Now incorporating The Sudbury Hill Harrow and Wherever End Times

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Project Natal: fiction, hype, fraud or karaoke?



If, like me, you love fiction but hate computer games, I think you should watch this. Personally, I think it's a fraud but it's fascinating. It does approach the experience of story somewhat and so we must take it into consideration. It is really another way of translating a story, not film, not stage, not other languages but into an interactive scenario that brings the story partly to life. The pre-planned scenarios that are inevitably programmed into it are the problem, reading a story gives us an infinitely variable visualisation, conjecture and response. This robotised interpretation is always on the verge of saying "Sorry, that does not compute." Don't swallow all that sales hype without a large pinch of salt. All that said, the demonstration is quite amusing. The nearest analogy would be that it is to fiction as karaoke is to music.

Ossian

1 comment:

rainbow spike said...

I like Charlie Brooker's rant re Milo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqyIfL0PbTo&feature=related

nevertheless i can see Milo being the thin end of the wedge. Next will be holographic mates.