Arjen Mulder is a media theorist, writer, and editor for V2_Publishing and of De Gids.
Marshall McLuhan, Counterblast, Rapp amp; Whiting Limited, Londen 1970.
44. Shapes – Caroline Nevejan
Clutter
In the summer of my 26th year I completely lost the capacity to read. I had hit my head badly and a severe concussion made me instantly illiterate. As I slowly walked the streets through the heart of Amsterdam in a large hat, I was surprised at how streets appeared to be full of text; I had never realized this before. They were full of cluttered signs randomly organized and blocking the buildings from view. Why do people need so much text? Why do we put it everywhere, as if nothing can be left without a mark?
Blur
After a few days the illiteracy did not disappear and I realized I would have to learn how to read again. But I could not see the shape of signs, I did not recognize any letter. So I started to do Tangram, the game in which you make different shapes with the same 7 pieces. On and off I would try to make shapes and make the same shape again. Slowly I improved. After about a week I opened a Donald Duck magazine. First the exclamations opened up and bit by bit more letters and even words. It was a strange experience that after another week I could read Donald Duck, but at the same time the newspaper still remained a blur. I remembered this experience from when I was a child: learning to read, but not being able to read ‘grown up’ things. Apparently when you cannot handle a more complex level of the same thing, it goes back to the state of blur.
Looking through
So after Donald Duck I went into the women’s magazines and by the time I could read those (advertising especially was fun in the beginning) slowly the newspaper opened up. By now I was training several hours a day and I could read faster and faster. I was immersed in trying to make sense of more blur and more blur, puzzled by how my brain was adapting in this exponential manner. After 4 weeks I even read complex French and German texts that I could hardly read before. My focus and training on ‘looking through shapes’ had a deep impact on my understanding.
Opening up
The experience of letters ‘opening up’ is strange. One has to be able to recognize the shape to be able to read the words. But once reading, you don’t see the shape anymore, only words and meaning surface. Learning to read seemed to be learning to look through shapes and not at shapes. Peripheral attention registers the shapes, but words, sounds, and meaning emerge from behind and through the shapes. Letters are like the mise-en-scène of language, setting the stage for the theatre of mediated communication. Only when you grab the mise-en-scène do words acquire meaning and communication flows.
Centre Stage
Letters opening up requires me to move my attention into the place where letters are located. On the many devices connecting to the Internet, however, letters pass by in instantaneous configurations of a never ending mise-en-scène. I am put centre stage, where mobile letter carriers embrace my body with their bliebs and sounds and colour my personal environment. No looking through is required here; opening up one’s self is the only way in or out. All is here. What is it that we do not look at now?
Caroline Nevejan is a researcher and designer focusing on the implications of technology on society.
45. Achievement Unlocked! – David B. Nieborg
It is a question that keeps recurring among game critics. What if games had the same social status as literature? A gamer can search through the supplements of the Dutch quality newspapers and although there is well-wrought literary criticism, there is remarkably little intellectual reflection about games. And that is a pity for fervent readers and hardcore gamers have a lot to tell each other.
There is a world to be gained in the way in which stories are told in the average blockbuster game, such as the popular first-person shooter games Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, or Halo. The stories in these games can be summarized in one sentence and act as an excuse to paste a series of explosions and game locations one after another. There is seldom any narrative depth. Yet these games are played a lot. In fact, it is probable that many young gamers gain greater insight into modern warfare through digital games, than through books about the war in Fallujah, Baghdad , or the Korengal Valley .
The how (they fight) question is answered rather precisely by game designers. The why question is seldom addressed. Even though the interactive character of games can present the player with moral dilemmas in a different and more direct way than in books. In a war game, the question ‘What would you have done?’ is translated into ‘What do you do?’ Actually, authors in particular can help create believable characters, ambiguous choices, and applying many shades of grey.
Conversely, game makers can help tempt gamers to dive into war books. For games are not played for no reason. Before, during, and after the game, you constantly receive feedback from the game about how good you have been. Achievement unlocked then appears in the television picture. Such virtual medals can then be seen by all gaming friends.
Structurally speaking, there is nothing to prevent publishers and writers of books from adding such game elements to the book. Perhaps not in its paper form, but the average e-reader, tablet, or digital bookshelf is powerful and networked enough to add so-called ‘paratextual’ elements to the book. What if you could become better in reading books and could share that with the whole world?
David B. Nieborg is researcher and teacher at the University of Amsterdam and Utrecht with a focus on online participation and gaming culture.
46. U-turn – Kali Nikitas
Alternative paths towards reading to achieve maximum knowledge, in the shortest period of time, with approval from peers on content consumed and delivery method, tackling any insecurity about missed information or simply not being smart enough, not knowing how to manage time, racing to consume material that will make you more civic, a better conversationalist, a humanitarian, a braggart, fighting the fear of memory loss, and sneaking away into the corners of texts on lady gaga, fashion updates when the nagging continues pulling you back to world news even though you can’t stand the misfortunes of others and your only concern is 'do I really' or rather 'can I really take the time to enjoy the comics?'
Kali Nikitas is the Chair of MFA Graphic Design + Communication Arts of the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles .