[arg_discuss] Open Source ARGs

[mj williams]

On 2 Aug 2008, at 00:17, Mark Heggen wrote:

Of course it is OK that people enjoy art to whatever depth and in  
whatever
doses they so choose. The problem emerges when the artists, and others
involved, believe that lots and lots of people are experiencing the  
works
when in fact this is not necessarily the case. The problem lies in the
reality gap, not simply the level of audience participation.

Imagine a studio where a team of dedicated painters spend months and  
months
laboring tirelessly over their paintings, working out each detail
meticulously. When they finish a painting it is placed lovingly in the  
front
window of a gallery below their studio, where it is largely ignored by
people walking by. As the painters hears the footsteps of the people  
passing
by they congratulate one another on the thousands and thousands of  
people
who must be enjoying their hard work, when in fact very few people  
took more
than a passing glance at the art.

Ah, but now your mixing your analogies unfairly - It's not Art's fault  
it's a loser's game.
Seriously though, I feel it's dangerous to speculate on the level of  
people's engagement with a painting in a window, and to give art it's  
dues, studios of painters only tended to (and still do to some extent)  
congregate around a well reputed artist who then used their craft  
abilities to fulfil his ideas: that we only know about 'Reubens' and  
not 'Team Reubens' is the same reason someone with a passing interest  
in advertising might have heard of Tomato, but not know who Michael  
Horsham is.

This is not a healthy system. It isn't crime or a disaster, but it is  
not a
good way to reach people with your art and your message, nor is it a  
good
way help the painters grow in their craft. Things get even worse when  
the
painters attempt to convince local business owners (standing in for
advertisers in the analogy) and academics that their paintings are in  
fact
reaching a lot of people. If you were aware of the situation you  
wouldn't be
right to force the painters to stop their work, but you probably ought  
to
let people know what was really happening.

I suppose this is the problem with analogising a new medium. It has,  
in many ways, evolved out of the shoulders of goblins (or something)  
and trying to measure it against its antecedents doesn't allow you to  
incorporate its evolutionary steps. Which isn't going to stop me  
hamfistedly trying.
Telling stories around campfires (NYC or anywhere) has always  
fascinated me, and the previously stated idea that written and  
recorded media has changed our understandings of stories (and their  
maleability and reaction to their environment) is why ARGs interest  
me. So if the best story tellers around my fire contribute to the tale  
I started telling, that's awesome. But even changing and evolving that  
one story is going to get boring eventually... and maybe the story at  
that campfire over there is interesting. If the people around this new  
fire have only just lit it, and they don't know that much about how we  
tell stories over at our fire, it doesn't mean I'm not going to enjoy  
it - especially if they've got glo-sticks. And crucially, if their  
story is rubbish, I'll go back to my fire. Or I might go over to that  
other fire...

If ARGs are different from Campfire stories, it's maybe in the way  
that puzzles (there's that word again) have become an integral part of  
the story. By unlocking it you get a bit more material until you reach  
the next puzzle, staggering your progress through the story. (Maybe  
that's the influence of the well-rehearsed locked linear narratives -  
the impasse to the main thrust that requires an alternative action and  
a new narrative direction to move forward. Just a thought.)

**warning: talking about his kids alert**
Daisy, my eldest daughter, is currently engaged in making a book of  
The adventures of Peter Pan, Wendy and Tinkerbell. She hasn't read the  
original (she is only 4) but she's seen a couple of film versions and  
now she's taking those characters and making up adventures for them to  
have. My role (as Puppetmaster/Daddy) is to create the problems (after  
the well-rehearsed opening sequence) we have to overcome.

As it happens, we are about to start reading the JM Barrie book (she  
and Mummy have just finished The Enchanted Wood), because she might  
understand it more now she's bigger.
Should I have not let her watch the films until she had read the book?  
Until she can explain to me why Wendy's daddy is so cross?


Regarding the Sex Pistols; the notion that the Sex Pistols started their
musical career never having HEARD a full song is preposterous. The Sex
Pistols, being active participants in a culture, were deeply steeped  
in a
musical history and a musical zeitgeist which influenced and shaped  
their
own work tremendously. Someone creating an ARG without having ever  
played
another ARG fully is not like someone without a traditional sculpture
education teaching themselves to sculpt; it is more like someone  
reading the
first half of the Wikipedia article on opera and then trying to create  
their
own opera. This wouldn't be unholy or apocalyptic, but it would  
deserve a
healthy dose of skeptical attention.

A whole song? Well, in the immortal words of Derek Smalls, "that's a  
cosy ten minutes" - and I'm not aware of any 10-minute ARGs in  
development (I'm excluding R Kelly on moral grounds). Whether the sex  
pistols ever heard a full song (and I'm going to stick my neck out and  
say at least one of them had) is not the point: they weren't taking  
their inspiration from within the world of music. They, and their  
manager, were drawing it from the world around them. The only thing  
the Sex Pistols ever got steeped in was cheap cider.

best
marc

mj williams   | www.bushofgoats.com/bookofworks
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