Vivek

[artsclevervivek]

Critical Analysis

Grennan, S. and Hague, I. (2018) ‘Medium, knowledge, structure: capacities for choice and the contradiction of medium-specificity in games and comics’, Image & Narrative, 19(1), pp. 76–77. (https://www.imageandnarrative.be/index.php/imagenarrative/article/view/1765)

Introduction For this critical analysis, I’m focusing on a passage from Simon Grennan and Ian Hague’s article Medium, knowledge, structure. The piece sits in that long-running debate about “medium specificity” the idea that games do something fundamentally different from other narrative forms (like novels or comics), mainly because games include interactivity and choice.

The section I’m working with discusses open-world role-playing games especially The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011) and Fallout: New Vegas (2010) as examples where plot, time, and choice don’t behave like they do in conventional narratives. What I found useful here is that Grennan and Hague don’t just say “games are interactive”; they get more precise about where the difference sits: how player-time, story-time, and the “telling” of events tangle together during play.

What the authors are trying to argue The extract builds its point carefully. It starts from something very straightforward: these games don’t force you to follow a single “core quest” in a fixed order. You can ignore the main storyline for hours, bounce between side quests, wander, loot, talk to NPCs, or just explore.

From there, Grennan and Hague make their bigger move: they bring in Seymour Chatman’s distinction between story-time (the time of events in the story world) and discourse-time (the time of the narration/presentation). Instead of throwing narratology out, they adapt it to argue that, in open-world play, story-time and discourse-time collapse into the same present moment because the “story” is not fully there in advance as a completed sequence. It becomes real only as the player triggers events and links them through action.

That claim is one of the strongest parts of the passage. It reframes “choice” as a structural feature rather than a lack of narrative. In other words: the plot isn’t missing; it’s assembled through play.

Where the passage is strong One reason this section works is that the argument doesn’t float in abstraction. It stays anchored in how these games actually feel: you are always operating in “now-time,” making decisions, and producing a particular order of events. It’s also strong that the authors anticipate a common objection: “But stories have fixed, teleological plots , games don’t.” Rather than dismissing that, they respond by saying that stories and games are both unrealised until someone experiences them. You don’t get the novel’s story without reading; you don’t get the game’s story without playing.

I also like the way they handle the idea of “freedom.” They acknowledge that open-world games allow lots of permutations, but they don’t romanticise that as infinite agency. The player’s choices are always bounded by what the code, systems, and world rules allow. When they connect constraints to something like verisimilitude (the sense of “this is believable within this world”), it becomes a more grounded argument: the player is free inside a designed structure, not outside it.

The section becomes most persuasive when it shifts toward narration. Their idea of a “game utterance” that narration in games includes visuals, sound, movement, interface, system feedback, and interaction is a useful expansion beyond purely language-based storytelling. It also links back to their earlier point: the “utterance” is never fully delivered upfront; it’s revealed in pieces, depending on what the player does.

Where I’m not fully convinced (and why) Even though the argument is convincing overall, I think the wording can sometimes make the difference between stories and games feel sharper than it actually is.

For example, the claim that there is “no pre-existing plot” in these games risks being overstated. There is authored narrative content: quest chains, scripted scenes, gated progression, and pre-written outcomes. What’s different is not that plot doesn’t exist, but that plot order and emphasis are partially reorganised by the player. So I’d phrase the point more as: the authored plot exists as possibility-space, and the player’s route through it is what becomes “the plot” in experience.

Related to that: the passage leans heavily on open-world RPGs as the core example. That’s fine for Skyrim/New Vegas, but it raises the question of how well the model travels to games with tighter sequences (linear action games, puzzle games, walking sims, or heavily scripted story games). If the article is arguing against rigid medium-specificity, it’s slightly ironic that it depends on a very specific game structure to make the case. The core point still holds, but the scope feels narrower than the theoretical conclusion sometimes suggests.

Finally, the comparison to non-game texts like Saporta and Chris Ware is smart, because it prevents the argument from becoming “games are unique, end of story.” But it also opens a tension: if certain comics and novels already produce “ludic” or choice-like structures, then maybe the difference isn’t “game vs comic” so much as how a text controls event-order vs presentation-order. The article is already heading there I just wanted it to say that part more bluntly.

Conclusion Overall, I think this extract is strong because it gives a precise vocabulary for something players already recognise: in open-world RPGs, time, plot, and choice are experienced as an ongoing present, not as a completed storyline you’re simply being told. Grennan and Hague make a convincing case that the key issue isn’t whether games “have narratives,” but how narrative structure is produced through action inside designed constraints.

What I take from it (especially as someone interested in making game worlds) is that “story” can be treated less like a fixed arc and more like a designed field of possible events where meaning comes from the route a player assembles, not just from the content itself.

[artsclevervivek]

Reader

Dickey, M.D. (2005) ‘Engaging by design: How engagement strategies in popular computer and video games can inform instructional design’, Educational Technology Research and Development, 53, pp. 67–83. (https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02504866)

Dickey breaks down why mainstream games hold attention so well, and argues that those same engagement tactics can be borrowed for instructional design.

The paper highlights how games position the learner inside a role, then keep them moving through problems, feedback, and a sense of progress. It points to things like point-of-view/player positioning, narrative framing, and interactive design choices that encourage participation rather than passive reception. What I like here is the focus on learning as something embedded in context: you’re not just told information, you’re pushed to act, interpret, and adjust based on consequences.

Even though the examples are from 2005 and feel dated in terms of technology, the underlying principles still map onto newer immersive and AI-driven systems. It gives me a useful checklist for thinking about how to design “engagement” without relying on novelty alone.

Farina, A. (2025) Visual semiotics and digital game spaces: review of the semiotics of architecture in video games. Semiotica, Vol. 2025 (Issue 264), pp. 195-200.( https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2024-0086)

Farina reviews Gabriele Aroni’s work on the semiotics of architecture in video games, treating game environments as sign systems rather than neutral background decoration.

A key point is that virtual architecture doesn’t just “look” a certain way it communicates function and values. Farina draws on Eco’s idea of denotation/connotation to argue that spaces signal what they are for (paths, barriers, entrances) while also suggesting ideology and mood, especially since game worlds are fully designed and nothing is accidental. The review also stresses movement and “anticipatory play”: routes, thresholds, landmarks, lighting, and materials act like clues that guide players before any dialogue explains what’s going on. Aroni’s case studies range across genres, including Assassin’s Creed II, Final Fantasy XV, and NaissanceE.

For my own practice, this sharpens how I read level design as meaning-making: what a space teaches through layout, rhythm, and constraint. It’s a review, not a deep artefact analysis, but the vocabulary feels immediately usable.

Grennan, S. and Hague, I. (2018) ‘Medium, knowledge, structure: capacities for choice and the contradiction of medium-specificity in games and comics’, Image & Narrative, 19(1), pp. 74–86. (https://www.imageandnarrative.be/index.php/imagenarrative/article/view/1765) 

Grennan and Hague look at how “choice” works across games and comics, and use that to question strict ideas of medium-specificity.

The paper compares Chris Ware’s Building Stories with open-world RPGs like ** Fallout: New Vegas and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim**. Their key point is that Building Stories lets you choose the order of reading/presentation, but it doesn’t let you change the order of events in the same way the games do (and they also mention other non-game texts like Saporta’s Composition No. 1 when thinking about event order). They build the discussion using narrative theory (including Chatman, plus game/text theory like Frasca and Aarseth) to argue that “choice” is a structural issue, not a simple badge that only games have.

