Results
(A (Subversive) Allegory, Collage,
Cut-Up)
"Based on [my] observations, [I] drew the
following conclusions" (Wysocki & Lynch, 2014, p.
405).
"In terms
of" the dream-book (ibid),
"In terms
of" the dream-narrative (ibid),
"In terms
of" taking up the context (ibid),
"In terms
of" compensation (ibid).
An
interruption: "Post-critics write with the discourse of others (the
already written)" (Ulmer, 2002, p. 96).
("the post-critical penchant [is] for mimicry and collage" (Ulmer, 2002, p. 103)),
Dream-Book
In terms of the Dream-Book, students
documented their electrate dreams by writing about
them in the first person, as if they were the characters. We might say they
played their avatars, as in a kind of lucid dream: they knew they were
dreaming, but they were not necessarily the designers of the worlds in which
they dream. One example of this is the electrate dreams of Sarah Hicklin.
She attempted to survive a meteor shower in New Zealand, A.D. 2631, in the game
Contra. She played Henry Stickman in Escaping Prison, in which she was
confined to a cell with a teleporter, a drill, a
file, a drink, a rocket launcher, and a cell phone. Several gunshots at an
officer later, Hicklin transformed into a man in a
wheelchair playing the guitar, while his dog led the way toward a popsicle
propped atop the edge of a cliff. This game is called A Walk in the Park.
Hicklin's dream journal consisted of a
text-based outline that tracked the sequence of events. "Is a citation an alien
parasite within the body of its host, the main text, or is it the other way
around? [Is] the interpretive text
the parasite which surrounds and strangles the citation which is its host?" (Hillis-Miller qtd. in Ulmer,
2002, P. 183). Elizabeth Myer became Thor, the "God of Thunder," from the game:
Thor: The Dark World. She was tasked with teaming up with Asgard,
heroes with an agenda to save The Nine Worlds She also played Mario from "MarioKart," on a
mission to win a race around a track, and Eugene Fitzherbert (A.K.A. Flynn Rider) from The Castle. [According to Myer (2013), Fitzherbert "stole a really valuable crown from the kingdom
with hopes of being filthy rich, having my own island, and did I mention being
filthy rich?" He got caught and then went on a mission to remove all of the
"Wanted" posters with his name on them.]
(The reactions of Hicklin and Myers, as well
as the reactions of Grayson Bonds, Reid Hayes, and Di Nguyen, are recorded,
uploaded, and available for play on this website's homepage.)
##### A Bold Interruption: "Careful reporting of counts and numbers is a
hallmark of APA style because
Dream
Narrative
The
Dream Narrative is intended to impose a story structure upon a dream (Jung
1945). In keeping with Jung's instructions for identifying a four-phase
narrative structure, Nguyen (2013) wrote a "statement of place" (P. 19) that
highlighted the arrangement of spoken and written words during a League of
Legends battle: "The voiceover brings the connection between the players and
the game to a whole new level. A third person's voice narrates what is
happening during the game . . . 'First blood,' 'killing spree,' 'god-like,' and
many other words appear . . . [They are both figurative and emotion-provoking .
. . Each champion has a trademark quote, such as Jax's
'Surprise, I'm back' . . . It gives gamers a sense of control over the
champion/character." Grayson Bonds (2013) wrote a "statement about the
protagonist" (Jung, 1945, P. 19) of one electrate dream
in which he was saved by the protagonist. Thus, he illustrated a pattern about
the theme of control: "I think the
first guy I met was part of the 'Stormcloaks.' Hadvar became my new best friend when he helped me escape.
Oh yea, I'd been ambushed prior to waking up by the imperials and was being
executed when a dragon attacked."
The issue of control appears yet again in Hayes' narratives,
but the theme was amplified in his statement about the plot's development
(Jung, 1945, p. 19). He identifies gender's place in a battle of colonization.
