Expressive Processing – Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies - Softcover

Wardrip–fruin, Noah; Fuller, Matthew; Manovich, Lev

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262517531 ISBN 13: 9780262517539

Publisher: MIT Press, 2012

Synopsis

From the complex city-planning game SimCity to the virtual therapist Eliza: how computational processes open possibilities for understanding and creating digital media.

What matters in understanding digital media? Is looking at the external appearance and audience experience of software enough―or should we look further? In Expressive Processing, Noah Wardrip-Fruin argues that understanding what goes on beneath the surface, the computational processes that make digital media function, is essential.

Wardrip-Fruin looks at “expressive processing” by examining specific works of digital media ranging from the simulated therapist Eliza to the complex city-planning game SimCity. Digital media, he contends, offer particularly intelligible examples of things we need to understand about software in general; if we understand, for instance, the capabilities and histories of artificial intelligence techniques in the context of a computer game, we can use that understanding to judge the use of similar techniques in such higher-stakes social contexts as surveillance.

About this title

About the Author

Noah Wardrip-Fruin is Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the coeditor of four collections published by the MIT Press: with Nick Montfort, The New Media Reader (2003); with Pat Harrigan, First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game (2004), Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media (2007), and Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives (2009).

Edition details

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262517531
• ISBN 13: 9780262517539
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 504