I find this useful because it pushes me to think about interactivity as structure (what kinds of choices exist, and what they actually change) rather than treating “games vs comics” as totally separate categories. It also helps me frame my own practice around designed constraints -what choices I’m giving the player/viewer, and whether those choices affect events or only the order they’re encountered.

Han, Y., & Ho, X. (2024). “More Than Just Playing a Character”: Gender Exploration and Expression in Avatar Customization. Games and Culture, 0(0). (https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120241307982)

Han and Ho argue that avatar customisation isn’t just a cosmetic menu: it can become a space where players test, express, and negotiate gender.

They base the study on semi-structured interviews with 20 players across different countries who described a range of gender identities. The authors identify three recurring patterns: conforming to or deliberately bending gender norms, building an avatar that symbolises aspects of the self, and experimenting with identities that might feel risky or unavailable offline. What stuck with me is how players keep finding ways around “binary” systems by mixing cues and pushing limited options creatively.

For my own writing and practice, it gives me language for talking about representation as something players actively do, not only something a game passively shows. The sample is small and self-reported, so it can’t claim universality, but it’s still a strong fit for this module’s politics/identity angle.

Lee, L.-K., Wei, X., Chui, K. T., Cheung, S. K. S., Wang, F. L., Fung, Y.-C., Lu, A., Hui, Y. K., Hao, T., U, L. H., & Wu, N.-I. (2024). A Systematic Review of the Design of Serious Games for Innovative Learning: Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, or Mixed Reality? Electronics, 13(5), 890. (https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics13050890) 

Lee and colleagues map how serious games are being designed for “innovative learning” across AR, VR, and MR, and what design patterns keep repeating in the research.

They follow a PRISMA-style systematic review process and synthesise a large body of studies (they report 273 relevant papers). Instead of treating immersive tech as a single category, they compare how different modalities are used, what interaction techniques show up, and how projects are evaluated. The review reads like a toolbox: it pulls together frameworks, design elements, and common evaluation approaches, but it doesn’t always push hard on which choices work better and why.

What I’m taking from it is mainly orientation. It gives me a practical way to justify design decisions in an immersive learning prototype, while reminding me I’ll still need to add my own critical lens around context, culture, and what “learning outcomes” actually mean.

Paredes-Olea, M. (2009) Procedural realism in computer strategy games. MA thesis. University of Alberta.(https://doi.org/10.7939/R3G98B)

Paredes-Olea argues that “realism” in strategy games isn’t mainly about convincing graphics, but about how the game’s procedures make the world behave over time.

Using computer strategy games (including Age of Empires III) as touchpoints, the thesis develops “procedural realism” through system-focused game theory, drawing on writers like Bogost and Galloway. The attention stays on mechanics and interfaces: tech trees, resource loops, unit rules, and feedback that quietly teach the player what “progress” looks like and which kinds of power feel normal inside the simulation. Repetition matters here by playing, you learn the model’s cause-and-effect logic.

This shifted my own view of realism from representation to operation. Instead of asking whether a game depicts history accurately, I’m pushed to ask what its systems assume about history. It’s dense in places, but it’s a strong way to read mechanics as cultural arguments.

Petra Jääskeläinen and Cecilia Åsberg. 2024. What’s the Look of "Negative Gender" and “Max Ethnicity” in AI-Generated Images? A Critical Visual Analysis of the Intersectional Politics of Portrayal. In Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 570, 1–9. (https://doi.org/10.1145/3613905.3644057 )

Jääskeläinen and Åsberg explore what “neutral” actually looks like in AI image generation by testing prompt settings like “negative gender” and “max ethnicity”, and then reading the outputs as political images rather than technical results.

Working with tools such as ArtBreeder and Midjourney, they show how the interface and prompt logic can steer users into familiar visual stereotypes: removing gender markers doesn’t produce an empty category, and pushing ethnicity to the maximum can amplify racialised cues instead of offering nuance. Their point is that bias isn’t only “in the dataset” it also sits in defaults, sliders, and the way the system invites you to describe bodies and identities.

This matters to my AI-assisted workflow because it’s a reminder that prompts and constraints are design decisions with cultural consequences. It makes me want to test outputs more critically, document patterns, and add guardrails when I use generated imagery.

Rodriguez-Garcia, B., Ramírez-Sanz, J. M., Miguel-Alonso, I., & Bustillo, A. (2024). Enhancing Learning of 3D Model Unwrapping through Virtual Reality Serious Game: Design and Usability Validation. Electronics, 13(10), 1972. (https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics13101972)

This paper presents a VR serious game built to teach UV unwrapping, treating it as a skill that’s hard to grasp through demos alone.

Their game, Unwrap 3D Virtual: Ready (UVR), is organised into four levels that ramp up complexity and uses animation plus gamification, explicitly tied to Mayer’s Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning. They validate it with 53 students, grouping participants by device (PC vs VR) and by prior VR experience (low/mid/high). The evaluation leans toward usability and user-behaviour patterns rather than long-term skill transfer.

For my own 3D workflow learning, the main takeaway is how much easier “technical” knowledge becomes when the interface shows causality and allows safe repetition. I’d treat it as strong design evidence, but not final proof of durable learning outcomes.

Taheri, M., Cyma-Wejchenig, M., Gomes, L. and Tan, K. (2026) ‘Adaptive historical education through generative AI and immersive game design’, in Arai, K. (ed.) Proceedings of the Future Technologies Conference (FTC) 2025, Volume 1. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol. 1675. Cham: Springer. (https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-07986-2_6) 

Taheri and colleagues outline how generative AI could support adaptive history learning inside an immersive game, where the content shifts in response to a player’s choices and progress.

They propose a framework that mixes AI-driven narrative generation with interactive environments so that history is experienced through action (exploring, deciding, dealing with consequences) rather than only being “told”. The interesting part for me is the focus on the system: the game is treated as a learning process that can personalise scenarios, pacing, and feedback, instead of delivering one fixed storyline to everyone.

This connects with our class discussions about learning through simulation and agency, but I also felt the paper is still early-stage. It reads more like a concept/prototype than a long-term study, so the evidence for learning outcomes is limited. Even so, it helped me think about what guardrails you’d need to balance accuracy with engagement when AI is generating or reshaping historical material.

Zhang, Y. and Li, S. (2023) ‘Texts to games: Tracing intertextuality, intermediality and intermateriality in Chinese cultivation games and novels’, Journal of Games, Virtual Worlds and Social Reality, 5(1), pp. 1–18. (https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/jgvw_00101_1)

Yu Hao traces how Chinese “cultivation” games develop out of web novels, mythic traditions and fan culture, rather than appearing as standalone game texts.

Using examples like Jade Dynasty and The Legend of Sword and Fairy, the article shows how these games lean on players already recognising cultivation tropes power-up hierarchies, archetypal roles and genre expectations, so the world makes sense through familiarity. Hao frames this through a movement from intertextuality (shared story patterns) to intermediality (novels, games and other formats feeding each other) and then to intermateriality, where distribution, technology and commercial systems shape what stories can travel and how.

What stuck with me is the idea that recognition can act like a design shortcut: you don’t always need to explain everything if the audience brings the genre knowledge with them. Even though it’s very grounded in Chinese contexts, it gives me a better way to think about games as ecosystems, not isolated works.

