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This article examines United States v. Stevens, a case recently decided by the Supreme Court, and its relation to animal law and freedom of speech issues, specifically the contention between the two, caused by the statute in question at the heart of the case. While animal rights advocates wish to frame the case through an anti-animal cruelty perspective, those seeking to protect freedom of speech have made the statute an issue of First Amendment rights. Is 18 USC § 48 an (...) imposition on free speech or a step in the right direction towards protection of animals and promotion of their rights? It is argued here that the Supreme Court should have recognized the Stevens case as an important development in animal rights and held that the statute is narrowly tailored, based on a compelling government interest, and that the protection of animals from harm overshadows any possible speech or expression that is found incrushvideos, dog fightingvideos, and the like. (shrink)

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Robert Stevens was indicted for marketing dog-fightingvideos in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 48, a law criminalizing depictions of animals being "intentionally mutilated, tortured, wounded, or killed..." The law aimed principally at "crushvideos," but extended to dog-fighting as well. Stevens challenged the law’s constitutionality and the Supreme Court eventually struck it down. This article explores whether the Stevens decision will have lasting implications for animal cruelty jurisprudence. It argues that the answer is “maybe, but probably (...) not.” In Stevens, the Court skirted the question of whether preventing animal cruelty can rise to the level of compelling state interest. Ironically, its avoidance of the issue may constitute a net positive for animal advocacy. (shrink)

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continent. 2.1 (2012): 22–28. Jeroen Mettes burst onto the Dutch poetry scene twice. First, in 2005, when he became a strong presence on the nascent Dutch poetry blogosphere overnight as he embarked on his critical project Dichtersalfabet (Poet’s Alphabet). And again in 2011, when to great critical acclaim (and some bafflement) his complete writings were published – almost five years after his far too early death. 2005 was the year in which Dutch poetry blogging exploded. That year saw the foundation (...) of the influential, polemical, and populistically inclined weblog De Contrabas (The Double Bass), which became a strong force for internet poetry in Dutch in the years to follow. In the summer of that year, a lively debate raged in the aftermath of Bas Belleman’s article “ Doet poëzie er nu eindelijk toe ?” (“Does poetry finally matter now?”), on a blog specifically devoted to this question. Up to that point, the poetical debate in the Netherlands had largely been confined to literary reviews (which were often subsidized), having become mostly marginalized in more mainstream media, where poetry could be covered by only a small number of so-called authorities. As a result, literary debate had acquired a rather placid quality. Though a variety of camps with different aesthetics could be discerned, most poetical positions shared a general acceptance of poetry as a form of art somewhat apart from fundamental political concerns. Late modernists would pursue subtlety and density of reference. Others would insist poetry was best understood as a form of entertainment that should ideally be accessible and work well on the stage. Still others would insist that poetry is mostly a play with forms. Linguistically disruptive strategies were valued highly by some, but mostly for their aesthetic effect. Values of disinterested playfulness reigned supreme everywhere. Any idea that poetry could be a field in which one confronts politics and the world was decidedly marginal. This led to a climate in which most attempts at polemics were DOA, often based on far too superficial positioning and analysis. The greatest polemical debates were revolving around the question of whether poetry should be difficult or easy, with both camps defining their ideas of difficulty and accessibility in ways that were so utterly shallow as to make the entire point moot. Debates were performed, rather than engaged with. It was a postmodern hell of underarticulated poetics. Half-consciously, people were yearning for new forms of criticism that could put the oomph back into poetry. Weblogs provided for ways to explore debate directly outside of the clotted older channels of the reviews and the newspapers. Belleman’s essay and the resulting online activity had shown that there was a widespread eagerness to take poetry more seriously as a social art form. It was in this environment that Mettes started his remarkable project Dichtersalfabet . At that moment, Mettes was active mostly in academic circles, having become noted at Leiden University as a particularly gifted student of literary theory. Within the Netherlands, the field of literary theory has a very odd relationship to literature as it is practiced in the country. Academic theory tends to have a mostly international view and engage with international debates of cultural criticism, literary theory, and philosophy, with academics often publishing in English and attending conferences around the world. Literature itself however is much more concerned with domestic traditions. Consequently, in the Netherlands, there exists a language gap between academic theoretical practice (as it is studied in the literary theory departments) and literary practice (which, academically, gets studied in specialized departments of Dutch literature). The Dichtersalfabet can be seen as Mettes’s attempt to close this gap. It is also an attempt to bridge the divide between theory and practice, in which he could apply his theoretical knowledge in a very unorthodox and unacademic critical mode that moreover could reach far beyond the domain of conventional criticism. Mettes’s goal was to trace a diagonal through Dutch poetic culture, to “strangle” what he perceived to be its dominant oppressive traditions of agreeable irrelevance, in order to see whatever might be able to survive his critical assaults. But he could only do so by means of a very serious engagement with poetry itself. To this end, he would go systematically through the poetry bookshelf of the Verwijs bookshop (part of a mainstream chain of booksellers) in The Hague, buying one publication per blog item, starting from A and working his way through the alphabet, reading whatever he might encounter that way in the restaurant of the HEMA store (another big commercial chain in the country). He would subsequently write down his reading experiences, refraining however from trying to write a nuanced book review. Rather, he would write about anything that caught his attention and sparked his critical interest. This way of working would yield vast, at times somewhat rambling, dense, lively, and generally brilliant essays, in which he held no punches. He never hesitated to pull out his entire arsenal of concepts from the international theory traditions, while never degenerating into mere academic exercise and pointless intertextualities. The attempt was rather to live the poetry that he read, and to engage it with the full range of political, academic, cultural, and personal references that he had at his disposal—all that composed the individual named Jeroen Mettes as a reader. Often what he wrote would not be according to the standards of what we usually think of as a critical review of a book of poetry. Sometimes he would even be a little sloppy in his judgments of poets or representations of the books he read, for example by basing an entire essay on the blurb of a book rather than its poetry content. But what he did was always brilliant writing nonetheless—virtuoso riffs on poetic fragments randomly found within capitalist society, exposing an incisive and insistent poetical sensibility. Mettes read poetry for political reasons, to see whether poetry could offer him a way to deal with a political world he detested. The right-wing horrors of the Bush years, the Iraq war, and the turn of Dutch public opinion towards ever more conservative, narrow-minded, and xenophobic views alongside a complete failure of the political left to present any credible alternative, were weighing heavily on the times in which Mettes reported on his reading. Poetry was to measure this world, diagram it, to lay bare its inconsistencies and faults, to indicate where lines of flight might be found. Amid the ruins of a world wrecked by imperialist policies, corporate capitalism, and doctrinal neoliberalism it would have to show the possibility of a new community. And it was, through its rhythmical workings, to release the reading subject from his confinement to ideologically conditioned individuality and lead him into the immanent paradise of reading. The stakes were high. Much higher than anything Dutch poetry had seen for many years. Mettes’s blog was widely read from the start. His posts sparked lively debates. Some of these subsequently led to the publication of extensive essays on a few key poets in some literary journals, particularly Parmentier and the Flemish journal yang , for which Mettes would become a member of the editorial board, a few months after starting the Dichtersalfabet . This could have been the start of a brilliant career, but this was not to be. The initial manic energy that fueled the blog gradually subsided. The Alfabet was updated less and less regularly. Mettes sometimes just disappeared for many weeks, then suddenly returning with a brilliant essay. Until, on September 21, 2006, he posted his final blogpost, consisting of no text whatsoever. That night I learned from his mentor at Leiden University that he had committed suicide. Mettes and I had had some fruitful exchanges on poetry, rhythm, music, and form, mostly on the blogs, but also by email. Three weeks before his death was the last time I heard from him: a very sudden, uncharacteristically curt note saying “My old new sentence epic.” Attached to that message I found a DOC-file of a work so major that I felt intimidated. This was N30 , a text he had been working on for over five years. After his death, it took me a long time before I dared to read it in its entirety. In the meantime, the work of preparing the manuscript for publication was entrusted by his relatives to his colleagues at yang magazine. It took them a few years to brush up the text and to edit the Dichtersalfabet -blog (which, apart from the Alphabet project itself, incorporated many other fragments of political, polemical, and theoretical writing) into book form along with the essays. The result of this labor was finally published in 2011 as a two-book set, and Mettes burst onto the Dutch poetry scene for the second time. The work was widely reviewed, on blogs, in journals, magazines, and newspapers. Many critics who had not followed the blogs in 2005 showed themselves surprised, baffled even, by the intensity of Mettes’s critical writing. But for those who had read the blog, the main surprise was in the poetry. During Mettes’s lifetime, some of his poems had already been published in Parmentier . Although these were strong texts by themselves, in no way did they prepare readers for N30 . Nothing like it had been written in Dutch before. Instead, N30 explicitly follows the American tradition of Language Writing, directly referencing Ron Silliman and his concept of The New Sentence. However, it would seem that much of the poetical thinking around his use of this technique puts him closer to a writer such as Bruce Andrews. For Mettes, using non sequiturs as a unit of poetic construction was not only a way of reinventing formal textual construction, but it was another way of finding the fault lines in the social fabric. From the perspective of the Language tradition, one may put N30 somewhere between Silliman and Andrews. N30 shares an autobiographical element with Silliman’s New Sentence projects, and as in Andrews, there is a concern for mapping out social totality within text—what Mettes refers to as a “textual world civil war.” Again this shows a formal textual strategy for allowing the person “Jeroen Mettes” to be absorbed by the world, which here appears as a whirlwind of demotic and demonic chatter, full of violence, humor, intensity, beauty, disgust, sex, commerce, and strife. Influenced as it may by American precursors, Mettes’s tone and form end up quite different from his American counterparts, consistently referencing a world that is Dutch, all too Dutch, taking on the oppressive orderliness of Dutch society with its endemic penchant for consensus by introducing chaos into its daily life and laying bare its implicit aggressions. The work’s 31 chapters each have a different feel and rhythmical outline, but none of them follow a predetermined pattern. Rather, Mettes would consistently edit and reedit the text, randomly rewriting parts of it, as he explains in his poetical creed Politieke Poëzie (Political Poetry). N30 – referring to the 1999 antiglobalist protest in Seattle – was to be the first text of a trilogy. The work itself was written “in the mode of the present.” A second text was to be written in the mode of the future, and a third one, in the mode of the past, was going to be an epic poem about the Paris Commune, and to form an alternative poetic constitution for the European project. I still deeply regret that Jeroen Mettes never got to complete those projects, just as I would be very keen on knowing what he might have had to say about more recent political developments. Instead, in 2006, he remained stuck in the horrors of the present, that ended up consuming him completely. He left Dutch literature with some of its most piercing criticism and its most profoundly moving, exciting and powerful poetry. Excerpts from N30 Translated by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei from Jeroen Mettes. "N30." In N30+ . Amsterdam: De wereldbibliotheek, 2011. Published with permission of Uitgeverij Wereldbibliotheek, Amsterdam. Chapter 1 1999. A day is a space too. And another man, who had chained himself, had his ribs crushed, and a motor has driven over somebody’s legs. Dutch health care system spends ±145 million guilders per year on worriers. A spiderweb vibrates as I pass by. Randstad renovating. She slaps her bag against her ass: “Hurry up!” OPINION IS TRUE FRIENDSHIP Your skin. It doesn’t express anything. “But the use of the sword, that’s what I learned, and you’ll need nothing more for the moment.” Just try to interrogate a guy like that. Gullit in Sierra Leone. Codes silently lying all around. But that’s simply what belongs to “that it’s just allowed”: that sigh of “world” (a word expressing that the trees are now standing along the water like black men with white bags in their hair); that’s nothing else right? And you see how everything has to move, and first of all what cannot do so. Without Elysium and without savings, barbarians lashing out, horny for an enemy, staring across the water, staring into the air—staring to get out of it. “You’ve never showed me more than the mall,” she said. All those “dreams” in the end—and now? It was lying on the stairway, so I picked it up and took it upstairs. Chapter 3 “You know what?” Telecommunication. For love… I don’t really like that cheap cultural pessimism, but… The holy city is on pilgrimage in the earthly bodies of the faithful until the time of the heavenly kingdom has come. The end of an exhausting autumn day behind the computer, my eyes filled with tears of fatigue. KITCHEN / INSTALLATION / SPECIALIST. Network integration. In the sun, stretched out on a sheet. (…) I don’t believe what I’m reading, because I want to believe something else. An illusion? Suits me. There’s a variety of shapes and tastes… “So what?” you may think. 102 dalmatians can’t be wrong. But I want more, dear… A feel good movie. I’m smashing the burned body. So what? We continue to save the European civilization. What’s there to win? Plato with poets = Stalin without gulag? Ball against the crossbar. No wonder. She comes straight to her point. She’s standing in the kitchen eating an apple. (…) The godless Napoleon had used her as a stable and wanted to have her taken down. “Our” Rutger Hauer. Ready or not here I come. Psst… are you also wearing a string? Nobody understands our desire. Cliffs breaking the waves and shattering the sunset. I used to be a real romantic (as a poet). A typical fantasy used to be the one in which I brutally raped mother and daughter Seaver from the sitcom Growing Pains . Nevertheless you only contain bad words. Eyelashes. Automatic or manual? That your skin always in the afternoon. Integration. The air is empty. Too bad! Hand in hand on their lonely way. Alaska! Chapter 12 May 5, 2001 [10:00-10:30] A dust cloud on a hill. Globe. Indian (British) (tie) / pope. Damascus. Rape. We’re carrying the ayatollah’s portrait through the streets. At the moment the girl is mostly suede jacket with white ribbons on her sleeves. A small explosion flares up/impact. Camouflage. Close up. We’re analyzing the situation. He’s dead right? Dead dead. Dead. Everything without, these, and only with the body. Indices signal death. Dollar bills are printed in factories. Holes. Light patch. Globe in a box. Microphone. What’s the situation? Grey impact on a green hill (field?). The water is blue. He has no lips. Interns on the background with skirts that are too long. This is an example of a sonnet. An Islamic woman pushes against the door of an electronics shop. Arrows (percentages (prices)). Is this what awaits the American? Touch screen interface. The word, an island, can only be a sign in that situation. We pull up a chair, join in on the fun. On the shelves only books about computers. One glance in the distance is enough to lighten up a luna park in the distance. She’s really desperate, especially when she laughs. Click. Ah. Next. And now it’s raining, but that’s ok. Yellow stains sliding over the south. Shallow caves light: clothes, boots, electrical equipment. 