Hello again! I am a day late with my 2nd soul in the search. I wasn’t able to get it done yesterday, but a day later is cool. Last time one of the responses was that they’d like to see search queries as well. I was thinking of doing that too. At first this was about having a subjective narrative around interesting links, but perhaps the groove is found more in the subjectivity throughout. It is about revealing the soul in the search!
Some tweaks to the method: I used the search-function in my Chrome History. This reduced a lot of noise and made it easier to find sites and searches. I also included searches and non link/article/video visits. I listed them from oldest to most recent, and I included a screenshot to give you my view.
OK, so here are some links from my last week’s browser history! đ
Last week I did a call out in Twitter asking for examples of the use of comedy in academic writing. I was thinking about the frustration I feel writing academic articles, and how the rhetorical demands stifle parts of myself. I am actively bringing my “selves” together and not having a “public self”, a “professional self”, a “private self” as so on. I have a private life, but I’m working to be myself in all of them. The whole notion of a “professional self” is so stupid. Now I sound stupid.
But at the time I realised I don’t have to censor myself. It is possible to be light-hearted, perhaps, and have scholarly gravitas. This is one of the reasons why I stopped joking around at work — because I found people couldn’t hold in their head that someone can be smart and silly at the same time. And my response? To stop being silly. Not smart.
So now I’m looking out at examples of academic writing that uses comedy, that has a lightness, just to see I’m not alone. I’m familiar with the wink and pun hear and there, but I was keen to find out about people who were known for their rhetorical effect. I few great examples were sent to me, including Joanne B. Freeman and Amanda Heffernan. And now I remember the title of my first ever talk as a post-graduate student studying cross-media: “The Day My Book Went Psycho”.
I was happy to see this, as it is another example I can show my studio students (postgrads and trainers) that having diverse viewpoints during development is not uncommon. I won’t say common. I feel in love with the process of giving and receiving feedback from all team members, and importantly too from all people outside the arts. You need to know how to facilitate the feedback to get the most out of it together, and who to select for a feedback session, but when these work it is satisfying and inspiring for all involved. Silos are an artificial construction. Art is a lifestyle, not a medium, or a department. Why does this even have to be said? Oh I know. Ignore the question.
Once again, so many cool things in this article that I copied and pasted to my Notes folder. I have tried Scrivner, and I have a million google Docs. But I find using Notes to the best way for me to keep notes on my writing and research. It has to be quick and categorised, and in chronological order. Notes WORKS for me. [beat] I totally just checked if you could back up Notes and you can. I’ll be doing that next!!
Ha! Yes. I use Google as my calculator. And even for simple multiplications like this. It was for a invoice. I didn’t want to get that wrong. (And it isn’t as much as it seems as it is another currency.)
This popped in my email and I listened to it immediately while I was working on something. I don’t recall what. Some really lovely discussions about systems thinking in this conversation. I may include it as a resource for my next Narrative Design course.
I don’t remember exactly why I searching for this. I recall being worried that I may be writing out some word that I don’t mean…and I couldn’t get “Stifler’s mum” out of my head. I did a panic search just to make sure.
Well, if my browser history on my phone was fully accessible this would be a slightly different story. It was Friday. A very hot Melbourne day of 44C/111F. I needed to go into work to make some certificates for the Trainers of the last course I ran. I didn’t mind the heat (I just moved from tropicalish-Brisbane). I didn’t like the idea of just sitting on a tram though. I looked at the weather of my phone, and even though it was late morning and the heat was rising I concluded that I will ride my bicycle to work. (I usually say “bike” but some people start thinking I have a “motorbike”.)
I looked at the ride path along the beach and thought it would be good to get exercise and I could go and come back before the heat peak. I wore a head-to-toe white outfit, and put on sunscreen. The majority of the ride was glorious. But then I was on the long part of the beach ride where there are no trees. I felt my back and it was soaked, and I could feel my face getting red. I turned to the side streets and managed to cool down very quickly then. Got into work. Was mopping my face for the first 7 minutes, but then dried and refreshed. Chatting with folks, and then hopped on the bike to get back quickly.
It was a long and much harder ride back. A couple of cyclists rode past me, and one said “Hot day” or something like that. I didn’t respond, I just turned to look as they rode by. I don’t know why, I just didn’t feel compelled to fill in a line back. The cyclist seemed annoyed and spat on the ground, as the tough ones do.
I was in the last 10 minutes and knew I was about to pass my gym. I thought I could refill my drink bottle with cold water, but then I thought “nah, I can do it!” But then I reminded myself that if I was riding with someone else, I would insist we spot to do the smart thing and take care of ourselves. So I did it for myself. I am very good at taking care of myself these days, but sometimes I have to catch how quickly the “I can handle it” mindset kicks in. And I treat myself as I would treat others. It was a great cold drink.
Then as I rode home I fought the urge to get an icy-pole as a reward for doing the trip. I’m training myself not to reward myself with food. I reminded myself that a cold drink of water is much more rewarding for my body than an ice-cream, and I’ll feel better for it. So I got all the home. Stripped off. Had a great shower. Not soon after I ordered a pizza, chips, and thick shake. I have this every lasting dance where I keep figuring out what is right for me in the moment. Delayed gratification is important, especially the gratification part.