[artsclevervivek]

When One Grid Becomes the World

Sources and Significance Blog Post - 10

Race, Identity, and the “neutral” look of global design

There is no neutral way of seeing or designing. What gets presented as “universal” often comes from a specific history, a specific location, and a specific set of values that have become normalised through power (Haraway, 1988). With that in mind, I want to treat a “media object” as something broader than film or games: modernist / international-style architecture in global cities, and the grid logic it carries.

The media object: modernism as the global default

Walk through major cities today and the skyline starts to blur. Glass towers. Clean lines. Modular repetition. The visual language is recognisable across places that otherwise have very different climates, histories, and cultures. Modernist architecture often frames itself as efficient, rational, and universal. But that universality is doing ideological work. If we follow Hall’s argument that representation is not reflection but meaning-making through shared codes, then the modernist grid is not just a style it’s a coded claim about what counts as “order,” “progress,” and “good taste” (Hall, 1997).

1) What does it exclude? Exclusion through “good taste”

The exclusions here aren’t only about who can access these buildings. They are also about who gets to be visible as modern. Architectural traditions rooted in local contexts—vernacular housing, courtyard-based planning, climate-responsive construction, symbolic geometry, ornamented façades—are often treated as “outdated,” “informal,” or “too much.” In practice, this disproportionately sidelines non-Western and racialised histories of building and space. Whole ways of organising life and community get treated as noise in relation to the grid’s promise of clarity.

This is where the lecture’s politics of representation becomes tangible to me: one design language becomes the default, and others become “variation,” “culture,” or “inspiration” rather than equal systems of knowledge (University of Hertfordshire, 2025; Haraway, 1988). The grid looks like neutrality, but it functions like a filter.

2) Can it be “fixed”? Beyond cosmetic diversity

I don’t think the problem is solved by adding surface motifs ornament as decoration pasted onto modern structures. That becomes cosmetic diversity rather than structural change. The deeper issue is that modernist systems often treat emptiness, reduction, symmetry, and minimal surface as inherently superior values. Meanwhile, density, repetition, layered symbolism, or ornate craft are framed as excess.

This is why I find the discussion hard to resolve cleanly: if modernist architecture is embedded in global capitalism—speed, scalability, branding—then “fixing” it may require confronting the economic system that rewards standardisation. What becomes important, then, is not whether modernism can be corrected into fairness, but whether we can learn to see its universality claim as historically produced rather than natural.

3) What strategies help me avoid bias? Unlearning neutrality

The most important shift for me is to stop treating Western modernism as the “default grid” that everything else must adapt to. Haraway’s “situated knowledges” helps here: it pushes me to ask from where a visual system speaks and whose worldview it is making feel natural (Haraway, 1988). Once I take that seriously, the grid stops being a technical tool and becomes a cultural construct—a choice that carries politics.

This doesn’t mean rejecting modernism completely. It means recognising that “clarity” and “order” are not universal values with one visual solution. For me, the key is learning to recognise when a design system is quietly flattening difference in the name of universality.

Conclusion: how visual systems teach us to value people

Modernist architecture shapes more than skylines. It shapes how we learn to value order, progress, and legitimacy. When one visual system is positioned as universal, it marginalises other systems by treating them as tradition, heritage, or noise. The session helped me name this as political rather than personal taste: how we organise space reflects how we value people, and the “neutral” grid is never as neutral as it looks.

References

Hall, S. (1997) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage.

Haraway, D. (1988) ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective’, Feminist Studies, 14(3), pp. 575–599.

Harding, S. (1991) Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women’s Lives. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Hitchcock, H.-R. and Johnson, P. (1932) The International Style: Architecture Since 1922. New York: W.W. Norton.

Rovine, V.L. (2015) African Fashion, Global Style: Histories, Innovations, and Ideas You Can Wear. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Said, E.W. (1978) Orientalism. London: Penguin

[artsclevervivek]

XR is not something you look at. It’s something you breathe through.

Source and Significance Blog Post - 9

Why embodied, affective XR matters more than visual spectacle

Most conversations around XR still sound like a spec sheet. Resolution. Fidelity. Field of view. How real it looks. 

This assumes immersion is primarily visual. If XR looks convincing enough, presence will follow.

Bolter and Grusin argue that VR positions itself as a medium that wants to disappear, chasing immediacy by erasing awareness of mediation (Bolter and Grusin, 1999). The goal is to forget the interface. But disappearance does not guarantee depth.It can just as easily flatten experience into spectacle. The real question is not how real XR looks, but how meaningfully it is felt.

Beyond eyes and hands

Mainstream VR often reduces the body to two functions: seeing and grabbing.You look. You interact. You complete tasks. 

Char Davies’ Osmose (1995) resists this model entirely. Movement in Osmose is controlled through breathing and balance rather than buttons. Inhaling lifts you. Exhaling lets you descend. Navigation becomes physiological. This matters because it challenges the idea that interaction must be active and goal-driven. The user does not act on the environment. They drift within it (Chan, 2014).The body is no longer an interface layered onto the world. It is already part of the system.

Feeling before doing

This is where XR becomes affective rather than task-based. Affect here is not about dramatic emotion. It refers to intensity felt through the body before conscious interpretation.

Marshmallow Laser Feast’s We Live in an Ocean of Air works in this register. There are no objectives, no puzzles, no rewards. Instead, the experience draws attention to breath, proximity, and invisible biological processes. Immersion emerges through bodily awareness rather than interaction. Wilson describes this as an “attending to attention”, where participants become more aware of their own bodies instead of being absorbed in action (Wilson, 2020).

This exposes a limitation of game-centred XR design. When experience becomes task-driven, the body often becomes secondary.

XR as a relationship, not a simulation

What connects Osmose and We Live in an Ocean of Air is a relational understanding of XR.

These works do not simulate worlds to be mastered. They construct relationships between body, environment, and technology. Massumi argues that the virtual is not an illusion opposing reality, but a dimension of reality itself, something lived rather than represented (Massumi, 2014). This reframing resists the hyperreal logic described by Baudrillard, where simulation risks becoming “more real than the real” (Baudrillard, 1988).

Instead of escalating realism, relational XR focuses on presence and co-existence.

When interaction breaks immersion

Game design often assumes that more interaction equals more immersion. This assumption is fragile.

Ryan argues that excessive logical interaction can interrupt psychological immersion by keeping users in a constant state of decision-making (Ryan, 2003). When players are always choosing, optimising, and solving, they remain cognitively alert rather than affectively absorbed. This explains why minimal XR experiences can feel deeper than complex interactive ones.More input does not automatically create more presence.

What this means for XR and games

According to me, if XR is embodied, affective, and relational, realism stops being the goal. And sensitivity replaces it.

Design questions shift to What actions should the player perform?What bodily states does the experience invite? When should the system respond, and when should it remain quiet? This opens space for XR that is slower, less extractive, and less obsessed with mastery. XR does not need to disappear as a medium, it needs to breathe alongside us.That shift may be its most radical move.

References

Baudrillard, J. (1988) Selected Writings. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Bolter, J.D. and Grusin, R. (1999) Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Chan, M. (2014) Virtual Reality: Representations in Contemporary Media. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

Massumi, B. (2014) ‘Envisioning the virtual’, in Grimshaw, M. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–17.