45. 22:10. Nothing gives you the right to eat more than people starving to death. The Hague. Slam dunk. Traffic light. Two H’s, one L (standing for the L (little prick)). We’re happy to say something. Clouds, small suns, temperatures, cities. The truth is never an excuse. Yellow. Yellow. Green. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Green. Green. Yellow. Will you email me? Skeleton: “No.” Ex-nerds in brand-new and brightly red sport cars. $$$. I love. Shihab. Hooves in the sand. Skinny senior with over-sized sunglasses; old jockey (cap, trophy) smiling in slow motion. And there I am again, flashback, crying with my head in between my hands. Sometimes I’ve got the feeling that cannibals. Eyes: blue. Cancer. Why would I wait until tomorrow? Golden beams protruding from the lifted/lit earth. May 5, 2001 [11:30-12:45] You’ll remember this for the rest of your life. Graphs, diagrams. Bu$ine$$. Blue shirt, white collar, no neck (porn star). A name lights up. I’m hysteric. Will you join us? Letters falling in their words. Fingers set up a tent and start to dance. Young entrepreneurs from poor neighborhoods (read: black) guided by Microsoft. Kinda makes me happy, that sort of kitsch. A sense of exhaustion/impotence to see anything but the present. (…) Wouldn’t you like to? Orange explosion in an industrial zone. YOU’RE DOING THIS FOR AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL. Would you. A familiar face. Clouds and blossom. Sunflowers. Supermodels. Mountainous area in a rectangle: shades of brown, from dark to beige, more green toward the south. Tents and next to them (it’s all a blur) people. Plane. Stadium. Geometrical block of people. No, I ain’t crying. I don’t speak no more. I just want. Quote + photo. (Positive:) screaming crowd. Three-piece suit, seen from the back, before entering the arena. On the back: “Daddy abused me.” Oh, bummer. State of emergency has been declared and everyone has to cooperate. She’s cut her wrists. What we do know (…) is that there’s never been a unique word, an imperative name, nor will there ever be. [Click here for work that suits you.] Barefooted children are watching it (coherent pieces revelation of what’s lying below). Who knows how she’s changed during those two years. “Everything used to be better” + sigh. And here we are. An empty field of parquet. A city lying behind it. Explosion. Blue. A rain drop falling in my coffee. May 5, 2001 [14:30-15:30] A young Arafat on video speaking with raised finger. “I’m calling from my convertible.” Names on walls, victims, numbers… Tourists. Yellow. Yellow. “Your own child! Really, what kind of human are you?” I don’t want to hear it no more. A woman jumping out of the water in a yellow bikini against a background of fireworks and the Cheops pyramid. Thy sorrow shall become good fortune, thy complaints laudation. All planets will float and wander. Wo die Welt zum Bild wird, kommt das System (…) zur Herrschaft. It is something, but is it? May 5, 2001 [18:30-19:00] Iris. Leaves. NASDAQ. Open / and white and. For the one who’s doing nothing, just waiting. (…) NO DEFEAT is made entirely up of defeat -- since / the world it opens is always a place / formerly / unsuspected. October 2002. “Jeroen, I’m leaving for the cemetery, byeeee.” The rise of the middle class. My entire oeuvre is an ode to the. My entire head is a fight against the. God always demands what you cannot sacrifice. You may take that the easy way, but… “The state hasn’t made us, but we make the state” (Hitler). A stork exits the elevator. Skeletons of. Moscow. Helsinki. Palermo. Paris. Chapter 30 Like your paradises: nothing. United Desire, as only remaining superpower. And even though the sea is now calmer and the wind is blowing pleasantly in my face… Heart! Who determines whether a tradition is “alive”? The yellow leaf or the white branch? Mars. This sentence is a typical example. Most Dutch people are happy. No consolation. When I see a girl sitting at a table with a book, a notepad, a pen, a bottle of mineral water, her hand writing in the light—then I consider that one thing. “Presents,” “poetry,” “classics.” We are what we cannot make from ourselves. “Left”: mendicant orders, missionaries. Saint-Just: “A republic is founded on the destruction of its enemies.” She crosses the street with a banana peel between her fingers. (…) We chose our own wardens, torturers, it was us who called all this insanity upon ourselves, we created this nightmare… But “no”? Girl (just like a beach ball) talking rapid Spanish (Portuguese?) in a mobile phone. Do I have a chance now that her boyfriend is getting bold? CLIO, horny bitch. What else do you want? An old woman, between the doors of the C1000, is suddenly unable to go on; her husband stretches out his hand, speaking a few encouraging words. Selection from. Der Führer schenkt den Jüden ein Stadt. How can it reach us if we haven’t been already reached somehow? It doesn’t “speak.” No problem. Each word she uses is a small miracle, as if she doesn’t belong to it, to language, but wanders around with a pocket light looking for the exit; she’s never desperate (maybe a little nervous), lighting up heavy words from the inside. But indeed, we’re free. But the predicate is not an attribute, but an event, and the subject is not a subject, but a shell. That’s why also samurai, knights, and warriors raised the blossom as emblem: they knew how to die. Locked up in a baby carriage with a McDonald’s balloon. Blue helicopter, the blue sky. Whether you want to refer? The point is. How / Motherfucker can I sing a sad song / When I remember Zion? You’ll feel so miserable and worthless that you think: “If only I were dead!,” or: “Just put an end to it!” “So you’re an economist?” Her card—two little birds building a nest, her handwriting shaking—is still on the mantelpiece. Guevara: “No, a communist.” A straw fire, such was our life: rapidly it flared up, rapidly it passed. I’m fleeing, coming from nowhere. (…) Eazy-E drinking coffee with the American president. If I’d scream, would that be an event? Drown it: the cleaner it will rise up from the depths. No! The night, so fast… As if there’s something opened up in that face. Come on, we may not curse life. He shows me his methadone: “If you drink that all at once, you’ll die instantly.” The last one dictates how we should behave to deserve happiness. One shine / above the earth. “I want to go to Bosnia,” I said bluntly. I don’t even know the name of the current mayor. Let’s despise our success! “There is no future; this is the future. Hope is a weakness that we've overcome. We have found happiness!” Sun. Sushi. Volvo. I feel like a bomb about to explode at any moment. Makes a difference for the reconstruction right? The decor moves forward. Daughter of Nereus, you nymphs of the sea, and you Thetis, you should have kept his tired head above the waves! Alas! This sentence has been written wearing a green cap. I receive my orders from the future. A frog jumps into it. Her husband has turned the Intifada, which he follows daily on CCN, into his hobby, “to forget that he doesn’t have his driver’s license yet." Suddenly the sun slides over the crosswalk. Her (his?) foot is playing with the slipper under the table. Is this how I’m writing this book now? I’m not a fellow man. I hate you and I want to hurt you. These are my people. Their screaming doesn’t rise above the constantly wailing sirens which we've learned to ignore. My whole body became warm and suddenly started to tremble. Unfortunate is he who is standing on the threshold of the most beautiful time, but awaits a better one. Arafat’s “removal” is contrary to American interests. Jeep drives into boy. What you can do alone, you should do alone. A food gift from the people of the United States of America. Two seagulls. [...]. (shrink)

