Download outside-satyricon.hqx (601,814 KB)
From: bsharvy@efn.org
Subject: Outside Satyricon 1.5
Welcome to my fun project (and to my parlor). The project has been to
play around with forms and ideas native to the interactive medium, with
an eye toward artistic use. "Artistic" is, of course, a fuzzy word, and
we should always get in trouble for using it; I trust you to interpret
the general drift of what I mean. Never mind, no I don't: The general
drift of what I mean is "individual and interesting". Outside Satyricon
aims to explore forms that use elements unique to the computer--not
visual art that is merely generated with a computer, and not interactive
games which, while unique to the medium, lack intellectual & spiritual
color. I want to expermiment with interactive "fiction," of a sort. This
is my first such experiment. ...A technique with potential is to use an
Eliza-like interface to create narrative voice and personality.
Literature has a narrative voice; interactive media could too, with its
own particular twist. Experimentation with narrative is particularly
natural in forms which are story-like, such as the adventure. I've
written an Eliza script into Outside Satyricon, but as of yet it isn't
nearly as developed as it could be. (Eliza is a simple
artificial-intelligence simultaor created by Joseph Weizenbaum.) ...The
computer medium naturally lends itself to simulation, and the
representation of things. This naturally suggests symbolism as a
technique, since symbols are objects (compare to, say, music, which
represents no objects and uses no symbols). The possibility of symbolic
meaning, or resonance, for an object can define its use, and create
meaning within the program as a whole. For example, if progress within
an adventure game depends on the user finding the key to some locked
door, that is very boring and meaningless. But imagine that "doors" open
when the user breaks open a plastic red heart that he has found--say,
the 20 clocks in the room all begin to melt, the floor turns to sea, and
he finds himself continuing his adventure in an ocean-dream world
(perhaps as a shark, perhaps as a blowfish, depending on choices he has
made earlier in the program). Now the user is solving puzzles which,
because of the symbolic resonance of the things in the adventure (e.g.,
red hearts), may suggest certain interpretations and meanings to him.
This is a much more interesting way for a world to unfold than the way
of unlocking a door with a key, which you got by killing the thief,
outwitting the Sphinx, etcetera....Naturally, symbolism can be overt as
well. In Outside Satyricon, most of the rooms are the ordinary
kind--representations of physcial places such as bathrooms, roof tops,
etc--but you will also find yourself in "Therapy", "Solitude" and a few
other abstract places....Its object-based character makes the
interactive medium especially at home with "deconstructive" or
"meta-fiction" techniques, since its modelling of symbolic objects is
programmable and changeable during the course of the adventure's
"narrative." Thus, the player can be forced to examine his own uses of
symbols as sources of meaning.
Crunchy Pickle Software: http://www.efn.org/~bsharvy/crunchy.html