Ted Hope referred to his video and once again I had it playing in the background while I worked. There were some interesting and helpful conversations (especially as I’m writing my non-fiction book). But my thoughts went back to a thought that has been niggling at me for years: how it is easier to become proficient at something that uses existing, prevalent structures. I don’t mean for a second that Gladwell and Johnson don’t have skill and that what they do is easy. What I am referring to is relational. How the complexity of representation and responsibility increases when you’re crafting marginal systems. I don’t shy aware from the hard stuff though. That is why I’m here, to see how I and we can live our true selves beyond what others say is shiny.
I run my own remote studios. I have been doing remote creative work for over a decade, building remote communities for years, designing and running remote practice studios for post-graduate students, and training teachers in remote practice for studios over the past couple of years (I just won a national teaching award for these!), and will be launching a virtual artist co-working studio soon.
Actually, it is difficult to even find a person who HASN’T done remote work these days. But for a few years I have been teaching others how to overtly do remote practice. The key benefit I have found about running remote artist studios is that if you can make it work online, you can make it work offline. Indeed, the inverse is not true: what works locally doesn’t automatically work online. Why? Because you can’t lean on proximity bias in the online context. You have to overtly design the environment and actions to reach your aims. It is the test of making it work for a non-norm context that makes it better in all contexts.
What prompted this quick post were the recent discussions on Twitter about group work and students (in games), and coming up with alternative methods. So I’ll share notes about an approach I’ve developed in my remote studios: co-collaboration/parallel collaboration.
THE NEED FOR CO-COLLABORATION/PARALLEL COLLABORATION
I’ll begin by sharing how the co-collaborative approach emerged for me as a response to problems I was facing. Skip ahead if this isn’t of interest.
The need for a co-collaborative approach came out of my international lab Forward Slash Story (which is about developing the artist, not the project), my undergraduate and post-graduate studio teaching (which includes addressing negative experiences in student collaboration), my role as department co-ordinator, national chair, and national program co-ordinator (which includes facilitating awareness, integration, and feedback quickly), and my role as trainer of faculty in remote practice (which includes addressing the constraints of the institutional infrastructure and facilitating a cultural shift). Out of these experiences grew the following needs:
Need 1: Put the focus on the process and people, not the project
All the labs and residencies I have mentored at around the world are project-based. Teams bring in a project and they’re given guidance with assigned and rotating mentors to help progress the project. All projects are intimately connected with the people that make them, but the focus has historically been on the object, not the artist. This can create a warped view of what creative practice is. So the F/S lab was introduced to be about creatives coming together, irrespective of what project they’re working on. The lab enabled me to develop activities that facilitate a quick connection between creatives in ways that will then influence their own projects (and lives).
Need 2: Giving students a positive experience of collaboration, which includes seeing the benefits of collaboration quickly
In studios designed for project-based learning, instructors can choose the student teams for them, or give the students information to help them choose the teams themselves. Some also teach the interpersonal skills needed to bond, inspire, and produce. In my remote context, I have very limited live (synchronous) and email/forum (asynchronous) time with the students. I have a 1 hr meeting with the whole studio each week. That is it. Everything else happens between our sessions (and the 1-on-1 sessions I added).
These are interdisciplinary studios were I’m overseeing the creation of music albums, games, documentaries, installations, films, animations, product design, paintings, and more. So I need to have systems that keep the projects going no matter what the needs. Even though the students are creative post-graduates and many have done collaborations before, there are still ones that do not have experience with teams.
So the issue becomes: is it more important they work on the same projects, or that they understand what collaboration is and how it can benefit their project? We often think the only way to get students to understand collaboration is to force them into working with each other. And no matter how much design you put in to assist this process (especially emphasising how to collaborate above asset deliveries), with limited time it is inevitable that not all students will be able to participate equally. After seeing some students not enjoying the process because of bullying or other overt or subtle blocking behaviours, I decided it was more important to give students a sense of control over their creative process. That the experience and benefits of collaboration are more important than the specifics of a full collaboration scenario.
Need 3: Scaffolding the experience of collaboration, and making it adaptable to suit a variety of disciplines, experiences, and project stages
Along with wanting to scaffold learning collaboration, I also had other external issues related to training faculty in remote studio practice. The training is part of an early push towards an institutional-level remote-friendly work culture. But the infrastructure and proficiency isn’t there yet. So rather than mandate faculty to immediately implement interdisciplinary cross-campus projects in all the studios, I wanted to find a way for the learning and infrastructure to catch-up and grow with the teachers.
This is where co-collaboration came in. It is a way for students, faculty, and individual creatives to engage in interdisciplinary, distributed collaborations without forcing shared projects.
WHAT IS CO-COLLABORATION/PARALLEL COLLABORATION?
Co-collaboration is when people collaborate together at strategic points during the development of their own projects.
The key difference with other approaches I have found so far is this: participatory design and co-creation is predominately (or exclusively) about collaborations on a shared project. It is assumed this is the norm, and usually the difference being taught is to include people who aren’t usually involved, such as the “users”/”audience” or “stakeholders”.
In co-collaboration/parallel collaboration the emphasis is on the reciprocally beneficial activities between people who are working on different projects.
This can include students working on their own projects, artists working on their own projects in a fixed-term studio, and individuals or teams in production studios with parallel projects operating.
I haven’t been able to find writings about this approach specifically as yet. And I have oscillated between calling it co-collaboration and parallel collaboration. Draw on whatever term works for you! And if you’re familiar with writings on this — shoot them through!
