Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies
Abstract
What matters in understanding digital media? Is looking at the external appearance and audience experience of software enoughor 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 suggests that it is the authors and artists with knowledge of these processes who will use the potential of computation to define the future of fiction and games. He also explores how computational processes themselves express meanings through distinctive designs, histories, and intellectual kinships that may not be visible to audiences. Wardrip-Fruin looks at expressive processing by examining specific works of digital media ranging from the simulated therapist Eliza and the first major story-generation system Tale-Spin 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. Most books on digital media focus on what the machines of digital media look like from the outside but ignore the computational machines that make digital media possible. With this book--the firs…
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In order to understand the meanings created by games, it is usually sufficient to consider the level of mechanics or procedures.
“But in order to understand the meanings created by games, it is usually sufficient to consider the level of mechanics or procedures (Wardrip-Fruin 2009).”
From Do We Need Real-Time Hermeneutics? Structures of Meaning in Games (2011) · cites this paper as Wardrip-Fruin 2009
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- Venue
- Choice Reviews Online
- Publisher
- American Library Association
- Published
- 2010-04-01
- Volume
- 47
- Issue
- 08
- Pages
- 47-4465-47-4465
- ISSN
- 0009-4978 (ISSN-L)
- 1523-8253
- OpenAlex
- W611271060
- Cited by
- 297
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2025: 8 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 21 · 2021: 23 · 2020: 29 · 2019: 11 · 2018: 22 · 2017: 15 · 2016: 16 · 2015: 39 · 2014: 21 · 2013: 19 · 2012: 16
- Type
- book review
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Choice Reviews Online (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Cybernetics and Technology in Society
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Visual Arts and Performing Arts › Art, Technology, and Culture
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Digital Games and Media
- Keywords
- digital fiction, video games, software studies, computational processes, artificial intelligence, Eliza, SimCity, story generation, simulation, surveillance
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