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In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:iPod, YouTube, Wii Play: Theological Engagements with Entertainment by D. Brent Laytham, and: If These Walls Could Talk: Community Muralism and the Beauty of Justice by Maureen H. O’ConnellJoel WardeniPod, YouTube, Wii Play: Theological Engagements with Entertainment By D. Brent Laytham EUGENE, OR: CASCADE, 2012. 209 PP. $24.00If These Walls Could Talk: Community Muralism and the Beauty of Justice By Maureen H. O’Connell COLLEGEVILLE, MN: LITURGICAL PRESS, 2012. (...) 319 PP. $39.95Although, in the Republic, Plato discussed the usefulness (and danger!) of having artists practicing within the civic community, from his time forward, social philosophers, moral theologians, and religious ethicists have tended to avoid [End Page 199] probing too much into the relationship between the aesthetic and the ethical. To be sure, as organized academic philosophy developed, especially after the Enlightenment, the separate intellectual bailiwick of aesthetics left ethical considerations of what is morally (as opposed to artistically) good to the domain of ethics. The result of such segmentation was to keep both interests’ discussions of “the good” significantly apart.The two books reviewed here represent new (and, hopefully, now less uncommon) attempts to find the correspondence between beauty and goodness. Because both authors think and write specifically from the perspective of Christian ethics, these attempts make use of the resources of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, the sometimes contrasting traditions of Protestant and Catholic spiritual reflection, and the authors’ own personal engagement with sources of beauty or entertainment. Both authors argue in some way that the pursuit of the beautiful (or the enjoyable) bears a relation to goodness. They both also argue that our use of technology and our making of art ought to attend to the building of justice.In his book iPod, YouTube, Wii Play: Theological Engagements with Entertainment, D. Brent Laytham investigates varied forms of contemporary entertainment activities and technologies (e.g., the media-sharing website YouTube, video games, fashion magazines, sporting events) and unearths the ways in which these contemporary and technologically facilitated pastimes both support and endanger human social interaction. In particular, he pays close attention to how entertainment(s) help or hinder the drive of a community of believers into lives of discipleship.The thirteen chapters of the book are each organized around a particular technological theme and make good use of sociological reflection on media, as well as some Christian reflection on games, the communal pursuit of fun, and festivity. Laytham, a Methodist, takes a sympathetic stance toward modes of entertainment in how they function, at times, as legitimate means of communication between persons. But he also warns that they can, if used without an understanding of their effects on the inner lives of the persons involved, be damaging. The author often demonstrates remarkable psychological insight, such as when he discusses the pressures put upon teenagers’ sense of physical self-image when based on the values of fashion magazines (140), the spiritual dangers of any kind of escapism (118), and the complicated motivations underlying petty gambling (107). And though reflection questions that are scattered throughout the body of the text are sometimes distracting from the arguments he puts forward (and so maybe would be better placed at the end of each chapter), he clearly wants his critique of media and entertainment to lead to a fuller, better enjoyment of them, a proper enjoyment possible when they are understood in relation to what should be their ultimate purpose: the drawing together of communities of persons. [End Page 200]Moving from a consideration of entertainment to art, properly speaking, Maureen O’Connell’s If These Walls Could Talk: Community Muralism and the Beauty of Justice is a number of things. It is a narrative description of what has happened in one urban environment in the United States, where socioeconomic decline, street violence, and crushing poverty produce needful places for transformative grace; a theological-aesthetic analysis of a genre of fine art, peculiar for the materials used and the venues in which it is displayed; a moral-ethical project inspired by familial ties to a particular city, as well as the fruit of continued interest (and, one might even say, pastoral zeal) on the author’s... (shrink)