Ryan, M.-L. (2003) Narrative as Virtual Reality. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Wilson, H.R. (2020) ‘New ways of seeing, feeling, being: intimate encounters in virtual reality performance’, International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, 16(2), pp. 114–133.

[artsclevervivek]

Games don’t just make us feel.

Source and Significance Blog Post - 8

Affect, interaction, and the quiet business of intensity in games

Before I read about affect theory, I thought emotional impact in games came mostly from story. Characters. Music. Big narrative moments. What I learned is that games work on the body first. Long before I name what I’m feeling, my hands tense, my breathing shifts, my attention narrows. Affect operates at this pre-conscious level. It’s not emotion yet. It’s intensity. A capacity to affect and be affected (Gregg and Seigworth, 2009).

Interaction is where affect starts

Playing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, I’m constantly doing something. Aiming. Reacting. Taking cover. Reloading under pressure. What the readings helped me realise is that this constant bodily input is not neutral. Interaction itself produces affect. The game doesn’t wait for meaning to emerge. It puts the body into a state of urgency immediately. Ash describes this as attunement. To play well, players must open their bodies to specific affective states like alertness, tension, and speed (Ash, 2013). Skill is learned through feeling.

Decision-making creates pressure, not meaning

What surprised me most is how little choice is needed to generate affective weight. In Call of Duty 4, many decisions are constrained, yet they still feel heavy. Being forced to act quickly, or to witness without control, creates bodily discomfort. The intensity comes from responsibility, not freedom. Freeman calls this “first-person deepening”. Emotional impact emerges because the player must live through consequences, even when they didn’t choose the situation (Freeman, 2004). I interpret this as games simulating ethical pressure through action, not explanation.

Affect is how games keep us engaged

What becomes clear is that affect isn’t just an outcome of play. It’s how games function. Fast feedback loops. Escalating difficulty. Constant threat. Call of Duty 4 holds the body in a state of readiness. Ash calls this a “politics of captivation”, where affective intensity is organised to maintain attention (Ash, 2013).From my perspective, immersion here isn’t accidental. It’s structured.What feels like being “pulled in” is also being held.

When affect becomes a product

Freeman is unusually honest about this. He frames emotion as a design tool. Something that can be engineered to create buzz, expand audiences, and gain competitive advantage (Freeman, 2004).This is where my reading became uncomfortable.

The player’s capacity to feel stress, attachment, and responsibility becomes a resource. Affect turns into engagement metrics. Emotional investment turns into profit.The body doesn’t just play the game.It works for it.

Playing differently once you see it

None of this means affect is bad. Affect is what makes games powerful.But what I take away from this session is awareness. Games don’t just tell stories or offer challenges. They actively shape how bodies respond to pressure, responsibility, and urgency.Once you see how interaction trains feeling, play changes.Not because it loses power.But because that power becomes visible.

References

Ash, J. (2013) ‘Technologies of captivation: Videogames and the attunement of affect’, Body & Society, 19(1), pp. 27–51. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1357034X11411737 

Freeman, D. (2004) ‘Creating emotion in games: The craft and art of emotioneering’, ACM Computers in Entertainment, 2(3), Article 8a. https://doi.org/10.1145/1103900.1103903

Gregg, M. and Seigworth, G.J. (2009) The Affect Theory Reader. Durham: Duke University Press. https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-affect-theory-reader

[artsclevervivek]

Harley Quinn on Screen: From Object to Agent

Source and Significance Blog Post - 7

Representation, gaze, and authorship in Suicide Squad (2016) and Birds of Prey (2020)

Image generated by ChatGPT

Why I chose Harley Quinn

What stood out to me when watching Suicide Squad (2016) and later Birds of Prey (2020) was not that Harley Quinn fundamentally “changed” as a character, but that the way I was positioned as a viewer changed. The films ask me to look at her differently.

This shift makes Harley a useful case study for analysing representation, gender, and power. Rather than focusing on character development alone, this comparison allows me to examine how meaning is produced through framing, authorship, and visual language, drawing directly on this week’s discussion of politics, diversity, and identity in media.

Characterisation: ownership versus subjectivity

In Suicide Squad, Harley’s characterisation is structured almost entirely around the Joker. Her backstory, emotional motivations, and moments of vulnerability orbit his presence, even when he is absent from the scene. She functions less as a subject with interiority and more as an extension of a male narrative.

This reflects Stuart Hall’s argument that representation does not simply reflect reality, but actively constructs meaning through repetition and framing (Hall, 1997). Harley’s “madness” is aestheticised and repeated as a visual motif rather than explored as a psychological condition. Her identity is stabilised through ownership.

In Birds of Prey, this structure is deliberately broken. Set after her breakup with the Joker, the film removes male ownership as the organising principle of her character. Harley now drives the narrative rather than reacting to it. Importantly, her contradictions are allowed to coexist. She is violent, humorous, vulnerable, and self-aware without being reduced to a single readable function.

Art direction and the gaze: who is the image for?

The visual style of Suicide Squad is loud and hyper-stylised, but its function frequently collapses into advertising logic. Harley’s costuming, combined with slow-motion shots and low camera angles, positions her within what Laura Mulvey defines as the male gaze, where women are framed primarily as objects of visual pleasure rather than narrative agents (Mulvey, 1975).

Here, style works to stabilise Harley as a consumable image.

In Birds of Prey, style remains central, but its purpose shifts. The colour palette is chaotic and playful rather than seductive, and the camera largely avoids fetishistic framing. I noticed that shots prioritise Harley’s movement, expressions, and reactions rather than isolating her body. This reframes visual excess as expressive rather than consumable, aligning with feminist critiques of visual culture discussed in the lecture .

Violence, humour, and gendered meaning

In Suicide Squad, Harley’s violence is frequently coded as “cute” or “sexy”. Humour and spectacle soften its impact, turning harm into a stylised performance. This risks neutralising violence by aestheticising it, making it easier to consume without consequence.

By contrast, Birds of Prey presents violence as physically demanding and messy. Harley falls, struggles, bleeds, and gets hurt. This removes the fantasy of effortless chaos and reintroduces consequence. For me, this shift resonates with Judith Butler’s argument that identity is performed and unstable rather than fixed or naturalised (Butler, 1990). Harley’s femininity is not coherent or controlled; it is excessive, unstable, and resistant to easy consumption.

Authorship and the politics of representation

Authorship plays a decisive role in this transformation. Suicide Squad, directed by David Ayer, reflects a franchise-driven, male-authored gaze that stabilises Harley into a recognisable and marketable icon.

Birds of Prey, directed by Cathy Yan and written by Christina Hodson, approaches Harley through a different politics of looking. The film does not attempt to redeem or idealise her. Instead, it allows her to be incoherent, excessive, and morally ambiguous without punishment.

This demonstrates that representation is shaped not only by characters on screen, but by who controls the camera, narrative structure, and visual priorities. Power operates behind the image as much as within it.

Conclusion: what this comparison shows

Comparing these two films made it clear to me that representation is not simply a question of character design or personality traits. It is about systems of looking.

Harley Quinn does not fundamentally change as a fictional figure. What changes is whose perspective structures the image and whose pleasure the image serves. Birds of Prey re-authors Harley through a different visual and political logic, showing how media can either reinforce dominant gender norms or actively challenge them through authorship, framing, and affective control.

References

Ayer, D. (2016) Suicide Squad [Film]. Warner Bros.

Berger, J. (1972) Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin.

Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.