HOW DO I ENACT CO-COLLABORATION/PARALLEL COLLABORATION?
In the meantime, I’ll share how I do co-collaboration. I have implemented it in different ways:
Begin with co-collaboration and then people choose their teams based on their interactions during co-collaborative activities;
Or, co-collaboration continues throughout the studio duration, with some also collaborating with others on their project outside the studio (with creatives they already know and/or new ones).
If your aim to is scaffold (stagger) learning collaboration, then begin with co-collaboration and build to full collaborative projects. I find it works to help people get a feel for it, see the benefits, rehearse/practice how it is done, and get to know potential collaborators. One of the issues with forced collaborations is how people are brought together. Education institutions aren’t necessarily curators of creatives, and temporary studios are curated but this is executed by others. Co-collaboration allows the artist to keep doing what they’re doing and benefit from what collaboration can bring in a controlled manner.
Co-collaboration is facilitated is during many stages of a studio process: ideation, research, externalisations, feedback, reflections. Here is an example of a pivotal point:
Ideation:
I find co-collaborative ideation to be an immensely helpful process. This is because it enables best practices in ideation, and gives the artists immediate and reciprocal benefits to their project. Since it is at the beginning of a project as well, it introduces the benefits of collaboration first up (a positive first experience) and they get to know each other.
On this point, you could also do a synchronous bonding activity that pairs or groups people with an activity that benefits their projects (not just meeting each other). But for me, with an online studio it would be counter productive. I need everyone to get to know each other asynchronously and then synchronously as a group for various reasons.
So back to ideation. Let’s quickly qualify the supposed best practices I threw out there. I’m referring to factors such as ideation being about divergent, not convergent thinking; a quantity of ideas to get beyond the probable; having helpful constraints; inputs that are both specific (related to your project) and general (related to world & general inspiration); biosociation to enact these; contributions from diverse (interdisciplinary and non-creative) people; time to incubate; and importantly a combination of individual and group contributions for brainstorming (because going straight to group brainstorming stifles voices and promotes premature consensus).
With these principles in mind, I give the artists a range of ideation activities (and they can share their own) to choose from. They then go into pairs (or any small group size you deem works for your context), and conduct the activity in any of the following manner:
Same ideation activity, on own projects, done in parallel (same time), and then share what you did and give feedback to each other.
Same ideation activity, on each others’ projects.
You can both do person A’s project and discuss, and then both do person b’s and discuss.
Or you can do each others’ projects at the same time. So I do your project and you do mine at the same time, then we discuss.
Different ideation activities, using the variables above.
In all of these, even though they’re working on different projects, they’re being inspired by what the other is doing. You get ideas even from coming up with ideas for another’s projects. The different projects are another form of biosociation.
QUESTIONS, THOUGHTS?
I have just plonked down some quick thoughts on how I use co-collaboration/parallel collaboration and why. I didn’t go into detail here about how I make this work remotely, or give citations for everything. But let me know if you’d like me to elaborate, and let me know if you do this or will do this! I’d love to share notes!
Koestler, A. (1964). The Act of Creation, London: Hutchinson & Co.
Sanders, E. B. N., & Stappers, P. J. (2008). Co-creation and the new landscapes of design. CoDesign, 4(1), 5-18.
Schuler, D., & Namioka, A. (1993). Participatory design: Principles and practices. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Sleeswijk Visser, F., Stappers, P. J., Van der Lugt, R., & Sanders, E. B. N. (2005). Contextmapping: Experiences from practice. CoDesign, 1(2), 119-149.
This is the full speech of my talk on the relationship between the creative works we make and the world we live in.
Some quick background:
I was invited to give a talk at the Sweden Games Conference this year (2018). I felt relief when I saw the topic of the conference: “Politics & Games: Reflections on Power, Play, & Changing Perspectives”. It meant I could talk about anything. I mean, we all can anyway. But I knew there would be a (potentially) more welcoming audience.
What I share in this talk is a viewpoint I’ve been coming to for a while now. Specifically, the concepts started with my talk at ANZCA in July last year (2017) with my talk “Comparing World Recentering Practices in Australia and the USA”. In that talk I was trying to reconcile my intuition about my attraction to pervasive media practices as compared to immersion as transportation. Another key development of the worldview concept was in June this year (2018), with my blog post “The Two Markets: Finding Your Kin”. Then I stumbled on a book and all the concepts fell into place.
So here is the speech. I include both game and non-game examples. In my last talk for GDC, I gave mainly game examples only. While that was helpful, some people didn’t see how the concepts are transdisciplinary. So this time I included a range of examples.
There will be some small differences with the video, as I couldn’t always read the text on my screen (ha!) and of course I improvised. I took out a few slides to fit the time, which aren’t here either. A couple I want to highlight are 1) more descriptions on the theory and how it works; 2) the role of dystopia and how it has a limited role in facilitating change. But all this will be developed further with the academic paper I’m writing on this, and of course for my book. So let me know your thoughts – whatever they are – as that will help with my further writing on this topic!
So here is the video of the talk, and the original speech. The video includes a Q&A, in which I do the really weird thing of not letting people know that my book includes tips on how to then action these insights! I have been touring my concepts and not wanting to tease people with the book when it may be a while before it releases. But I forgot I’m now closer to releasing it. My talks and workshops are all from the book. Indeed, “Worldbuilding our World” is at present the working title. And the art is from the book, by my wonderful collaborator Marigold Bartlett.