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Changes in immigration policy and legislation have the power to shape and alter the gendering of migration in significant ways, and can have a dramatic effect on the lives and relationships of the men, women and families involved. In this paper, we examine the provisions of the new Immigration Act introduced in South Africa in 2002. The Act, which replaces the outdated Aliens Control Act of 1991, gives considerable cause for concern on gender grounds. Foremost, the Act entrenches a system (...) of male-dominated regional labour migration that has its origins in the 19th-century discovery of gold and diamonds. The male bias in the work permit and other employment-based categories along with the limits to family reunification for those entering for work are likely in effect to discriminate against women to a greater extent than men. While similar gender concerns are common to most immigration policy regimes around the world, the particular circumstances of the South African case, where both skilled and unskilled migration streams are heavily male-dominated, makes them especially acute here. This paper contextualizes migration regimes in South Africa and examines in detail the likely implications of the new Immigration Act. (shrink)

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Virtual reality (VR) offers a new medium for video games. But how does VR as a medium affect the aesthetics and design of VR video games? In this chapter my aim is to answer this question. I begin by introducing video games as an art form, then highlight two types of pitfalls that a game’s design can fall prey to. A game can be too permissive, or too restrictive, when structuring the player’s agential role given its aesthetic aims. I argue (...) that VR makes falling into either extreme easier because of the sense of presence VR elicits. After defining the sense of presence, I present a conceptual framework for designing virtual items, then apply this to the sense of presence. I argue that the resultant framework allows us to see how VR exacerbates the two pitfalls, and can help mitigate the difficulties of VR game design. (shrink)