Hall, S. (1997) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage.

Mulvey, L. (1975) ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’, Screen, 16(3), pp. 6–18.

Yan, C. (2020) Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) [Film]. Warner Bros.

[artsclevervivek]

Why Ways of Seeing still matters in games today

Source and Significance Blog Post - 6

John Berger’s Ways of Seeing (1972) argues that images are never neutral. How we see is shaped by culture, power, and habit. Although Berger was writing about painting, photography, and advertising, his central claim becomes even more urgent in contemporary video games, because games do not just present images. They position players inside systems of looking.

In games, the camera, mechanics, framing, and pacing do more than represent the world. They actively train the player how to look, judge, and feel. In this sense, games function as visual arguments. The Last of Us offers a strong example of how games can move away from spectacle and toward what I interpret as ethical ways of seeing.

The Last of Us: teaching the player how to see

From spectacle to lived perspective

Berger critiques classical visual culture for presenting the world as something to be looked at, often from a position of control or dominance (Berger, 1972). Many games historically follow this logic through wide heroic shots, power fantasies, and spectacle-first design.

The Last of Us deliberately resists this tradition. The camera remains close and restrained, rarely granting the player a dominant or panoramic view. Violence is slow, awkward, and heavy rather than cinematic. The world is framed as fragile and exhausted, not heroic.

Through these choices, the game refuses visual pleasure as an easy reward. In Berger’s terms, the image no longer invites ownership. It demands endurance. Suffering is not consumed visually, but made uncomfortable to witness and participate in.

Looking as responsibility, not ownership

In Ways of Seeing, Berger links vision to ownership, particularly in advertising and art, where to look is to possess (Berger, 1972). Games often inherit this logic. Seeing usually leads to conquering, looting, or mastering.

The Last of Us quietly disrupts this habit. You look at bodies, ruins, and violence, but the game never encourages you to enjoy them. Environmental storytelling through abandoned homes, children’s drawings, and personal notes slows the player down. These spaces are not resources to extract value from, but traces of lives interrupted.

I interpret this as a reframing of vision itself. Seeing no longer implies control. Instead, it becomes a form of ethical encounter. This directly aligns with Berger’s claim that images can either reinforce dominant power structures or actively resist them.

Reframing gender and the gaze through Ellie

Berger’s analysis of the gaze, particularly how women are positioned as objects to be looked at rather than agents who look, remains relevant here. While Laura Mulvey later formalised this critique in cinema, Berger establishes its visual foundations (Berger, 1972; Mulvey, 1975).

Ellie’s representation in The Last of Us actively challenges this tradition. She is not sexualised. The camera does not linger on her body. Crucially, her perspective increasingly shapes how the world is framed.By The Last of Us Part II, Ellie is not just seen. She is the primary seer. This reverses traditional visual hierarchies and places agency in perception itself. Berger’s critique becomes playable here. The image exists not for passive consumption, but for alignment, responsibility, and discomfort.

Violence and the politics of seeing

Berger warns that repeated images can normalise ideology (Berger, 1972). Many games normalise violence through repetition, reward systems, and spectacle.

The Last of Us does the opposite. Violence is framed as exhausting, morally ambiguous, and physically costly. Animations emphasise strain and hesitation. The player is forced to witness consequences, not just outcomes.

This design makes players aware of how games usually teach us to see violence, and then deliberately resists that training. Vision becomes a site of critique rather than reinforcement.

Why this matters for contemporary game design

Viewed through Berger’s lens, The Last of Us demonstrates that games are not just entertainment products or technical systems. They are ideological machines that shape perception.

What this analysis shows is that:

Games do not merely show worlds; they educate vision

Camera placement, pacing, and framing carry political meaning

Representation is not just about realism, but about ethical ways of seeing

For contemporary game designers, visual design cannot be separated from responsibility. The question is no longer simply whether something looks good, but what habits of looking it produces.

Conclusion

The Last of Us proves Berger right in a digital age: games do not just show us the world. They train us how to look at it, and in doing so, how to judge, care, and feel.

References

Berger, J. (1972) Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin.

Mulvey, L. (1975) ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’, Screen, 16(3), pp. 6–18.

Naughty Dog (2013) The Last of Us [Video game]. Sony Computer Entertainment.

Naughty Dog (2020) The Last of Us Part II [Video game]. Sony Interactive Entertainment.

[artsclevervivek]

Spider-Verse as Semiotics: How Color & Line Choices Speak

Source and Significance Blog Post - 5

What this post does (and why)

I’m using a single lens- paradigm vs syntagm (the style options available vs the way they’re combined) alongside Barthes’ denotation → connotation → myth - to read how Into/Across the Spider-Verse turns style into language. I’m looking at halftone dots, motion lines, and the red/blue palette not as decoration but as signs that tell us about identity, heroism, and belonging. In short: what we see (denotation) sets up what we feel (connotation) and what the film quietly naturalises as truth (myth) (Barthes, 2009; Chandler, 2002)

Evidence: six frames where style = sign

1.Halftone vs clean render - Miles vs Gwen

At the denotative level, the films look like comics in motion, halftone textures, inked contours, hand-drawn motion lines, even deliberate CMYK misregister. Those forms carry connotations- Miles’ grain and sketch signal process, DIY, becoming and Gwen’s watercolor pastels suggest grace, interiority and emotional clarity (McCloud, 1993; Barthes, 2009).

2 Red/blue palette tension

Color plays a clean semiotic game. Red punches urgency, risk, public action; blue holds thought, doubt, private feeling. When saturated reds invade a blue field, it isn’t just “pretty” it stages a binary opposition inside the frame: duty vs reflection. That opposition is a paradigmatic choice (which palette?) made legible through syntagm (how color, pose, and camera combine over time) (Chandler, 2002). 3 Motion lines & onomatopoeia (Bagel)

Motion lines and onomatopoeia push action into language: symbols that announce “speed/force/direction” with no dialogue. They’re placed at beats where cause-and-effect must read instantly a leap, a catch, a swing , so the syntagm (timing and placement) turns a stylistic option into a clear sign (McCloud, 1993).

4 CMYK misregister under stress

When color channels separate during stress, the film sneaks in an indexical tell: identity is wobbling now. It reads as anxiety without stating it. Here the myth peeks through: being a hero isn’t a stable essence ,it’s a negotiated practice, visible in the “errors” and edge-noise of the frame (Barthes, 2009).

5 Ben-Day dots in the environment

Ben-Day dots fold the page into the world, collapsing medium and diegesis. Connotation: heritage and belonging- the universe owns its comic lineage as lived reality. The resulting myth is elegant: heroism is learned in public, through a shared visual language; you don’t hide the medium you learn to speak it (Bolter and Grusin, 1999; Barthes, 2009).

6 Gwen’s pastel “drip” world (feeling as environment)

Gwen’s world externalises emotion: the environment repaints with her inner state. Denotation: color shift. Connotation: empathy and control. Myth: true power is emotional clarity - the world becomes readable when you are.

The short read: denotation → connotation → myth

Taken together, these cues make a consistent semiotic system. On the denotative layer, Spider-Verse looks like a printed comic animated: halftone, line, motion text, color channels. On the connotative layer, those forms speak character: Miles’ gritty dots imply unfinished identity; Gwen’s pastels imply interior poise; red/blue pairings stage duty vs reflection. The syntagm - how these selections are combined across frames builds beats where action is read as language (motion lines, Bagel) and stress is felt as process (CMYK drift). The myth that gets naturalised is that heroism is not a fixed look but a constant negotiation between impulse and care, public sign and private feeling (Barthes, 2009). In other words, style is sign, and meaning arrives from both the paradigm (what choices are available) and their combination (how they’re arranged) (Chandler, 2002). That’s exactly the toolkit outlined in our semiotics session: signifier → signified, denotation → connotation → myth, and structured oppositions. Conclusion

I learned that style isn’t garnish: halftone, motion lines, and palette work as signs that carry story even in silence. Mapping denotation → connotation exposes the film’s myth, changing how I read every frame. Paradigm vs syntagm is a practical tool what matters less is the menu of styles and more how they’re combined; tiny shifts (where a red accent lands, when a CMYK drift appears) can recode meaning without changing the model. Indexical tells like slight channel misregister communicate state faster than dialogue by pointing to something happening now. Finally, I’m watching for naturalised ideology (e.g., red = duty, blue = reflection): spotting these patterns is the step from enjoying a look to reading a language the core gain of a Barthes pass

References

Barthes, R. (2009) Mythologies. London: Vintage. Bolter, J.D. and Grusin, R. (1999) Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chandler, D. (2002) Semiotics: The Basics. London: Routledge. McCloud, S. (1993) Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: William Morrow. Miller, P., Ramsey, B. and Persichetti, P. (2018) Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse [Film]. USA: Sony Pictures Animation. Dos Santos, J., Powers, K. and Thompson, J. (2023) Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse [Film]. USA: Sony Pictures Animation.

[artsclevervivek]

Believable then Playable

Reading GTA’s “realism” through Immediacy & Hypermediacy

Source and Significance Blog Post - 4

In this post I focus on one framework-immediacy vs hypermediacy (Bolter & Grusin, 1999)-to track how Grand Theft Auto moved from representing a city to simulating one across GTA III → IV → V → VI (trailer). I’m asking a simple question: when does GTA feel “real,” and why? I argue that early games make the medium disappear (immediacy) through atmosphere and continuity, while later entries show the seams (hypermediacy) phones, radio, HUD, feeds yet still feel real because systems, physics and audio hold the fiction together (Bolter and Grusin, 1999).

Lens

Immediacy tries to erase the interface so we “forget” we’re looking through a medium; hypermediacy calls attention to mediation—windows, overlays, feeds—but can still feel authentic through density and self-awareness (Bolter and Grusin, 1999). I’m applying that lens to the series while noting the engine shift from RenderWare to RAGE, which enabled a move from representational tricks to systemic behaviour (Rockstar Games, 2014).

RenderWare era - GTA III, Vice City, San Andreas

Replaying GTA III (2001), I’m struck by how much realism arrives from continuity and atmosphere: day–night cycles, traffic patterns, ambient radio and weather. Physics are gamey, but the camera, cuts and soundbeds keep the interface out of the way—classic immediacy. Vice City (2002) leans even harder on style—soundtrack, colour, VO—so place and time feel convincing without deeper simulation. San Andreas (2004) scales to a whole state and adds light RPG systems (skills, body stats), nudging towards behaviour, yet the primary sell is still representational: the medium “disappears” behind mood and rhythm.

The pivot RAGE

GTA IV (2008) feels different because bodies and vehicles respond. Euphoria’s procedural animation and Havok physics produce micro-events-scrapes, stumbles, weight shifts-that I negotiate rather than just watch. Paradoxically, this resistance increases immediacy: I’m present because the world pushes back. The city stops being a set and becomes a system; even with visible UI, the feel is immediate (Rockstar Games, 2014).

GTA V (2013) - balancing immediacy and hypermediacy

GTA V keeps systemic credibility but tunes handling for flow. The next-gen first-person mode is textbook immediacy-windshield, head-bob, occluded sirens, and muzzle flash all pull the interface out of mind. Yet V also embraces hypermediacy: smartphones, radio, TV, weapon wheels, map pop-ups. Instead of breaking realism, these layers feel true to a media-saturated Los Santos; dense mediation becomes part of the world’s authenticity (Bolter and Grusin, 1999; Rockstar Games, 2014). I found sound and physics doing the heavy realism lift: traffic layers, room tone, and suspension noise made me believe the street more than texture counts.

Immediacy on tap (FP), with hypermediated layers still in play

GTA VI (trailer) — ambient simulation as hypermediated realism

From the GTA VI trailer, the latest RAGE iteration foregrounds ambient truthfulness: ray-traced lighting and reflections, dense crowds, hair and cloth behaviour, and a camera that feels filmic while surfing highly mediated frames (Digital Foundry, 2023; Rockstar Games, 2023). Even before interaction, scenes read as “on”—neon bounce on chrome, wet sidewalks, social feeds—hypermediated yet convincing because the systems are consistent shot-to-shot.

What I learned

Across the series, GTA’s “real” doesn’t live in pixels alone. Immediacy shows up as continuity, physics and audio that make me forget the interface; hypermediacy shows up as visible media layers that still feel true because cities are saturated with media. The engine shift (RenderWare → RAGE) matters because it lets representation give way to behaviour—the world acts back. For my own work, I’ll A/B the same 20–30s slice in Unreal:

Immediacy pass: HUD-free, FP camera, continuity-first sound mix;

Hypermediacy pass: diegetic phone prompts, signage overlays, radio bed. I’ll log which version peers call “more real” for the task (Bolter and Grusin, 1999).

Reference

Bazin, A. (1967) What is Cinema? Vol. 1. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Bolter, J.D. and Grusin, R. (1999) Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Rockstar Games (2014) ‘Grand Theft Auto V — First-Person Mode and next-gen features’ [News post]. Rockstar Newswire. (Accessed: 13 November 2025).

Rockstar Games (2023) ‘Grand Theft Auto VI — Trailer 1’ [Video]. Rockstar Games/YouTube. (Accessed: 13 November 2025).

Digital Foundry (2023) ‘GTA 6 Trailer 1 — Tech analysis’ [Video/article]. Eurogamer / DF YouTube. (Accessed: 13 November 2025).

Wikipedia (n.d.) ‘Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE)’. (Accessed: 13 November 2025).

Wikipedia (n.d.) ‘Grand Theft Auto V’. (Accessed: 13 November 2025).

[artsclevervivek]

Signals in the Rain

Bat-Signal across Comics, Film & Games

Source and Significance Blog Post - 3

Suddenly a gigantic cone of light pierces the dusk of day and etches an eerie symbol against a black cloud—the silhouette of a giant bat -Detective Comics #60 (1942), DC Comics.

Why the Bat-Signal?

When we covered intertextuality in the lecture, the first thing that hit me was Batman. I’ve read, watched, and played this world across comics, films, the animated series, and the Arkham games—so the motif that surfaced immediately was the Bat-Signal. A single image switches Gotham on in our heads—Gordon’s pact, city in crisis, vigilante en route. Each appearance cites the rest: intertext at a glance.

Intertextuality

Inside the franchise: it instantly loads the Gordon - Batman pact and Gotham’s “always-in-crisis” state.

As a genre cue: it’s superhero shorthand - vigilante justice, a public call to action, a night-time civic ritual.

When flipped: deconstructions land (villains hijack it, cops smash/cover it) because we already know the default meaning the lamp usually carries.

Why the Bat-Signal travels so well

Transmedia (Jenkins): the same icon shows up in comics, films, TV, games even marketing but each medium does something different with it.

Hyperdiegesis (Hills): the lamp hints at a bigger, mostly unseen Gotham system - who ordered it, who maintains it, police politics, street rumours , so the world feels deep and consistent.

What each medium adds

Comics: panel-filling punctuation—the visual contract between city and vigilante.

Film: sound + orchestration + scale turn a light into spectacle or dread.

TV/Animation (BTAS): a Deco mood machine—the signal as timeless noir atmosphere.

Games (Arkham): symbol → mechanic (waypoint, mission gate, a landmark you can glide to).

Paratext/Marketing: a one-shot brand key that onboards the world instantly.

Comics -

I started with the comics. In Detective Comics #60 (Feb 1942), the Bat-Signal is basically a public summons that makes the Gordon - Batman partnership official. That becomes the template everyone else quotes. Even in The Killing Joke, when the lamp isn't on the page, that "lawful call" idea sits in the background and makes Joker's attacks feel like a violation of the pact. Then in The Batman Who Laughs, the symbol gets corrupted-the bat reads as predation, not protection. That flip only works because we all know the original meaning. So, for me, comics set the contract that later media keep echoing or breaking.

Animation

When I checked the cartoons, format really mattered. The Adventures of Batman often uses the Bat-Phone for quick cheap summoning, and saves the Signal for big skyline shots - classic TV economics. In Under the Red Hood, the lamp pops up as a clean citywide punctuation mark whenever the story needs that public Gordon-Batman alignment. Batman Ninja shows how the idea travels: even without a modern searchlight, flags, moons and silhouettes stand in for the Signal. Animation's superpower here is ritual and mood - music, timing, fog, and framing make the light feel like a civic ceremony.

Movies

Onscreen, I saw three clear phases. In Burton's Batman, Batman basically gives the device to the police, and that emblem becomes the brand for years. Nolan changes the origin-Gordon builds the lamp in Begins, then in The Dark Knight they use it like a bluff: sometimes it's lit even if Batman won't show, to spook criminals. It's smashed and later rebuilt in Rises, turning hardware into a symbol of hope. Reeves' The Batman pushes it further-the opening makes the Signal feel like a citywide fear broadcast. Film adds sound, scale, and editing, so the same icon can play as spectacle, policy, or dread.

Games

when the symbol becomes something I can utilize In the games, the intertext becomes interaction. Arkham Asylum proves you can feel “Batman” through systems - glide, grapple, detective vision - even if the lamp is just background. In Arkham City, the Signal becomes a waypoint/landmark - you literally aim or glide toward it. Arkham Knight keeps it as a hub icon on GCPD’s roof while the weather and lighting make the skyline feel alive. Big takeaway for me: games turn the Bat-Signal from a sign you recognise into a tool you use, which is why it’s such a strong transmedia hinge across the whole franchise.

Close reading When rewatching Nolan's trilogy, I noticed how the Bat-Signal shifts from a simple call into a citywide pressure system. In Batman Begins, that rooftop scene frames the lamp as infrastructure-Gordon literally builds it, so it feels like a sanctioned, civic tool. In The Dark Knight, Gordon sometimes lights it even when Batman won't show. That turns the signal into a bluff: criminals can't know the odds, so the uncertainty itself works as deterrence. When the lamp is smashed later, you can feel that pressure vanish. By The Dark Knight Rises, rebuilding it reads as public reassurance-the pact is back. For me, Nolan's "realism" doesn't kill the myth; it puts the symbol to work.

With The Batman, 2022, it means something else again-from bluff to ambient dread. The film opens like a diary: rain, street crime, and that line "I am the shadows." Cross-cutting and sound make the whole city feel like a threat field. The signal isn't just "meet me on the roof" it conditions behaviour across Gotham. Film tools-heavy sound, slow tempo, watchful framing-make that deterrent felt moment to moment. So whereas Nolan's lamp plays probability, Reeves' lamp bathes mood. So it upscales the icon from summons to climate of thought, the city breathes in and out.

Reflection

Tracking the lamp across media made the lecture’s point concrete: intertextuality is how worlds cohere; transmedia is how they extend. Recognition (the emblem in clouds) carries the entry cost ,variation (owner, function, tone) is where meaning shifts. Compared with last week’s medium-specificity focus, this isn’t about tools shaping form so much as shared signs shaping expectation.

References

Kristeva, J. (1986) ‘Word, Dialogue and Novel’, in Moi, T. (ed.) The Kristeva Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 34–61.

Jenkins, H. (2007) ‘Transmedia Storytelling 101’. Available at: https://henryjenkins.org (Accessed: 12 November 2025).

Hills, M. (2002) Fan Cultures. London: Routledge.

DC Comics (1942) Detective Comics #60. New York: DC Comics.

Timm, B. and Radomski, E. (1992–1995) Batman: The Animated Series [TV series]. USA: Warner Bros.

Nolan, C. (2005; 2008; 2012) Batman Begins; The Dark Knight; The Dark Knight Rises [films]. USA: Warner Bros.

Reeves, M. (2022) The Batman [film]. USA: Warner Bros.

Rocksteady Studios (2011) Batman: Arkham City [video game]. London: Rocksteady Studios / Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.

[artsclevervivek]

When the Medium Thinks

Sources and Significance blogpost 2

AI as Meta-Medium: Medium Specificity vs Gesamtkunstwerk

Medium specificity landed in a world that’s already multisensory and accelerated: purity survives less as an ideology than as a method. Our media environment is already multisensory and accelerated, so it’s unsurprising that hybrid forms command attention more easily than single-medium purity. I’d argue that “purity” isn’t dead so much as displaced: in AI pipelines like my ComfyUI character-sheet workflow, the site of specificity moves from materials (ink, film stock) to systems (prompts, seeds, LoRAs, samplers). That’s where style and authorship now crystallise. In this sense, AI behaves like a meta-medium: it can imitate many arts, yet each concrete configuration (graph + parameters) yields its own constraints the new “rules of the game".

Leaving the medium-specificity session, one line stuck with me: in a plural, entangled culture, “purity” survives less as an ideology than as a method. In AI pipelines like my ComfyUI character-sheet workflow, the site of specificity moves from materials (ink, film stock) to systems (prompts, seeds, ControlNets, LoRAs, samplers). That’s where style and authorship crystallise.

If Wagner fused arts on a stage, today’s version often lives in latent space. AI collapses image, text and layout, so the question isn’t “what medium is this?” but “which configuration did you choose and why?”

image: my ComfyUI graph for the character-sheet pipeline

Why I built this

I wanted to model a character from my favourite manhwa in 3D. Before sculpting, I needed a clean character sheet (front/side/back + expressions) to lock proportions and costume logic. Instead of drawing it from scratch, I designed a ComfyUI workflow that keeps style and anatomy consistent while giving me fast iterations I can take straight into Blender.

The media object: my comfyui character-sheet generator

The goal was to generate front/back/side and expressions for a character to be 3d modeled in blender.

This pipeline lets me “draw” by designing a system. Pose is blocked by OpenPose, mass by Depth, line discipline by LineArt. My “brush” is the graph; my “stroke” is a parameter change.

At a glance (mapped to my diagram):

Load models & resources - UNet / DualCLIP / VAE / LoRA.

Prepare character image input — reference portrait (identity & palette).

Define prompts - (a) character-sheet layout prompt, (b) style + quality prompt, (c) character descriptors.

Combine & condition - join strings → CLIP encodes; PuLidFlux / InsightFace help maintain face identity/embedding.

ControlNet operations - OpenPose (pose sheet), Depth (volumes), LineArt (edge discipline) via ControlNet SD3 Apply.

Generation parameters - latent noise + scheduler, sampler (DPM++ 2M Karras), and guiders.

Pose-sheet input - scaled to match canvas; guarantees orthographic consistency.

Image generation - SamplerCustomAdvanced → VAE Decode.

Upscale/Tiler and Grid assembly — print-ready sheet; save.

What this enforces:

Composition from pose controls,

Form/lighting from depth control,

Line economy from line-art control,

Identity/style from LoRA + Flux/InsightFace,

Repeatability from fixed seed & sampler.

Medium specificity (today)

Classic modernism said each art should embrace its own limits (Greenberg). In my workflow, specificity lives somewhere else: in the configuration. The exact graph + weights + seed + sampler + ControlNet balance is what gives my sheet its look and reliability. Designing the pipeline is designing the form.

(Post-)Gesamtkunstwerk

Wagner fused music, stage, architecture into a single experience. AI fuses text, image, layout (and soon motion/sound) inside one system unity conducted by a trained model. It’s a kind of technical totality: immersion by generation. That’s powerful for production, but it can drift toward the same “AI sheen” if I don’t set deliberate constraints.

So is it good or bad?

Good: rapid iteration, consistent multi-view outputs, accessible hybrid making.

Risk: style homogenisation and fuzzy authorship.

My guardrail: log seeds/samplers, limit variables per run, and keep a human pass when needed.

Notes from a hallway debate (friend • me )

Friend: In a feed already multisensory and accelerated, single-medium purity struggles to hold attention. Hybrid orchestration (image + layout + motion/sound) matches how we now perceive.

Me: The 20th century saturated many “pure” experiments. Mixing media creates fresh constraints (graphs, seeds, models) to explore. “Medium” behaves more like a configurable system than a fixed material.

Lecturer: Pursuing purity is complicated under plural, entangled, stochastic conditions. Speak about specificity under hybridity—what a work does because of its setup, not its silo.

Reflection

Working with ComfyUI moved my authorship from stroke to system. ControlNet blocks pose, the sampler is my “film stock,” the seed fixes repeatability. That’s where my voice lives what I lock and what I let vary. Purity isn’t gone,I use it as a method (fix variables to isolate causation). The risk is homogeneity; the answer is intentional constraints and iteration notes so results are reproducible and mine.

I’m now pivoting this workflow toward product animations. The goal is to keep the same pipeline logic (pose/volume/edge control, fixed seeds) but apply it to short, loopable promos that hold up under motion.

References

Bolter, J.D. (2023) ‘AI generative art as algorithmic remediation’, IMAGE, 37(1), pp. 195–207.

Greenberg, C. (1940) ‘Towards a newer Laocoon’, Partisan Review, 7(4), pp. 296–310. (Reprinted in: Frascina, F. (ed.) (1985) Pollock and After: The Critical Debate. London: Harper & Row, pp. 34–46.)

Kay, A. (1984) ‘Computer software’, Scientific American, 251(3), pp. 52–59.

Krauss, R. (2000) A Voyage on the North Sea: Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition. London: Thames & Hudson.

Manovich, L. (2001) The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Wagner, R. (1849) ‘The Artwork of the Future’, in Wagner, R. (1895) Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, Vol. 1. Translated by W.A. Ellis. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., pp. 69–213.

[artsclevervivek]

blog post #1 - smooth sand, striated lines (scaffold)

Sources & Significance

Blog post 1 - Narration & Storytelling reading diary: mccloud • jenkins • deleuze & guattari

smooth sand, striated lines: how deserts do narrative with a b/w fractal accent how i approached three texts and folded them into my own practice from black-and-white fractal contrast to world-as-story, to deserts vs grids as a design hinge.

source - Scott McCloud — Understanding Comics

reading mccloud gave me a simple, portable tool: closure — the mind completing what isn’t drawn. the key line i kept returning to:

“this phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole has a name. it’s called closure.”

for practice, i mapped this onto my b/w fractal studies: high-contrast edges act like gutters; the eye jumps across gaps and invents continuity. if i push black to total, white to blown, the viewer does more narrative work.

2) henry jenkins — “game design as narrative architecture” (environmental story cues)

jenkins shifted me from “telling” to staging. the sentence i taped above my desk:

“game designers don’t simply tell stories; they design worlds and sculpt spaces.” itgs.pbworks.com

i approached the essay as a checklist of how spaces communicate:

evoked (borrowed mythologies / recognizable genres),

enacted (what the player does there),

embedded (props, signage, ruins — the archaeology of clues),

and the emergent echoes that spill out of these.

to internalize it, i storyboarded a corridor twice: first as blank geometry (no story), second with embedded cues (scuffed floor, emergency placard, one light dead, a jacket snagged on a hinge). the beats “read” faster without exposition. jenkins’s lens made me treat level dressing as sentence structure: verbs (interactives), adjectives (materials), punctuation (thresholds, choke points). world-building became editing, not ornament.

3) deleuze & guattari - “smooth and striated” (desert vs fractal as a hinge)

this one i treated like a conceptual rig for layout. the line i kept using as a guardrail:

“‘smooth’ does not mean homogeneous, quite the contrary.” writcult2013

i translated smooth as dune-like flows (open, vectorial, wandering) and striated as grid/logical segmentation (metrics, modules, repeat). my desert vs fractal pairing clicked here: desert = smooth navigation (no fixed path; orientation by gradients); fractal = striated recursion (self-similar cells, measurable rhythm). when composing shots, i now ask: do i want drift (smooth) or count (striated)? the best scenes mix them — a smooth camera move against a striated scene grid — producing tension. the theory became a switching device: pick field (smooth) for mood, frame (striated) for legibility.

closing note

mccloud taught me how gaps tell; jenkins taught me where spaces speak; deleuze & guattari taught me which textures think. together they form a small workflow: contrast → cue → compose. that’s now my baseline for both theory reflections and production sketches.

next post — places of the mind (implemented work)

caption: from theory to practice.

i’ll put mccloud’s closure + b/w contrast, jenkins’s evoked / enacted / embedded cues, and d&g’s smooth (desert) / striated (fractal) into a single environment study. expect a tight, high-contrast workflow: fractal b/w frames, desert flow layouts, and environmental story beats staged in blender → unreal.

implemented shots + breakdowns in the next blog post: places of the mind.

[artsclevervivek]

The Beginning

Hi, I’m Vivek Gautam, once a software engineer, now a full-time explorer of digital worlds. I spent years writing code that worked perfectly but felt empty. So I switched paths from debugging servers to sculpting forms, from writing logic to painting light.

ArtsClever started as my sketch page years ago, late-night doodles, character studies, things I never had time to finish. Now it’s evolving into something bigger: a creative diary of my MA Game Art & Design journey at the University of Hertfordshire.

This space isn’t for polished portfolios. It’s for messy viewport screenshots, render fails, shader experiments, and the small moments that make creation addictive.

If you like Blender renders, Unreal lighting tests, 3D scenes, or sketches that feel like storyboards from unfinished worlds welcome.

This isn’t a portfolio. It’s a playground.

(more coming soon…)

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