[content warning – mention of some hate crimes, but I avoid going into detail, and I refer obliquely to projects but donât name or show them.]
Hello everybody! Iâm going to get straight into what I want to share with you. I want to take advantage of my time in this talk, and my time on Earth, I want to use my time wisely (which to me also means enjoying it)! So straight up: I decided in my teens that it was through creative projects that I wanted to change the world. I did consider law for a bit, but it was creative practice that was my calling and my choice. So when I look at worldbuilding techniques, it isnât to see how I can create an immersive world to transport you to for a few hours. No, it is to see if there is a glimpse into how new worlds are made.
This is one of my ongoing life clipboard questions. Do you have life clipboards? It is virtual clipboard of questions that I have about life. Some of them take hours or weeks to answer, but most of them take years. Here are some of the current questions Iâve been looking at in my life:
1) Why is it I donât find many AAA, double AA and Hollywood studios appealing to work in, despite the great talent and resources? 2) How can I help others understand why I turn down working with some great clients and companies? 3) Do you really have to make one kind of project for a mass market? 4) What other ways can the core essence of a creative project be understood? (Transmedia) 5) Do I, and others, do harm with the projects we create? 6) Can creative projects really change the world? 7) Can I, can you, change the world, now? All of these questions have the same answer. Itâs a broad spectrum solution or insight, that works for me. I am sharing it here today, in case any of these thoughts help you with your own questions (some of which may be the same). And in order to do this, I need to go back to a book that was published in 1966.
The book was written through a collaboration of American-Austrianâs Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann. The images here are of Peter Berger, who has spoken about his long-term curiosity with âwhat makes people tickâ (same here!). In a documentary, he talks about an early memory he has of being given a toy train. But he didnât switch on the electricity to see it turn around the tracks. Instead, he lay on his belly and talked to the imaginary people on the train. The book Iâm going to talk about today is the result of this curiosity. People have gone up to Berger that after reading the book and tell him how they see the world differently, and he said he understood because he too saw the world differently once the ideas became clear to him. So let me share with you what it is about (and some of you will know it anyway).
The book is âThe Social Construction of Realityâ, and it is considered one of the top influential sociology books of all time. When it was published in 1966, world events included the death of civil rights activist Vernon Dahmer in Mississippi, and a Ku Klux Klan member is unsuccessfully tried for his murder 4 times; Indira Ghandi is elected the first and to-date only female Prime Minister of India; and the first Winnie the Pooh feature film is released. In the academic context, Berger (I will refer to Berger as the shorthand for Berger & Luckmann from now on, and I have changed the pronouns in quotes,and I use the American spelling from the book – Â FYI). Bergerâs book contributed to what is called âthe sociology of knowledgeâ. Previously, all questions of the nature of reality were discussed through the theories of philosophers and scientists for instance. What Bergerâs book argued was that we need to look all forms of knowledge not just knowledge from âgreat thinkersâ. We all construct knowledge they argued, and so we should look at what passes as âcommon-sense knowledgeâ. How is it that we construct our reality?
Firstly, letâs define the amazing notion of ârealityâ really quickly. To Berger, âreality is a quality appertaining to phenomena that we recognize as having a being independent of our own volitionâ âwe canât wish it awayâ. Itâs reality.
So how is reality socially constructed? And is it possible for us to discuss this AFTER the big party last night? We will find out! First…
Reality is co-constructed â we all create our human environment, with everything we say and do. Berger calls them our externalisations.
As creatives, externalization is a term to describe any activity that gets our ideas out of our head. It is a music score, a sketch, a storyboard, a diagram, a script. This process is essential to not just understand what the project is through the act of creation, but to communicate it to others. Indeed, a creation is an act of communication. Communication with the self, and communication with others. But externalization also includes any time we talk, any time we write, we write a law, we write a course, we write code, any time we make sound, we make a gesture, we externalise our inner world. These externalisations are our human activities. Theyâre what we do in the world.
Over time, our activities become habits. When we repeat them often enough, they become a pattern (a schema in our mind). That is, rather than remembering every little step and every possible action we could do in each moment, we end up remembering only what weâve been repeating. We donât remember the different ways we could do something, we remember the way we end up doing something repeatedly. And then that becomes automatic. A musician, for instance, develops muscle memory with their guitar. And we always greet someone when we meet but we often donât actually listen to what weâre actually saying to each other. This brings us the important psychological benefits of habits – they narrow choice so we donât have to expend as much cognitive effort, we are freed from the burden of âall those decisionsâ. Our activities become routines, we create a stable environment in which we do a minimum of decision-making. Our actions become automatic, unconscious, and we forget we had choices.
These habits, over time, become institutions. Now, you may be thinking, like I did, of an institution, like a building. How can a habit become a building?
But for our sociologists, an âinstitutionâ describes the types of actions performed by types of people. Employers issue work duties, and employees execute them. There is the institution of marriage where you have celebrants who conduct a wedding ceremony for instance, institution of law, of education, and the family. Institutions arenât created instantaneously, remember the habits – it needs to happen over time. Interestingly, institutions are about âcontrolling human conduct by setting up predefined patterns of conduct, which channel it in one direction as against the many other directions that would theoretically be possibleâ. Institutions define what control is exerted, by whom, how, and with whom.