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This multiple-case study sought to understand what ambitious history teachers focus their reflections on throughout a unit of study. Through video-stimulated recall methodology, reflective interviews were conducted with participants in four different schools within the same high-poverty public school district. The study built upon findings from research on ambitious teachers and found that teachers fixated on a range of problems while reflecting, among them: students” historical thinking, cultural relevant pedagogy, and their framing of history through essential questions. That the teachers (...) focused on these issues could be linked to their values and broader educational aims. (shrink)

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This essay has its origin in a project on the globalization of science that rediscovered the wisdom of past research practices through the technology of the future. The main argument of this essay is that a convergence of digital video technologies with practices of social surveillance portends a methodological shift towards a new variety of qualitative methodology. Digital video is changing the way that students of the social world practice their craft, offering not just new ways of presenting but new (...) ways of practicing field research. We introduce concepts of the fluid wall and videoactive context to emphasize that the camera is an actor in the research process, and both behaviour and observation occur in both directions--in front of and behind the camera. While these practices and procedures are novel in some ways, they may also be viewed as old methods in the context of new instruments for recording as well as a new social understanding of these instruments. Since new technologies interact with the social context, the digital video methods we discuss in this essay are likely to become increasingly important for generations to come. We provide an overview of the use of digital video in research practice and present an account of the use of digital video methodology in Chile. (shrink)

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I, player : the puzzle of personal identity (MMORPGS and Virtual Communities) -- The game inside the mind, the mind inside the game (The Nintendo Wii Gaming Console) -- Realistic blood and gore : do violent games make violent gamers? (First-person Shooters) -- Games and God's goodness (World-builder and Tycoon Games) -- The metaphysics of interactive art (Puzzle and Adventure Games) -- Artificial and human intelligence (Single-player RPGS) -- Epilogue: Video games and the meaning of life.

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Violent video games are not always or perhaps even typically used for recruitment by extremist groups, even when extremists produce their own games. Nevertheless, when not used for recruitment, they have a clear propaganda function, including that of “normalising” extremism behind the façade of a familiar first-person shooter format. There is some evidence that success in violent video games may distinguish players and make them liable to in-person approaches from extremists on game-adjacent platforms. These approaches may radicalize players who are (...) looking for social connection, and may, in a few cases, turn them into real-world fighters. Extremist games also give people with extremist inclinations the opportunity to act them out online. The transition from game violence to real violence is not guaranteed, but extremists encourage it, sometimes through tactical communication over gaming devices, sometimes by using game audio and text for the expression of hate. There are strong and obvious moral objections to this use of games and game-adjacent platforms, and to enlisting games for the common extremist objective of weakening liberal democracy. (shrink)

