mattscape

PRINTED MATTER: "Dying Alone in Videogames" (Rolling Stone March 2010)

My latest piece for the game section of Rolling Stone magazine (March 2010) focuses on trailers and commercials. Specifically, the article is a response to "Mad World", a lovely analysis of the Gears of War TV ads by FRIEZE's contributors Christopher Bedford and Jennifer Wulffson. Their thesis is that Cliffy B.'s game and related TV commercial can be understood only in relationship "to a contemporary understanding of war produced in large part as a response to the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan". Chris and Jenny raise interesting points and ask challenging questions, e.g.:

"[H]ow to craft and market a war game in an era when public opinion has turned against war as a paradigm? How, for instance, is heroism rendered in a fictional narrative when the most obvious contemporary social referents – the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan – do not, as social histories in the making, embody the kind of unambiguous moral bases easily identified, for example, in World Wars I and II? How can our period eye, in all its ambivalence, be satisfied while still offering a compelling narrative of heroism?" (Christopher Bedford and Jennifer Wulffson, FRIEZE, December 2009)

To solve the riddle(s), they evoke Freud's theories on melancholy, which might seem a bit of a stretch in this context, but as a supporter of pataphysics, I cannot but fully appreciate the authors' creativity. In my counter-piece I analyze the much celebrated Assassin's Creed's trailer featuring UNKLE's "Lonely Soul". My thesis: the real message of the trailer is that games and social media's sense of connection is purely illusory and, like it or not, you're gonna die in a place that does not know your name.

Yeah yeah.

Click on the thumbnail to read the article.

  

PRINTED MATTER: My latest film reviews (Rolling Stone March 2010)

The latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine (Jimi Hendrix framing two lovely, scantly dressed gals on the cover) features three mini film reviews of mine: Daybreakers, Legion and The Book of Eli (in Italian, "Codice: Genesi", another idiotic title change that makes no sense whatsoever). I really wanted to love Daybreakers, alas this is not the masterpiece I was hoping for. Nonetheless, the second film by the Spierig brothers' does offer a few touches of genius, e.g. the gated communities for vampires, the customized SUVs for daydriving, and the Emo-Starbucks.

By the way, is it just me, or Hollywood these days is obsessed by The End? Narratives of the apocalypse dominate our screens (big and small). Blame the recession, global warming, and capitalism...

Click on the thumbnails to read the reviews:

   

PRINTED MATTER: "Mr. Bit", my new column on WIRED Italy

"Mr. Bit" is the title of my new monthly column on WIRED Italy. We begin our journey in the world of new media, entertainment, and science at Stanford University, where Byron Reeves is reinventing the very notions of work and play.

The topic of the column is "funware", that is, the incestuous but virtuous relationship between work activities and playful practices. We take a look at his latest book, Total Engagement (with Jason Leighton Read) and at his start-up Seriosity. 

Reeves and Read write::

"Most work is not “designed,” but takes place in settings and flows that have evolved haphazardly as our economy has evolved from mostly jobs handling physical materials to mostly people using all kinds of tacit knowledge in information work.  What would happen if jobs and career paths were as carefully thought out as the level design and reward systems in a truly good video game?" (Byron Reeves & Jason Leighton Read).

If you're interested in this topic, stay tuned:  I'll be talking about the potential of Funware at PLAY 2010 (Modena, March 12-13).

You can read "Mr. Bit" by clicking the thumbnail below:

 

BOOK: "Drammaturgie multimediali" (Edited by Gianni Canova)

Edizioni Unicopli (the same publisher behind Ludologica), has just released Media e forme narrative nell'epoca della replicabilità digitale, an anthology of essays on the relationship between drama and dew media edited by Gianni Canova. The collection features a contribution on mine, in which I basically argue that, for the sake of comparison, videogames are much closer to theater than cinema. Titled "Il teatro ludico. Videogame come arte performativa" (Ludic Theater. Gaming as performance art), the essay focuses on the performative natures of both artistic expressions.

Excerpt:

TEATRO LUDICO

II videogioco come arte performativa

Matteo Bittanti

In questo saggio ci proponiamo di esaminare sinteticamente alcuni aspetti di una relazione a prima vista insospettabile, quella tra teatro e videogame. In realti il tema e' tutt'altro che nuovo: la disamina di questa peculiare liaison si colloca al centro di una riflessione - e di una pratica - pluridecennale che ha impegnato (e impegna) accademici di ogni scuola ed estrazione. Dopo aver ripercorso le tappe fondamentali del dibattito, introdurremo il nostro contributo che si fonda sulla nozione di performance. Riteniamo infatti che per comprenderea deguatamenteI' interazione tra queste due forme espressiv, infatti, e' indispensabile focalizzare l'attenzione sulla loro natura eminentemente performativa. Ilcambio di prospettiva - dalla nozione di testo a quella di prassi - richiede che si considerino le dinamiche di consumo creativo sottese a questi processi culturali e artistici. In altre parole, non ci interessa tanto indagare il design del videogame e dell'opera teatrale, quanto le condizioni alla base della loro messa in atto. Solo in questo modo e' possibile portare in primo piano le analogie e, nel contempo, le differenze. (continua...)

Link: Drammaturgie multimediali. Media e forme narrative nell'epoca della replicabilità digitale (Edizioni Unicopli, 2010)

NEWS: WIRED Italy is a finalist for the 2010 Merit Awards!

 
WIRED Italy is one of the winners of the 2010 Merit Awards in the Best New Magazine category and it is also competing in the Best Design and Best Photography categories. The list of the 16 runner-ups for this prestigious award include WIRED US, Time, Blender, New York magazine, The New York Time magazine, GQ, Esquire and more. Kudos to David Moretti and Francesca Morosini for their oustanding work! The winners will be announced in New York on May 7 2010.  Fingers crossed!

Read more (in Italian)

PRINTED MATTER: Pacific Standard Time #5 [Duellanti February 2010]

 

 "Pacific Standard Time (PST) aka Pacific Time Zone runs down the Pacific Coast of Canada and the United States of America.  It is sometimes referred to as Pacific Coast Time or West Coast Time.  It includes the cities of Seattle WA, San Francisco CA, Los Angeles CA, San Diego CA &  Las Vegas NV" (source)

The latest episode of Pacific Standard Time has been published on Duellanti magazine. Another look at the Silicon Valey (part two of two). This story is a mash-up of Paul Graham's brilliant 2006 talk  at XTech ("How to be Silicon Valley") and my own experiences. This piece could be retitled: "The Rich and The Nerds" aka Richard Florida meets Freaks and Geeks.

Here's my favorite passage from Graham's speech:

"If you want to attract nerds, you need more than a town with personality. You need a town with the right personality. Nerds are a distinct subset of the creative class, with different tastes from the rest. You can see this most clearly in New York, which attracts a lot of creative people, but few nerds.

What nerds like is the kind of town where people walk around smiling. This excludes LA, where no one walks at all, and also New York, where people walk, but not smiling. When I was in grad school in Boston, a friend came to visit from New York. On the subway back from the airport she asked "Why is everyone smiling?" I looked and they weren't smiling. They just looked like they were compared to the facial expressions she was used to.

If you've lived in New York, you know where these facial expressions come from. It's the kind of place where your mind may be excited, but your body knows it's having a bad time. People don't so much enjoy living there as endure it for the sake of the excitement. And if you like certain kinds of excitement, New York is incomparable. It's a hub of glamour, a magnet for all the shorter half-life isotopes of style and fame.

Nerds don't care about glamour, so to them the appeal of New York is a mystery. People who like New York will pay a fortune for a small, dark, noisy apartment in order to live in a town where the cool people are really cool. A nerd looks at that deal and sees only: pay a fortune for a small, dark, noisy apartment.

Nerds will pay a premium to live in a town where the smart people are really smart, but you don't have to pay as much for that. It's supply and demand: glamour is popular, so you have to pay a lot for it.

Most nerds like quieter pleasures. They like cafes instead of clubs; used bookshops instead of fashionable clothing shops; hiking instead of dancing; sunlight instead of tall buildings. A nerd's idea of paradise is Berkeley or Boulder." (Paul Graham, 2006)

Click on the thumbnails to read the article (in Italian):

       

Previous episodes:

Pacific Standard Time #1

Pacific Standard Time #2

Pacific Standard Time #3

Pacific Standard Time #4

PRINTED MATTER: A Single Man (Duellanti, February 2010)

Here's my review of Tom Ford's A Single Man, one of my favorite movies of 2009 (and best soundtrack of the year, by far). The original article was published on the February 2010 issue of Duellanti. 

Click on the thumbnails below to read the full article (in Italian):

   
 
 

PRINTED MATTER: Avatar review (Duellanti, February 2010)

The latest issue of Duellanti features my (highly controversial, I dare say) review of Avatar, "Mission Failed". The gist: "Ambitious interface cinema meets inane story and ends up as a soap opera with one too many incongruities". The only thing I liked about the movie is the holographic displays used by the scientists, although even those are nowhere as visually powerful and imaginative as Minority Report's gestural interfaces. In my book, Avatar is the most overrated tech demo, pardon, movie of all time. The fact that it is also the highest grossing movie of all time is not at all surprising. 

More about Avatar here and here. 

Click on the thumbnails below to read the story (in Italian);

    

 
  

EVENT: PLAY 2010 (Modena, Italy, March 13-14 2010)

 

Speakers: Download PLAY - abstract interventi

PRINTED MATTER: "Up in the Air" (Duellanti January 2010)

Jason Reitman's Up in the Air and Walter Kirn's Up in the Air are two different beasts. Not only because the former is a novel and the latter a movie. Reitman's dramedy took only a few ideas from the book - the premise, that is, and little more. In my review for the Jan 2010 issue of Duellanti magazine I don't compare & contrast the two, but I focus on the cinematic "adaptation", which I truly loved. If you're interested in the novel, check out this interview with Walter Kirn on NPR, which took place shortly after the publication (2001). If you are fond of non-places - and airports are perfect examples of what Marc Auge' called the architecture of surmodernity - don't miss this movie.

Click on the thumbnail to read the story (in Italian):