Re: [-empyre-] benefits of practice to conventional research / could gamification save academia?
Am 23.02.2012 10:59, schrieb Gabriel Menotti: How efficient is this sort of symbolic camouflage to disentangle a discipline (structures of thought, conceptual frameworks, methods) from the hype (of the past)? From another perspective: should the changing of names/labels (from KYB to INF?) be taken as a “superficially” administrative or as a “deeply” philosophical operation? Or is it one of these cases in which such separation makes no sense whatsoever? This game seems to complex to me for a simple answer. The shift from Cybernetics to computer science (and AI/cognitive science) was philosophical (cf. Dupuy: The Mechanization of the Mind) administrative, driven by methods (calculus/algebra/engineering vs. logics/language/calculation), material (digital computers) and due to a hype cycle. Symbolic camouflage indeed is a strategy to carry frameworks, methods (Kuhn's paradigms or Fleck's Denkstil) from one field to the other, but I would also assume that many scientists using camouflage are not aware of it -- but take up paradigms that have been there, albeit invisible (the same holds for Wiener, who with Cybernetics quite successfully rephrased what happened in 1930s control theory, without saying so). Menotti: Reaching out to the other thread: should we take this rule-bending as a form of institutional critique? Can it have long-term effects, or is it restricted to opening space for a singular intervention? and Birringer: One might see the humor also in the old high academy positions (Lasse, did you not say that Karlsruhe has no room for practice based Phds and prefers you to write a theoretical/analytical one?) With the KHM in Köln and the DARC people (and efforts such as News of the World) we the two possible strategies of fighting the gamification (or neo-liberal makeover/takeover) of academia that make up the subject of this thread: The KHM simply rejects Bologna (not issuing any Bachelor or Master's degrees) and sticks to the traditional (and theory based) Dr. phil. instead of issuing (practice based or not) PhDs. This conservative solution paradoxically is quite successful in opening possibilities and maintaining freedom. It enables me to write a science/humanities crossover dissertation that would not be possible at most (German) science or humanities departments, for instance. DARC, on the other hand, tries to bend the rules. I honestly hope that the latter strategy proofs valid in the long run, but maybe that's only my inner meta-gamer. Heckman: I think we need another word for the opposite of gamification [...] Just kidding, but actually that's why we are Paidia Institute, referring to Caillois' separation of ludus and paidia: Caillois also places forms of play on a continuum from ludus, structured activities with explicit rules (games), to paidia, unstructured and spontaneous activities (playfulness) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man,_Play_and_Games http://paidia-institute.org/about Menotti: I’m curious whether this information remains as a form of silent inspiration to the thesis, or if it is actually written down in some way. Do you refer to the artworks even in passing? Haven't decided yet, if I should include it and if so: how? Lots of things to think about. Thanks. Lasse. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] benefits of practice to conventional research / could gamification save academia?
Interestingly though, until very recently these developments have only been Cybernetic by structure, not by name (mainly because it carried the smell of a hype from the past). [LASSE SCHERFFIG] How efficient is this sort of symbolic camouflage to disentangle a discipline (structures of thought, conceptual frameworks, methods) from the hype (of the past)? From another perspective: should the changing of names/labels (from KYB to INF?) be taken as a “superficially” administrative or as a “deeply” philosophical operation? Or is it one of these cases in which such separation makes no sense whatsoever? Is there any advantage in sticking to the old, overused/abused concepts, and forcing them to perform new operations? I generally feel uneasy with talking about benefits of artistic research, […] But of course both inform each other to some extend. [LS] I’m curious whether this information remains as a form of silent inspiration to the thesis, or if it is actually written down in some way. Do you refer to the artworks even in passing? If so, do you conceptually reframe them as experiments? How personal is (would be?) your account of them in any academic form (such as an essay)? the objects on a game's screen do not exist in the loops we created, although they exist (a) in code and (b) for us, i.e. as sign and signal. The game, however, functions without them. [LS] The game “functions”, but can it be /played/? And if it can’t, is it still a game? Considering the amount of material resources spent on these “objects” (memory, processing cycles, etc - which is critical in older console systems), how redundant they should be considered to the overall feedback structure entailed by the gaming system? (And: is this relation between “functionality” and “playability” in any form analog to the one between “conceptual structure” and “names” above?) News of the World is a nice example of circular causality because it bends the very rules that produced it (the demand for peer reviewed publishing). [LS] Reaching out to the other thread: should we take this rule-bending as a form of institutional critique? Can it have long-term effects, or is it restricted to opening space for a singular intervention? But exams and degrees are already gamification of education. And badge-based accreditation of achievement outside the academy is a way of reproducing this. [ROB MYERS] Ha, indeed. All the comments about “gamification” made me realise how it might be a most appropriate way to describe the particular economy of academic research we are already in. It brought to my mind a text on The Last Psychiatrist about a particular research project that went completely wrong, but nevertheless had a “quite positive publication output”. From its (self-congratulatory?) conclusion: “In general, the results could not be combined in an overarching model, and were thus disappointing with regard to scientific progress. In contrast, the end result in terms of publication output was quite positive: the majority of papers were presented at international conferences and published in highly cited journals and several students earned PhD degrees based on their work on the subject.” (The whole text: tinyurl.com/7fhsv9h) Best! Menotti ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] benefits of practice to conventional research / could gamification save academia?