The transmission of institutions also happens through parents. They tell their children stories, they read storybooks about the institution of marriage (that girls and boys want to marry, and there are social rules around who can marry who). As Berger explains, âsince the child had no part in shaping (this reality), it confronts them as a given reality.â Indeed, âall institutions appear in the same way, as given, unalterable and self-evident.â An institution doesnât occur unless it is passed on through a generation, otherwise it has failed.
In our parents stories, in the everyday comments to each other, in our films, in our games a reality takes shape, and is presented to us  âas undeniable facts. The institutions are there, external to us, persistent in their reality, whether we like it or not”. It takes on an objective nature because it is persistent and echoed everywhere. And we forget we have a choice, we forget we made it. So we have our externalisations that share our inner world, we develop habits, these unconscious habits become institutions, and weâre surrounded by them.
What happens over time is what is called âReificationâ – this is, we think that what we create is something generated by anything but our ourselves, and certainly not generated by the everyday. Over the generations, we forget why certain social order was put into place, and then we forget we put it into place ourselves. âHuman meanings,â Berger explains, â are no longer understood as world-producing but as being products of the ânature of thingsâ.â Our roles too can become reified. A role, such as being a husband, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, employee, and manager, can be âapprehended as an inevitable fate, for which the individual can disclaim responsibility.â This is when we say âI have no choice in the matter, I have to act this way because of my positionâ. I have to fire those people for being uncivil, because that is my role and that is the logic of the economic institution. Indeed, you can assume a total identification with your social assigned type and see it as something outside of your control. You are a boss, you are a geek, you are meant to be hot.
So, if successful, all these processes contribute to us thinking that there are these kinds of people that can do these kinds of things. We internalise the rules and make them our own. Letâs take this famous moment in sporting history: Kathrine Switzer is running the 1967 Boston Marathon. As Switzer recounts in her memoir: this photo is the moment when the race official Jock Semple came running up behind her yelling âGet the hell out of my race and give me those numbers!â And tried to rip of Switzerâs race numbers. It was then her boyfriend Thomas Miller gave Jock a cross-body blow to push him away from Kathrine and let her run. You see, for 70 years, this had been a male-only marathon. But when Switzer and her trainer were entering the competition, they looked through the rulebook and found no rules about gender. The marathon had been male-only for 70 years because everyone, male and female-identifying, had successfully internalised the institution of sport, of men being the only ones physically capable of running marathons. They had internalised the rules around who can do what. So the idea of putting a rule in there didnât need to happen. When the race official saw Kathrine challenging that social order, he exerted his own social control by attempting to rip of Switzerâs race numbers. But last year, Switzer ran the Boston marathon again, 50 years after this historic first run, and with the same race numbers: 261.
All this effort, over time, contributes to the social construction of reality. And this is where it gets really interesting. Berger talks about realities and universes somewhat interchangeably and talks about how these (and other) processes construct not just one reality, but many realities.
Here are four key realities or universes. Iâll be using these terms interchangeably. Now Berger doesnât actually mention four. He discusses the paramount reality or universe, and talks about reality maintenance and reality metamorphosis. The fourth human activity of creation is implied but Iâll be offering some further thoughts on how this one operates.
Paramount reality is the product of everything weâve been talking about. Berger explains that âAmong the multiple realities there is one that presents itself as the reality par excellence. This is the reality of everyday life. Itâs privileged position entitles it to the designation of paramount reality. […] It is impossible to ignore, difficult even to weaken in its imperative presence. Consequently, it forces me to be attentive to it in the fullest way. […]â.
They continue, explaining how the reality of everyday life is taken for granted as reality. It does not require additional verification. It is simply there, as self-evident.â âEverybody knowsâ it is real. The paramount universe is where the majority of all our creative projects are made from. Our creative projects are an externalization of what we know. Berger calls the paramount reality a naive one, in the sense that we can operate in it unconsciously. There is the belief there is one universe, and so we create for it. This is why we have creatives claiming that their work is neutral or apolitical. They have internalised all the types, all the roles, all the rules about how paramount reality works and assume it as self-evident, as objective. These kinds of projects are produced because the paramount universe is part of the everyday of the creators, part of the every day of the studios.
But not everyone who creates works for the paramount universe agrees with all aspects of the paramount universe. I have consulted on these kinds of project, and I have many colleagues around the world who do actively challenge many parts of paramount reality â such as the typified roles of males and females, and marriage, and hierarchical views of race, ability, gender, and sexuality â they actively challenge these things and even live âunconventionalâ personal lives themselves, but they create works that operate quite nicely in the paramount universe. What does this mean?
Now, Berger does talk about how we can have enclaves of variance in our universe. We can integrate differences into the paramount universe easily if they donât affect your routines. If you still get up, go to work, kiss your partner goodbye, visit family, and so on, then the differences are unproblematic. If your habits remain the same, your routines continue, then then paramount reality can remain unchallenged.
So, can creative projects that have a paramount reality stance, do good? Canât we just have fun, why do we have to say something? The problem is, weâre always saying something. If we havenât thought about the impact of our work, then weâre producing creative projects that take an uncritical stance, they present reality âas if it isâ. When theyâre done unconsciously, automatically, then weâre using the short-hand of agreed types, roles, and rules: letâs play with our ability to exert social control by being horrible to people, letâs remind them that there is a right way to be and anything else deserves consequences; letâs treat land as something to be taken and mined, to produce and make without ritual and care. It is so easy to create in this reality because it is automatic. We believe weâre just using what makes something funny and fun because it is human nature.
Comedian Cameron Esposito has commented about colleagues who have difficulty telling jokes (in the manner we would describe as paramount reality). Cameron mimics their concern âHow can I tell jokes? How can I tell jokes without all these words? I need them.â And Iâll just say, âIf theyâre any particular word that you need to use to do this job, I am a better stand up comic than you.â Indeed, it is the reality we create when we donât realise we can create our reality. Works set in the paramount universe donât exhibit qualities of a reality-transforming work. Like a roller coaster ride, we end up where we began. All works are always saying something, and works that echo the paramount universe present a world someone else has written, despite what it says in the credits. Can you just make works for the fun of it, without trying to do something though? Yes, and Iâll talk about that soon.
For now, I want to note that many of my colleagues create works, films, reality TV shows, TV shows, books, plays, and games, they create all these for the paramount reality because of income. They know on some level theyâre telling a lie, but they believe the only way to make money is to make content for the paramount reality. It is the question of whether we can make money from anything but the status quo. It is true that many of our institutions, our systems are set-up for this. But remember the inevitably illusion, paramount reality is not the only reality. There are other realities, and markets. Because these realities are also markets.
We spoke earlier about how we internalize paramount reality. If we believe it is inevitable most of the time, then our socialization is successful. But, Berger explains, there is âalways the haunting presence of metamorphoses […] the competing definitions of realityâ. Berger talks about other universes that increase in their sophistication from the naive mode. And I find this sophistication is in part because they involve an awareness of our role in co-creating our reality, and techniques to action this. Weâre taught how to craft games, but not how to shape the world. But as creatives, we can make projects that question and seek to transform paramount reality.
The Matrix was about the choice to wake up from the illusion weâre told is real, or choosing to see that it is constructed. It is a tale we see in creative projects throughout time in many forms. People canât engage in changing paramount reality if they donât first realise that reality is constructed.
Rod Sterlingâs The Twilight Zone sought to show the surreal nature of reality, questioning reality, and embedding within it tales of hope, along with his production processes like likewise challenged conventional structures. It was through TV, through fiction, that Sterling believed more could be said.
Another approach is to also bear witness to how paramount reality affects us, in different ways. James Baldwinâs essays, first published in The New Yorker in 1962, and then as a book in 1963. In the first essay, Baldwinâs addresses his 14-year-old nephew on the one hundredth anniversary of emancipation. [READ out pages 26-27]
“Every effort made by the child’s elders to prepare him for a fate from which they cannot protect him causes him secretly, in terror, to begin to await, without knowing that he is doing so, his mysterious and inexorable punishment. He must be ‘good’ not only in order to please is parents and not only to avoid being punished by them; behind their authority stands another, nameless and impersonal, infinitely harder to please, and bottomlessly cruel. And this filters into the child’s consciousness through his parents’ tone of voice as he is being exhorted, punished, or loved; in the sudden, uncontrollable note of fear heard in this mother’s or his father’s voice when he has strayed beyond some particular boundary. He does not know what the boundary is, and he can get not explanation of it, which is frightening enough, but the fear he hears in the voices of his elders is more frightening still. The fear that I heard in my father’s voice, for example, when he realized that I really believed I could do anything a white boy could do, and had every intention of proving it, was not at all like the fear I heard when one of us was ill or had fallen down the stairs or strayed too far from the house. It was another fear, a fear that the child, in challenging the white world’s assumptions, was putting himself in the path of destruction.”
More recently, Jordan Peeleâs feature film documents the horror of race relations, and topped the box office with a black lead. Perhaps the rules about what is profitable arenât true after all? No perhaps. There is more than one reality. Interestingly, it has been announced that Jordan is hosting the next Twilight Zone reboot.
We see it in the comedy of Bill Hicks and now Hannah Gadsby. Gadsby makes it clear there is a personal cost to producing content for a paramount universe. Gadsby had to be willing to give it all away to take on her reality. What Gadsby discovered was that there is a market for different realities. It does require using different narrative and interaction structures though. Most of our rules of creative practice are rules that work for the status quo, not for those wanting to transform. For all the talk in games about having agency, most games do not encourage you to have agency in your own world. But letâs look at ones that do.
An early example is Chris Crawfordâs âBalance of Powerâ (which he made using his severance for a company he was just laid off from). It is set in the Cold War, and is a criticism of the structures that support war, power, and the use of nuclear power. Crawford said Bob Dylanâs song âBlowinâ in the windâ was an influence on making this game promoting peace.
Gonzalo Frascaâs game September 12th puts you in the position of killing terrorists, only to find killing does not actually reduce the number of terrorists, it increases them. The New York Times described September 12th as âAn Op-Ed composed not of words but of actionsâ.
MolleIndustriaâs games are all designed for culture jamming. A popular example is âUnmannedâ, a critique of drone warfare and masculinity.