In Pirates: Tides of Fortune, he encounters a war between the East and West,
and a war between the sexes. The situation, as he interprets it, supplants the
stereotypical colonial encounter and the stereotypical role that women play,
which is that of a victim in a man's world: "The most tension arises at the
beginning of the story when Cap'n Bonnie destroys my
ships and holds me captive, under her demand." According to Jung, the
"culmination" or "peripeteia" happens in a dream when
"something changes completely" (1945, P. 19). In Hayes' electrate
dream, the protagonist gave him more control of the dreamworld:
"I begin the game in shackles, but through a deal Cap'n
Bonnie makes, I am able to cooperate . . . and free myself from capitivity to join her adventures of piracy on the high
seas." He reflected upon the plot's "solution" or "Lysis"
(Jung, 1945, P. 19) as follows: "Although [she went from] an enemy who
destroyed my ship to a useful reference and guide, I begin my tenure as a
captain in her fleet." Thus the end was the beginning of a journey in which his
avatar remained subordinate to a woman.
So
how do we reconcile the battles in which participants had varying degrees of
control over their narratives because of game mechanics? We could take an
imaginative leap to say that the game mechanics became part of the battlefield.
Students grappled with their encounters by making choices as gamers. Encounters
were in a dialogue with technology. The dialogue was made possible because of
technology.
goal of the APA's Ethics code is to 'ensure
the accuracy of scientific knowledge'" (qtd.
in Wyscoki & Lynch 405, 2014, p. 404).
Accordingly: #####
0--|--<
(emoji)
An interruption: "Post-critics write with the discourse of others
(the already written)" (Ulmer, 2002, p. 96).
The weaponry that was necessary to fight against the zombies is
symbolic of synchronicity, chance encounters, coincidences—and
to Hayes, the weapons affected him on a personal level: "On the balcony of the
house on the farm lies a mystery weapon box. For some money, you can gamble to
try and upgrade a gun. A random gun is supplied to somebody and it is luck
whether a player receives an automatic shotgun-killing machine or a simple
pistol. This theme of luck can easily be applied in everyday life. An example
of good luck is when my classes get cancelled in the morning. But an example of
bad luck is when my bike chain breaks as I am pedaling up a hill (it's happened
before). Luck is prevalent in our everyday lives as humans just as it is in the
random weapon assignment in Blackops II." (2013).
Chance encounters with weapons changed the trajectory of the
battles. Indeed, participants comment on the proliferation of weapons as
cultural relics. In keeping with Jung's hermeneutic, Nguyen made a cultural
association between the LOL character,
Master Yi, and Chinese Terracotta warriors at the Asian Art Museum. Nguyen (2013) noted that these warriors
are "mostly remembered to be in their armors and helmets, sacrificing
themselves at battle." What was perhaps the most outstanding was her role as
the "clockwork killing machine" Orianna and her armature.
"There was something unnerving and alien about me that made many think I was a
soulless clockwork shell, dangerous and deadly," she said. "We decorate time
and falsely believe that time is part of our emotions. The presence of Orianna represents a blessing but at the same time a curse
to human kind. Had we not known, we would not have feared losing it; thus, the
concept makes us feel small and helpless, something that our very own existence
often defiles."
[Her view may get at why we may be
compensating in
the
battle of our daily (academic) lives:
perhaps
estrangement from our Selves;
perhaps
not staying true to who we are.
Nguyen's writing is
empathetic and honest:
a
style that is occasionally viewed as sentimental, cliche, or colloquial,
and
often covered over by the armor of
conventional
academic
prose.]
Myer's
(2013) prose reflected upon her experience with the mechanics in Thor, The Dark World. She echoed Nguyen's sentiment: "The
player is only allowed to move from left to right, just as human scan only move
forward and not go back in time. The
Contra has to overcome obstacles that both his environment and the people
around him present. In my life, I have to handle the conflicts that arise
because of where I am and who I am with. Just as in
the game, as I get older my obstacles become harder and more abundant. Also,
success in the higher levels is more satisfying just as accomplishing harder
tasks in life is more gratifying." (Font: "American Typewriter") Nguyen also
extended Jung's sentiment about the impossibility of dream interpretation when
she concluded that electrate dream interpretations
forced her to see that electrate dreaming and waking
life may be one in the same: "Both the world of game and the human world are
real, [it's] just that reality is not constant; or perhaps the line separating
'real' and 'unreal' is not so clear anymore and we are embracing this new world
of both 'reality' and 'fiction' being jumbled up. Perhaps." More certain than
Nguyen, Hicklin made three salient epiphanies that
shall conclude the Results section of this study:
"Make
every decision count" (contra)
"Proceed
with caution" (escaping the prison)
"Help
one another" (a walk in the park)
["Educators
could choose to view Hicklin's wisdoms as guiding
messages; perhaps technology can be credited for her realizations and, if we do
so choose, our realizations; perhaps technology has helped to create her Self,
and ours. Perhaps."]