I think we need another word for the opposite of gamification, maybe there already is one, and a pedagogy and ethos that can contribute to the formation of solidarity, critical awareness, and life-sustaining activity. Gamification tries to turn play into a productive activity what about turning productive activity into occasions for play? On a cultural level, we are in the habit of thinking these are the same things, but one is about capturing energy and turning into money the other is about taking wage labor and setting it free. In an academic setting, this involves turning students away from the narrow conception of education as certification for employment, held into place by debt. The alternative is an education which recognizes these formal disciplinary structures, but teaches students how to understand disciplinary structure, how to subvert it, and how to create spaces of social dialogue, exploration of common interests, and the collective pursuit of the good. A second thought is that many of our concepts of gaming are heavily influenced by the impact of electronic gaming. While much of it is increasingly social, and this is good, electronic gaming also has shifted broad cultural practices of gaming in an individual direction (single player mode). While games have always contained the potential for competition, the contractual nature of gaming has counterbalanced the competing need for individual subjectivity. An individual can only engage others in the contest insofar as he or she can convince them to participate in the social activity of gaming. As any Monopoly player discovers, however, once the game begins to privilege a certain player and the possibilities for meaningful participation diminish, the game gets boring and the game ends before you or your friends are made totally penniless. This dynamic is not as strong in electronic games, participation falls very heavily on the solo player who chooses to play or not to play, and almost every game has a solo mode. Even the multiplayer games are not as easily held into place by the social negotiation between players agreeing to play for a time (though this does happen). You leave when you get bored. Gamification erodes the aspect of social agreement that is present in traditional gaming (and the playfulness, even, of electronic gaming), and in its place, erects a solo-player, merit driven economics to social behavior. It wraps activity in a fairly transparent currency with no value beyond our decision to buy into this new form of compensation in exchange for more direct forms of compensation (shorter workdays, better wages, reliable healthcare and shelter, ergonomics, collective bargaining, etc.). The old marxist critiques of religion are probably better applied to gamification. The opposite of this tendency is what is needed. People have done this to a degree. It is an art, poesis. DeCerteau describes it in the Practice of Everyday Life (an argument which has been appropriated by a culture industry anxious to merge governmentality with participation). Davin On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 4:59 AM, Gabriel Menotti gabriel.meno...@gmail.comwrote: Interestingly though, until very recently these developments have only been Cybernetic by structure, not by name (mainly because it carried the smell of a hype from the past). [LASSE SCHERFFIG] How efficient is this sort of symbolic camouflage to disentangle a discipline (structures of thought, conceptual frameworks, methods) from the hype (of the past)? From another perspective: should the changing of names/labels (from KYB to INF?) be taken as a “superficially” administrative or as a “deeply” philosophical operation? Or is it one of these cases in which such separation makes no sense whatsoever? Is there any advantage in sticking to the old, overused/abused concepts, and forcing them to perform new operations? I generally feel uneasy with talking about benefits of artistic research, […] But of course both inform each other to some extend. [LS] I’m curious whether this information remains as a form of silent inspiration to the thesis, or if it is actually written down in some way. Do you refer to the artworks even in passing? If so, do you conceptually reframe them as experiments? How personal is (would be?) your account of them in any academic form (such as an essay)? the objects on a game's screen do not exist in the loops we created, although they exist (a) in code and (b) for us, i.e. as sign and signal. The game, however, functions without them. [LS] The game “functions”, but can it be /played/? And if it can’t, is it still a game? Considering the amount of material resources spent on these “objects” (memory, processing cycles, etc - which is critical in older console systems), how redundant they should be considered to the overall feedback structure entailed by the gaming system? (And: is this relation between “functionality” and
Re: [-empyre-] benefits of practice to conventional research / could gamification save academia?
Oh! Lot's of interesting points. Let me start with gamification. Gabriel Menotti wrote: I wonder if there is any lesson about the relation between media art/theory and “the sciences” that we could take from this delay. Is one domain fated to lag behind the other’s insights, adopting them as late models? Or is the “longer time” media art/theory is “spending” with cybernetics able to bring out new things from it? I guess it's not that simple. In cognitive science itself there has been a small tradition of sustaining Cybernetic heritage, personified by Francisco Varela. And since the 1990s, embodiment, the question of sensorimotor-loops (which was, btw, raised by Noë who was mentioned here by Gordana) and today enactivism can be seen as revivals of Cybernetics in the sciences. Interestingly though, until very recently these developments have only been Cybernetic by structure, not by name (mainly because it carried the smell of a hype from the past). I’ve seen the exhibition and enjoyed it quite a lot. Didn’t know it was a recent undertaking. What benefits do you think this practical work is bringing to your research process? I generally feel uneasy with talking about benefits of artistic research, much in line with Sollfranks conceptualization of it as a field different from scientific research. But of course both inform each other to some extend. In this particular case I understood from the experiments that the objects on a game's screen do not exist in the loops we created, although they exist (a) in code and (b) for us, i.e. as sign and signal. The game, however, functions without them. Is there any connection that might be established between this criticism of pedagogy and the learning process that is entailed by a PhD investigation? (Or rather: could gamification be a solution for academia?) Wait: Isn't the economization of academia through impact points and evaluations exactly what gamification is about? But fortunately, News of the World is a nice example of circular causality because it bends the very rules that produced it (the demand for peer reviewed publishing). If gamification is to save academia, I think it should be through playing against it (think of speedruns and meta-gaming). Best! Lasse. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] benefits of practice to conventional research / could gamification save academia?
On Wed, 22 Feb 2012 11:14:43 +0100, Lasse Scherffig wrote: If gamification is to save academia, I think it should be through playing against it (think of speedruns and meta-gaming). Online gamification is usually a way of getting people to do work without monetary reward. And gamification has conceptual problems: http://www.kmjn.org/notes/soviet_gamification.html http://www.selfawaregames.com/2011/11/15/the-failures-of-gamification/ http://blog.learnboost.com/blog/3-reasons-not-to-gamify-education/ But exams and degrees are already gamification of education. And badge-based accreditation of achievement outside the academy is a way of reproducing this. So I think copying the aesthetic of gamification inside the academy would be less of a shift than people might think. - Rob. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] benefits of practice to conventional research / could gamification save academia?
Online gamification is usually a way of getting people to do work without monetary reward. And gamification has conceptual problems: Agreed. From my perspective based inside the games discipline, gamification is more interesting as a social phenomenon, as yet again a body of knowledge is being viewed by management consultants as a silver bullet, rather than as as an opportunity in motion. Much of what it supposedly covers, games were already doing. Games in the enterprise go back into the 1960s, in the military much further. Furthermore, the interesting interdisciplinary linkages that could provide real opportunities for renewal (e.g. challenging the rhetoric of efficiency in interaction design) are things that gamification does not presently explore. Cheers, Adam -- Adam Parker Campus Academic Coordinator Qantm Melbourne Qantm College Melbourne Campus 235 Normanby Rd South Melbourne VIC 3205 Australia +61 (0) 3 8632 3400 | Phone +61 (0) 3 8632 3401 | Fax 2011 MCV Pacific Awards: **Tertiary Games Educational Institution of the Year *** * www.sae.edu | Web www.qantm.com.au | Web www.saeshortcourses.com | Web SAE National Provider Code: 0273. SAE CRICOS Provider Codes: NSW 00312F. SAE Institute Pty Ltd, ABN: 21 093 057 973 This email (including all attachments) is confidential and may be subject to legal privilege and/or copyright. The information contained within this email (including all attachments) should only be viewed if you are the intended recipient. If you have received this email in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete this email from your system along with any copies that have been made. Any unauthorised use, which includes saving, printing, copying, disseminating or forwarding is prohibited and may result in breach of confidentiality, privilege or copyright. If you wish to unsubscribe or choose not to receive further commercial electronic messages from SAE Institute or any grouped/associated entities please send an email this address with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line. Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] benefits of practice to conventional research / could gamification save academia?
Of course, this science in the meantime had its own hype in media art and theory (in which it never was as forgotten as it is(?) in the sciences). [LASSE SCHERFFIG] I wonder if there is any lesson about the relation between media art/theory and “the sciences” that we could take from this delay. Is one domain fated to lag behind the other’s insights, adopting them as late models? Or is the “longer time” media art/theory is “spending” with cybernetics able to bring out new things from it? (Does the influence also go in the opposite direction? Are scientists still anachronically bewildered by something the artworld no longer takes seriously?) With Paidia Laboratory: feedback (that has been part of transmediale) and my friends of Paidia Institute, we recently have taken this research into art practice; [LS] I’ve seen the exhibition and enjoyed it quite a lot. Didn’t know it was a recent undertaking. What benefits do you think this practical work is bringing to your research process? Is there any connection that might be established between this criticism of pedagogy and the learning process that is entailed by a PhD investigation? (Or rather: could gamification be a solution for academia?) Best! Menotti ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
