nice hardback copy…shame to destroy it really!

I’ve been looking at Tristram Shandy again. I find this book (even though I haven’t read it yet) very interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly it is the ultimate postmodern text written years before postmodernism existed. The narrative of the book is not only non linear but completely nonsensical; characters crop up after they have died, after 2 chapters of the book Tristram hasn’t even been born and much more. Here are some notes from a recent lecture on postmodernism:

Ultimate postmodern text Tristram Shandy (1760)!
Not based on myth, has no heroes or villains
Stock characters obsessed with unlikely, idiosyncratic things
Profoundly unadventurous and unromantic
Follows no recognisable genre
After 120pp, narrator has failed even to get himself born
Yorick dies early on and then appears at the end
Specifically draws narrative form to your attention
Discusses what the problems are with chronological storytelling
Shows how certain effects are achieved (rhetorical devices)
Asterisks, dashes, puns, figures of speech, squiggles, drawings
Digressions and deviations (back and forth, circular, fragmented)
Ambiguous language (sexual innuendo, assumptions of reader)
Black page, marble page, white page
Not at all resolved but a cock and bull story…

Over the last week or so I have been having a mess around in processing seeing if I can make something for my space project. Seeing as I was going to look at keyboard use I wrote a little app. that maps the use of each lettered key on the keyboard by graphically representing it on the screen as a large letter. I have experimented with various features and have also included the functionality to save out a jpg of the map when you hit the return key. Below are a couple of the jpgs that I have saved out from testing the app. As a starting point I am very pleased with it. I have a meeting with Chris tomorrow to go over what I have done and where to take it next.

Ok so…I have an idea. I am quite interested in a number of points that have been brought up on this module. I have always been interested in Duchamp’s idea of the ready made and the physicality of objects over computer based art. I have also been taken by Tristram Shandy and everything it represents as a text. I would like to combine these thoughts with the idea that the writer cannot control how the reader interprets the text and how every narrative form is interpreted differently in some way by every reader giving a unique experience.

I want to produce a writing machine of sorts that experiments with the already experimental form of Tristram Shandy, but I want this to be a physical project with the physical qualities of the original text. To achieve this I am thinking of using a physical copy of Tristram Shandy as an interface for the writing machine, this also covers the ready made aspect. I am thinking of experimenting with the narrative in a dadaist cutup vein to produce a unique experience of the text.

Today we had our games module playtest where our game was set up and people were invited to play it along with the other games produced on the module. There was some really cool stuff on offer and everybody did well. Ours went swimmingly and we had positive feedback. It also proved useful for other people to point out things that they felt were missing or needed improving on. We documented the day with a video camera ready to produce our promo video this week. It will be posted up on here when its done.

I had my midway assessment for my project this afternoon. I did a quick 5min presentation to Geoff Cox (who is also my dissertation tutor). It was encouraging to get another tutors opinion on my work. He suggested that I think of situations in which this project could be placed and how I would use it. Below is a slide from the presentation that outlines the project.

I haven’t really been blogging about the game we’ve been making as it has all been a bit of a secret. However the game is now done and we presented it today.

Our company, Spotjam, make Augmented Reality Games (ARGs) that enhance audience engagement with an Intellectual Property (IP) or brand and provide additional revenue streams for IP owners. Our first game ShinobiAR is an augmented reality spy game, created as an example of what is possible with the spotjam platform.

Here’s how the project could work if I go with the GPRS option: