Description
Book SynopsisThis book modifies the concept of performativity with media theory in order to build a rigorous method for analyzing videogame performances. Beginning with an interdisciplinary exploration of performative motifs in Western art and literary history, the book shows the importance of framing devices in orienting audiences’ experience of art. The frame, as a site of paradox, links the book’s discussion of theory with close readings of texts, which include artworks, books and videogames. The resulting method is interdisciplinary in scope and will be of use to researchers interested in the performative aspects of gaming, art, digital storytelling and nonlinear narrative.
Table of Contents1. Introduction: Videogames as PerformancesPart I. Framing Devices: Performative Loops in Literature and Art History2. How to Do Things With Images3. What is
Rhyparography?: The Ambiguity of the Framing Device4. 'Fanciful Microscopy': Framing Devices and Uncertainty in Pynchon's
The Crying of Lot 49Part II. Anterior Motives: Performance in Videogames5. Anterior Motives: From Subjective Shot to
Portal’s Figure of Reversal6. Performative MultiplicitiesPart III. The Body Eclectic: Distortion, Distraction and Tactile Experience7. Serial Aesthetics: Gaming’s Metamorphic Bodies and Baudelaire's 'Argot Plastique'8. Physical Wit: Games and the 'Tactile Unconscious'Part IV. Performative Multiplicities: A Method for Analyzing Videogame Performances9. The Nip and the Byte: Analogue and Digital Performances in Videogames10. Time Invaders: Conceptualizing Performative Game TimeConclusion