The 2013 âPapers, pleaseâ game gives us moral decisions as an immigration officer around supporting our own family and being humane to others – it is in some ways documenting the tensions of working in paramount reality for the sake of an income. It was a critical and commercial success, and within 3 years of release (back in 2016) it had sold over 1.8 million units and won numerous awards. A short film has just been released too.
âHereâs Your Fuckinâ Papersâ switches the perspective to the person trying to cross the border, and highlights the difficulties one faces with changing bureaucracies. Proceeds of the game were going to organisations assisting in immigration and passports. That game was made at GaymerXâs GXDev…
Indeed jams often operate to facilitate games for reality transformation. The Resist Jam that has tons of resistance games made by creatives from around the world. Including one that sets Papers, Please in current Canada. These are all released on sites like itch.io, which donât gate-keep, donât use social control.
Anna Anthropyâs Dys4ia is an autobiographical game that actually opened up the personal game area, and is described by Nick Fortugno (the designer of Diner Dash) as âthe most powerful translation of the experience of gender reassignment in any medium â ever.â This game was available for free for a while, then paid, and now it free again. Anna has…
Night in the Woods is an adventure game, that through the storyline of allegorical characters who experience mental health issues (from the developersâ personal experiences). It is available on desktop, tablet, mobile, playstation, xbox, and switch. It has won numerous awards and has been listed as one of the top games in 2017. It has critical and commercial success. In Bergerâs book, therapy is listed as one of the social control mechanisms used to get people to return to reality. We will all be familiar with historical cases of terrible uses of therapy, and some current. But thankfully there are therapists that donât try to make you something different, and the developers comment on how important it is to find the right therapist.
Tiltfactorâs Buffalo is a party game for adults and families (2â8 players ages 14 and up). Your aim is to collect as many cards as possible by quickly name dropping a response to the blue and orange prompt cards. What you wonât see in any of the game descriptions on the box or at the online stores, is what the game is actually designed to do. It is a game that subtly reveals our unconscious biases. It was developed with funding by the National Science Foundation for this purpose. Intentionally, the game is using what the designers call âstealthâ – it isnât telling people what it is about and simply allowing players to come to realisations themselves while they play. It is in this sense a emergent dialectical rather than scripted dialectical.
I want to highlight here the market for these kinds of projects, and many of these works have ongoing resonance for years. They are stand-out hits both critically and commercially. There are some works that are not sold, they are released free. The artists garner income from other sources. Wild successes are due to them being a well-written and designed experience, that also has a message or transforming affect. There is great skill involved with this approach. Some are known for their message and some operate with stealth. One point I want to highlight here too, is the player or audience desire for these types of experiences. I see some serious games aimed at people who arenât interested in changing. A racist person isnât interested in picking up a game about racial discrimination. That is why some projects are about being a great entertainment or art piece in themselves too and operate with stealth. But an under-utilised market is people interested in self-transformation. Rather than aiming your creative works at people you want to change, instead, youâre creating works for people who consciously want to change something about themselves. Some of us donât need a wizard to come knocking at our door before we want to step up and be a better person. That is the market Iâm aiming for, and one that relates to our last reality category. But before we go there, we need to briefly look at the pushback to reality transformation.
Universe Maintenance occurs when there are problems with the paramount universe. It occurs when socialization from one generation to the next hasnât been successful. Why canât two women marry mum? It also happens when there are conflicting universes, and each of these universes have ways to maintain their own realities. There becomes enough of an alternative. There are different methods used to get us back to âparamount realityâ which is considered the best reality.
The passing on through generations doesnât always work because each new generation doesnât have access to memories of the activities first-hand. The types and actions and rules become ârealities divorced from their original relevance”. Everything becomes hearsay. Legitimization is about explaining and justifying why things happen. They need to be consistent and comprehensive if they are to carry any conviction for the next generation. The institution of celebrity, of fame, has successfully passed down through more than one generation, and has transformed to keep being relevant. You get famous, you get a husband or wife, you have kids, you keep being in the public eye and you can afford assistants and nannies. You can have a family, and be famous, and run your own company. Fame gives you independence. All humans desire to have a family and be known and live the good life, and some of us are better at it than others. Only the most selfish and cut-throat win. Itâs just the way it is.
Every generation has justifications for war throughout all mass artforms â film, TV, novels, games. It has to keep being repeated over and over again why we do this.
Our reality TV shows about Border Security (I see you have this on Swedish TV), Police, SWAT, etc – all of these aim to legitimise paramount reality, the rules, the types, and the social consequences of deviating.
An important aspect of the language universe maintenance is about returning to a reality, a reality that is framed as being paramount, as logical, as better. It is not about moving forward or transforming what we know, it is about returning to what was known before. The claim is that the discomfort anyone feels is not because of paramount reality, it is because we have deviated from paramount reality.
There are games that seek to exert overt social control through showing the consequences of deviating from paramount reality. These games involve mass murder, rape, and other crimes against humanity. I have chosen not to show them here. Because their existence, their words, have power.
Unfortunately, there is the belief that hearing out peopleâs thoughts has no power. I think people believe that power rests with law makers? But as Berger has shown, it is in everyday conversations that reality transformation occurs. So when journalists claim to be objective in their reporting, theyâre forgetting that words are not benign, theyâre incantations.
We all have a role in reality construction, whether we are aware of it or not. I have actually worked on an App that was for Universe Maintenance. It is a Pick Up Artist comedy series. It was funded by Screen Australia, and received an Australian Directorsâ Guild award. I mention this project because, 8 years ago, I consulted on it. At the time, I thought my colleagues were naive about their understanding of women, but it wasnât until I saw more of the content and posts from them that I realised the entrenched worldview they were coming from. Some of you may be working on such projects, and I hope you are hearing that there are alternatives. The last one I will mention here is Universe Creation.
So Universe Creation. The difference here is that rather than aiming your creations towards maintaining or changing existing realities, your focus shifts to co-creating completely new social realities. In order to do this, your focus involves looking deeply at yourself. You look into the melting pot and face yourself. Let me explain this further.
Years ago, I was developing an interactive comedy about the meaning of death. It was after my mumâs sudden passing from a brain aneurysm, and I was channeling my grief into a creative project. I was working on the dialogue and having such a hard time getting it right. I wanted it to have the same wit and insight as a lot of Sorkinâs dialogue from West Wing has. Now, dialogue is hard anyway. But the problem was being exacerbated by something else. I wanted my characters to give witty come-backs that get the crux of the matter. And I couldnât, I couldnât because I hadnât been living it. I was not practiced in speaking my mind, let alone speaking my mind with eloquence. Some may be thinking âthat is what writerâs do, they make it upâ. Sure, there are things we make up – settings, characters, objects, plots. But everything comes from somewhere. If youâre writing characters you donât know about, then youâre either drawing on cliche or yourself. This is why we have so many âstrong womenâ characters that donât quite ring true. Theyâre not being written from a point of personal experience with strength. I wanted to write dialogue that represents how I experience being witty and true. Funnily enough, it was at that point when I decided that I was going to be more forthright in my everyday interactions. So I could make better projects. If youâre going to create something new, then you need to be new. Your creative project can only stretch the imagination as far as you have personally stretched your inner world.
Iâm going to give a brand example here. Hesta is a superannuation company in Australia. Their aim is to âmake real differences to the lives of our members and also women in Australiaâ. Women have less superannuation than men but they live longer. The things I wish to highlight is that this value, this goal of the company is only possible because of the work the company has been doing internally with their own culture. There are many brands out there that ring the woke bell, but donât live it in the everyday. The things you create in the world are a reflection of how you live in the world. Your everyday.
The Wachowskiâs created a world where polyamorous lifestyles, and roles and types, and our sense of time and space are all part of a fully realised new reality. None of this could have been conceived or created without the Wachowskiâs doing the internal work. These projects are externalisations of an internal reality.
The same with Rebecca Sugarâs Steven Universe is producing characters and plots that make new types and roles normal.
John Lennonâs Imagine – asks us to image the world we want, and to feel it. More recently, this music video was just released, and features the lyrics âIâm not a boy, Iâm not a girl, Iâm fractalâ. It depicts an environment with lots of people enjoying their own fractal identity, a celebration of just being.
Journey is a world where the journey of your life is in doing the internal work and then turning to reach back and help others on that journey. It was a commercial and critical success.
David OâRiellyâs âEverythingâ. You can begin as a bear, and can move your consciousness, your POV to that of a horse, a flower, to a star. It is narrated with edited recordings of philosopher Alan Watts. Polygon described it as âthe most true-to-my-life game Iâve ever playedâ, and The Washington Post described it as a ârare game that may push you to want to lead a better lifeâ.
Mister Rogersâ Neighbourhood had the same affect on people. The TV series had people lining up around streets to meet Fred. The doco on the series premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. It received acclaim from critics and audiences and has (at the time of writing this) grossed over $22 million, making it the highest-grossing biographical documentary of all time.
There is also another biopic coming out almost to year from this day. The film is based on the true story of the friendship between Fred Rogers and journalist Tom Junod. Tom is a jaded Esquire magazine writer who is reluctantly assigned to profile Rogers. But his âwhole world changes when coming in contact with Fred Rogersâ, he is so moved by Rogersâ kindness and empathy that he overcomes his skepticism and has a renewed look on life.
An important moment from the original series was when Mister Rogers invited Officer Clemmons to join him in cooling in the pool. This is in the context of segregation happening at the time of this episode, where African Americans were not allowed to swim in the same pool as white Americans. Universe Creation can be these simple moments. This is where you can just create something that is fun or just is, but it is the result of internal work. You can just make, you can just be, when you choose to create the way you want to be.
The studio Tru Luv, headed by ex-lead AI programmer for 3 Assassinâs Creed games and Child of Light, Brie Code, is described by Slate as a âstudio devoted to a radically different framework built on care and connectivityâ. It was an experiment by the creators, Brie & Eve Thomas, and Petra, that reached 500,000 downloads in 6 weeks. In this experience, you spend time in bed, tending to your plants, reading tarot. It is a new everyday. An everyday that has been externalised from the everyday of the developers. Brie created this from her inner work.
These are the kinds of realities that are out there, that weâre making. What if we had these as Netflix categories or PlayStation categories? You could choose your reality. How cool would that be?
So, we come back to our questions…
1) Because they predominately make “paramount” and “maintenance” reality projects.
2) See above.
3) No. There are many markets.
4) In transmedia, we often talk about the essence of the property. The reality stance of a property is another element I take into consideration. It doesn’t have the be the same. You can have projects that move from paramount to metamorphosis. But when they move from metamorphosis to paramount there will be a bigger clunk, at least in myself.