"IS A CITATION AN
ALIEN PARASITE WITHIN THE BODY OF ITS HOST,
THE MAIN TEXT,
OR IS IT THE OTHER WAY
AROUND,
THE INTERPRETIVE TEXT
THE PARASITE WHICH SURROUNDS
AND STRANGLES
THE CITATION
WHICH IS ITS HOST?"
(J HILLIS MILLER QTD.
IN ULMER, 2002, P. 183)
"IS A CITATION AN
ALIEN PARASITE WITHIN THE BODY OF ITS HOST,
THE MAIN TEXT,
OR IS IT THE OTHER WAY
AROUND,
THE INTERPRETIVE TEXT
THE PARASITE WHICH SURROUNDS
AND STRANGLES
THE CITATION
WHICH IS ITS HOST?"
(J HILLIS MILLER QTD.
IN ULMER, 2002, P. 183)
"IS A CITATION AN
ALIEN PARASITE WITHIN THE BODY OF ITS HOST,
THE MAIN TEXT,
OR IS IT THE OTHER WAY
AROUND,
THE INTERPRETIVE TEXT
THE PARASITE WHICH SURROUNDS
AND STRANGLES
THE CITATION
WHICH IS ITS HOST?"
(J HILLIS MILLER QTD.
IN ULMER, 2002, P. 183)
NOTE: At
the bottom of this textbox, you will see six dream-books. Watch them. Listen to
them ("'For [Schonberg], composing was discovery and invention through the
practice of music-making'" (Buck-Morses qtd. in Ulmer, 2002, p. 98). "Listen to them." Do not read
them. To the right of this text box, you will see some of the symbols in
question as well as other associations that the participants made while "taking
up the context" of their gameplay.
"I hope I may have succeeded in throwing some light upon the
development of the symbols of the self and in overcoming, partially at least
the serious difficulties inherent in all material drawn from actual experience.
At the same time, I am fully aware that the comparative material so necessary
for a complete elucidation could have been greatly increased. But so as not to
burden the exposition unduly, I have exercised the greatest reserve in this
respect. Consequently there is much that is only hinted at, though this should
not be taken as a sign of superficiality. I believe myself to be in a position
to offer ample evidence for my views, but I do not wish to give the impression
that I imagine I have said anything final on this highly complicated subject"
(Jung, 1971, pp. 449-450).
Hint: "At its
best, this suspicion of totalization supports the
increasing interest in collage/montage, allegory, and associative reason that
is evident in textualism and deconstructive art" (Wallis qtd. in Ulmer, 1995, p. 253).
Hint: "Explanations lend a false unity
homogeneity, universality, to a heterogeneous body of materials, ignoring or sublating real differences in the interests of an
artificial verisimilitude of plausibility" (ibid).
"Based on [my] observations, [I] drew the
following conclusions" (Wysocki & Lynch, 2014, p.
405).
"In terms
of" the dream-book (ibid),
"In terms
of" the dream-narrative (ibid),
"In terms
of" taking up the context (ibid),
"In terms
of" compensation (ibid).
An
interruption: "Post-critics write with the discourse of others (the
already written)" (Ulmer, 2002, p. 96).
123
[ADDENDUM]
[An
Educator's Steps: In keeping with the literacy's values for critical thinking,
reading, and writing, I asked the students to work with three different games;
although, as the examples demonstrate, some students decided to work with only
one game. I took this approach because I wanted them to learn how to manage
what inevitably became data—or, rather, multimodal information overload.
And I wanted them to use a website as a database, a mound of clay, a palate
that they could shape, reshape, refine into what constitutes the equivalent of
a 2000-word argument. The approach was apropos, considering Jung's methodology
necessitates the certainty of literacy's formal practices while simultaneously embracing
the uncertainty of the quasi-narratives, symbols, motifs, and dream
associations.]
[IN TERMS OF Implementation: When the project
began, we devoted one class to playing any games the students wanted, without any
agenda aside from having fun. Some played vintage games like Tetris while others played popular
social-media games such as Candy Crush.
A large group of students set up the projector and played xBox,
with the more experienced gamers happily teaching the less-experienced gamers
(mostly females) how navigate the mechanics and instigating the competitive
spirit. I found it challenging at first to encourage non-gamers to play, in
part because of their preconceived notion that they would have to engage in violent
narratives. This conflict improved the learning experience. For example, for
some students, their apprehension became the source of something they needed to
reconcile through Jung's dream interpretation techniques. Instead of saying, "I
don't want to play violent video games," they asked: "Why don't I want to play
violent video games? What details are most disturbing? What does this suggest
about my personality and Self in relation to our culture? How do I grapple with
this refusal?"]
[Many students eventually came to the realization that the
competition of killing inanimate creatures was simply harmless fun. Library
research day, workshops, design workshop, creative work was accompanied by
readings and videos about video game and dream theories as well as readings
from Everyone's An Author (Lunsford,
2013), including chapters on design and research methods. The project took a
month to create. In the end, I found that Jung and the students grappled with
the same problem. According to Jung, "It is so difficult to understand a dream
that for a long time I have made it a rule, when someone tells me a dream and
asks for my opinion, to say first of all to myself: 'I have no idea what this
dream means.' (pp. 6-7) . . . How do we arrive at a
plausible meaning and how can we confirm the rightness of the interpretation"
(1945, p. 8).
Jung echoes Freud in saying that "the words composing a
dream narrative have not just one
meaning, but many meanings . . . therefore we need the dreamer's help in order
to limit the multiple meanings of the words to those that are essential and
convincing" (pp. 8-9). The uncertainty led to frustration and anxiety amongst
students; they wanted to get the answer "right," but they felt that the
experience of wading through possible meanings and choosing one is essential in
the formulation of a "convincing" argument as well as self-reflection and
expression. Technologies—video games, web interfaces, design tools, and
yes, words—were vital to this experience.]
[IN TERMS OF Assessment: My intention was for the
students to engage in a similar environment that Haynes and Holmevik
strove for with LinguaMoo, and I believe that the
students and I succeeded. Creativity,
critical writing, and effort was systematically built
into the assignment via its aesthetic, analytical, and electrate
emphases and via a step-by-step procedure that helped students to stay
organized. It was difficult for any student not
to be innovative. Moreover, scheduled peer workshops as collaborations
encouraged, inspired, and cultivated such qualities, rather than enforced
them.]
[IN TERMS OF Generalizable
Knowledge: As the examples illustrate, students walked away with
discoveries and artistic creations of personal and cultural epiphanies. In the
process, digital environments extended into the physical classroom for
collaborative workshopping, which was a positive
experience in many ways. Students were inspired by their classmates' projects;
they also enjoyed sharing their findings and getting feedback on the challenges
they were encountering. Some workshops were small-scale, consisting of two to
three students. The majority of the workshops consisted of students leading
informal discussion about their projects with the entire class. Because the
students seemed so enthusiastic about their work (after all, the projects were
about self-discovery), they didn't mind presenting.]
[They wanted to present, to rely on their classmates to help
them to understand themselves and their creative expressions. This built
students' confidence even if they weren't sure about where their
interpretations were taking them. Finally, EDI was particularly beneficial
because it allowed students to make friends, and to have fun, amidst a hectic
college schedule that allows minimal time for
PLAY.
[To these ends, digital technologies served as tools for
arranging these realizations. On the other hand, digital technologies served as
a machine within which students shaped and developed realizations. The study
reveals that digital technologies served to create and communicate the Self,
but students chose their machines, freely consenting to the matrix of their
choice. What we find then buried beneath the thematic of the battlefield are
the great tectonic movements of free will and destiny. The battlefield, we can
only argue, is symbolic of the wisdom of the dream.]
[In taking an imaginative leap, then, when educators view
the wisdom of students' electrate dreams as dreams of
their own, we can see how our personas struggle for control. The battlefield is
a projection of our own powerlessness as educators, but what about our Selves,
buried within or illuminating the roles we play?]
[This study implies that the Self can trust in destiny's
limitations of our free will as we design not only our roles as educators but
also our classrooms.]
[This
is
how
technology
shapes
our
identities.]
J
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