Blogging Pedagogy - procedural rhetoric

Procedural Engagement and Inform7

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:57:18 +0000

Author:

Matt King

Image Credit:

In my “Critical Reading and Persuasive Writing” course last semester, I included an assignment that drew on Ian Bogost’s understanding of procedural rhetoric while also aiming to complicate it. After studying communities of their choice throughout the semester, my students had to create procedural arguments about their communities using the interactive fiction software Inform7. This assignment drew on a similar one designed by Jim Brown. Through it, I hoped to encourage a form of what I have begun to call procedural engagement.

As Bogost notes in Persuasive Games, “Procedurality refers to a way of creating, explaining, or understanding processes. And processes define the way things work: the methods, techniques, and logics that drive the operation of systems, from mechanical systems like engines to organization systems like high schools to conceptual systems like religious faith… Procedural rhetoric, then, is a practice of using processes persuasively” (2-3). More specifically, it is “a technique for making arguments with computational systems and for unpacking computational arguments others have created” (3). For Bogost, video games serve as an exemplary embodiment of procedural rhetoric: the processes and rules that structure games make arguments about how the world works.

While procedural rhetoric focuses primarily on how computational systems – and video games in particular – can represent and make arguments about the processes at work in various systems, Bogost also uses the notion of procedurality to advance an ontological understanding of the world and the objects that comprise it. As Bogost elaborates in "Process vs. Procedure," objects are distinguished by the unique “logic[s] of behavior” and “way[s] of operating” that characterize their being (6). These logics can be understood as capacities for expression and engagement, and these capacities differ from object to object. Procedurality thus offers a way of accounting for how objects encounter and relate to one another: “Within the withdrawn core of an object, swirls of murky logics churn, regulating the ways an object might enter and exit relations with other objects in order to constitute still different objects” (7). Procedures, those “swirls of murky logics,” thus make available and constrain an object’s capacities for engagement and expression.

This in turn encourages us to think about the ways that we engage with objects. Bogost further argues that the “molten core of an object remains inaccessible and unknowable” (7). In other words, we cannot fully understand or represent the logics at play in a given object or system. Thus, as rhetoricians, our attendance to procedures and the relations they make available would not privilege symbolic representation, understanding, or critical engagement. The notion of procedural engagement offers a site for articulating a different mode of engagement. The main goal of procedural engagement would be to keep the lines of communication and relation open – that is, to maintain an engagement with the logics at play in a situation without translating them into imperfect representations and objects of understanding. From this perspective, rhetorical relations have less to do with bridging differences and establishing symbolic identifications than with finding ways to encounter and engage the withdrawn and unknowable, to bring it to the surface, to give it a space for expression.

Here’s where the assignment comes in. Working in Inform7 challenges students to expose the unique logic of their community to the logic of the digital writing environment. Take this example of a student working with the environmental activism community:

Inform.jpg

In "Environmental Paths," the reader/player must navigate a series of decisions as an EPA investigator that dramatize the complexities of balancing environmental and economic concerns. In part, the procedural and interactive text is argumentative; it embodies Bogost's understanding of procedural rhetoric. But the challenge of authoring such a text goes beyond argumentation. This mode of writing is not simply a matter of advancing a claim. Rather, it requires the student author to approach the situation in such a way that their understanding of the community can respond to the unique constraints of the writing platform. This asks of students a sensitivity to the various ways that their communities express themselves in terms of place and social practices. It makes their perspectives and positions subject to the logic of the platform. It calls for a different mode of engagement, one grounded in responsiveness to the various logics at play.

Why ARIS Works for Literature Classes

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:23:57 +0000

Author:

Cleve Wiese

Image Credit:

Cleve Wiese

So my Banned Books E314 class is wrapping up the ARIS project described in my recent lesson plan post, and as I reflect on the experience I find myself fending off the complaints of a reasonable (if imaginary) skeptic: Sure, games are rhetorical, so it makes sense to analyze them in a rhetoric class. And sure, procedural rhetoric is an important mode of argumentation, so game design makes sense – in a rhetoric class. And yes, given the proliferation of location based media, the creation of location based, augmented reality games is probably a valuable experience for students – again, in a rhetoric class. But why, this skeptic asks, would any of this be relevant to a literature class – a banned books class, no less – in which your texts are predetermined novels and poems? Aren’t you just driving a square peg into a round hole for the sake of a personal (read, selfish) interest?

I have a few responses for this critic. To begin with, I see the E314 course as a general introduction to a variety of ways of reading and analyzing literature. For me, that means spending part of the semester focusing on writers and their historical contexts, part of the semester focused on new-crit-inspired modes of close-reading and formal analysis, and part of the semester focused on reader response (things don’t break down quite that cleanly, of course, but that’s the guiding, tripartite framework). This assignment emphasizes the third approach: Beginning with the Aristotelian idea that people can only experience things (fiction included) through the lenses of concrete real-world experiences, memories, and images anyway, the purpose here is not to analyze what a text means, in itself or in some particular historical context, but what can be done with it, right now, at UT Austin in April 2011. The novel or poem is merely the raw material for a new creation that is literally embedded by students on the real-world space of the UT Campus via the ARIS platform.

But, my critic counters, if you so completely de-emphasize the text itself, how can this assignment possibly teach literary analysis? And what about your responsibility to focus on the bannedness of these banned books?

This assignment teaches analysis because every ARIS game the students design has to make an argument. And although that argument isn’t limited by the text, it is an interpretation of the text, inspired by the text, in response to the text. From this point of view, it’s really not all that far from the kind of literary analysis we already ask students to do all the time. The difference here is that the games students create self-consciously filter source material through their own real world concerns and lived experiences. For example, one game based on Catcher in the Rye includes an exchange with NPCs inspired by peripheral characters from Holden’s West Village drinking binge – but in the game, these characters are virtually embedded on the South Mall, and the focus of their exchange with the PC (in the role of Holden) is refocused on a particular concern of a particular group of UT readers/English students/game designers: underage drinking. These connections – between personal experiences and Holden’s fictional night out – occurred to these students in their roles as readers. And in their roles as students in my course earlier in the semester, they were expected to filter this seemingly irrelevant association out of writing assignments. But in this assignment, in the new roles of game designers, they are encouraged to put that subjective “noise” at the center of a new product focused not on the text alone, but on the intersection of the text and their everyday lives.

This may seem a counter-intuitive, or even self-indulgent, approach to teaching literature. But I find it strikingly appropriate for a Banned Books class: Most of the controversies we discuss have less to do with what disputed literary works mean in any objective sense than with what they are used for by different stakeholders in different cultural contexts. In some cases (such as The Satanic Verses, which we’re studying right now), the books themselves seem deliberately designed for this kind of fragmentation and re-mediation by a wide range of people in many places with a wide range of political, religious, or cultural agendas. In fact, this is the way books often work and have a measurable effect in the world. So I think it makes much more sense to give students the chance to engage in the same kind of openly rhetorical, subjective, irreverent appropriation of literature than to flatly condemn it as ignorant or wrong.

Finally, I think that playing with ARIS is an amazingly interesting way to get students thinking about persona and audience. In What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Literacy and Learning, James Gee discusses three levels of identity operative in a role playing video games: Real-world identity (student, teacher, etc.), virtual identity, and the intersection of real and virtual identities in a “projective identity” (what the real world ‘me’ aspires to for the virtual ‘me’). Similarly, in this assignment students first have to think of themselves in the real-world identity of game designers with the confidence and authority to play with (that is, freely appropriate) previously sacrosanct literary texts. Second, they have to design a persona for players to adopt and they have to figure out to effectively convey this role through dialogue and gameplay (as you can see below, in dialogue situations the ARIS player is visually represented by only a silhouette and the word “YOU,” a limitation that forces designers to find other compelling ways to convey 1^st person characterization). Finally, the students have to think about projective identity not so much in the aspirational sense that Gee talks about as in a closely related rhetorical sense: ‘What,’ they have to ask, ‘will players be encouraged to believe in their real world identities as a result of experiencing this game through the particular virtual identity I design.’ In other words, the projective identity becomes the interpretive thesis or argument.

Ok, my critic says, even if I buy all of what you’ve argued for here, I still think you’re trying to turn a literature assignment into a rhetoric assignment. To this I plead guilty, at least in part. But since every paper I ask my students to write requires them to make an argument for a particular audience, I’m not sure this is such a bad – or unusual – thing.

Prototyping Procedural Rhetoric

Scott Nelson — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:13:20 +0000

Author:

Scott Nelson

Image Credit:

Scott Nelson's RHE 309K Students

For the final project in my RHE 309K: The Rhetoric of Video Games class, I had students work in groups to develop a game concept that uses procedural rhetoric to argue a thesis. The lesson plan can be found here, but the gist is they write a classical argument on a topic of their choice, and then present both why their thesis is the preferred position and how a video game arguing this position would work. I encouraged them to use use various multimedia authoring tools for their presentations, but was still surprised by the innovation and quality of the multimedia they created. Since there were only four groups total, I'll run through their basic ideas for the games.

Mix

Mix is a game about broken copyright laws and the stifling of art. The group decided on a puzzle metaphor for the game, on where the individual pieces represent other artists' work. What I found particularly innovative abut their game design was that each boss battle corresponded to a different part of the four-part test for fair use. The player actually fights fair use concepts, but later these concepts come back on the side of the player to defeat record companies.

Children of the Future and the Laptops of Doom

CFLD argues to students about the overuse of laptops in college classrooms. What I found particularly innovaive with their approach was to have a set of minigames dealing with attention and respect for the instructor. All of the minigames' win states point to the overarching thesis that using laptops in the classroom is detrimental to students' learning.The above screenshot is from the first minigame, and highlights the difficulty in processing information from simultaneous, varied sources.

Overparenting Mama

As the title suggests, this game is about overparenting, often called "helicopter parenting." Aside from the obvious visual rhetoric of a hovering mother, this game uses a unique point system to argue that letting kids fail is ultimately good for them.

War on the Homefront

War on the Homefront argues against the military's Individual Ready Reserve policies of extending contracts beyond the three years mandatory service. The group argued that similar to the "backdoor draft" of stop-loss policies, the IRR disturbs veterans' civilian life and unethically asks more of men and women who have already served their country. The innovation in this group stemed from their decision to use Little Big Planet as a presentation platform. The above screenshot shows Sackboy literally drowning in statistics about PTSD and tours of duty.

These screenshots don't really do justice to the robust nature of the students' presentations, as each group created a multitude of digital media to supplement their arguments. Some of the presentations contained the usual PowerPoint, but some used static images, video, and even working prototypes of the game using Game Salad or the Unreal Engine. In creating procedural rhetoric, the students pushed themselves outside normal conception of argument creation and used new media in novel ways. I'll be submitting all of their projects to TheJUMP, where hopefully they can be published at a later date.