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This article explores the nature and theoretical import of a hitherto neglected class of fictions which we term ‘self-involving interactive fictions’. SIIFs are interactive fictions, but they differ from standard examples of interactive fictions by being, in some important sense, about those who consume them. In order to better understand the nature of SIIFs, and the ways in which they differ from other fictions, we focus primarily on the most prominent example of the category: video-game fictions. We argue that appreciating (...) the self-involving nature of video-game fictions is key to understanding various otherwise puzzling phenomena concerning the ways in which consumers respond to them. Video-game fictions are, however, far from being the only extant example of this class; and we suggest that the recent philosophical interest in video games would be better focused on the wider class of self-involving interactive fictions. (shrink)

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While video games have blossomed into the foremost expression of contemporary popular culture over the past decades, their critical study occupies a fringe position in American Studies. In its engagement with video games, this book contributes to their study but with a thematic focus on a particularly important subject matter in American Studies: spatiality. The volume explores the production, representation, and experience of places in video games from the perspective of American Studies. Contributions critically interrogate the use of spatial myths (...) ("wilderness," "frontier," or "city upon a hill"), explore games as digital borderlands and contact zones, and offer novel approaches to geographical literacy. Eventually, Playing the Field II brings the rich theoretical repertoire of the study of space in American Studies into conversation with questions about the production, representation, and experience of space in video games. (shrink)

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This revised edition of a standard textbook combines an examination of the cinema and television industries with a detailed analysis of their aesthetic and semiotic characteristics. John Ellis draws on his experience as an independent television producer to provide a comprehensive and challenging overview of the place of film, television and video in our daily lives and their future prospects in a changing media landscape.

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The ability ofvideos to serve as evidence of racial injustice is complex and contested. This essay argues that scrutiny of the Black body has come to play a key role in howvideos of police violence are mined for evidence, following a long history of racialized surveillance and attributions of threat and superhuman powers to Black bodies. Usingvideos to combat injustice requires incorporating humanizing narratives and cultivating resistant modes of looking.

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Historically, video games featuring content perceived as excessively violent have drawn moral criticism from an indignant (and sometimes, morally outraged) public. Defenders of violent video games have insisted that such criticisms are unwarranted, as committing acts of virtual violence against computer-controlled characters – no matter how heinous or cruel those actions would be if performed in real life – harm no actual people. In this paper, I present and critically analyze key aspects of this debate. I argue that while many (...) ethical objections to playing violent video games seem to miss their marks, there is sufficient reason to take modest steps in order to address the concerns that theorists have raised. (shrink)

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I argue that by any major definition of art many modern video games should be considered art. Rather than defining art and defending video games based on a single contentious definition, I offer reasons for thinking that video games can be art according to historical, aesthetic, institutional, representational and expressive theories of art. Overall, I argue that while many video games probably should not be considered art, there are good reasons to think that some video games should be classified as (...) art. I also show that the debates over the artistic status of chess and sports offer some insights into the status of video games. (shrink)

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Action video game (AVG) has attracted increasing attention from both the public and from researchers. More and more studies found video game training improved a variety of cognitive functions. However, it remains controversial whether healthy adults can benefit from AVG training, and whether young and older adults benefit similarly from AVG training. In the present study, we aimed to quantitatively assess the AVG training effect on the cognitive ability of adults and to compare the training effects on young and older (...) adults by conducting a meta-analysis on previous findings. We systematically searched video game training studies published between January 1986 and July 2015. Twenty studies were included in the present meta-analysis, for a total of 313 participants included in the training group and 323 participants in the control group. The results demonstrate that healthy adults achieve moderate benefit from AVG training in overall cognitive ability and moderate to small benefit in specific cognitive domains. In contrast, young adults gain more benefits from AVG training than older adults in both overall cognition and specific cognitive domains. Age, education, and some methodological factors, such as the session duration, session number, total training duration, and control group type, modulated the training effects. These meta-analytic findings provide evidence that AVG training may serve as an efficient way to improve the cognitive performance of healthy adults. We also discussed several directions for future AVG training studies. (shrink)

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Video games are a $20-billion-a-year industry, but it is still treated as a niche market. The video game corporations hold considerable power over the articles that journalists write. Through in-de...

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Video surveillance is an omnipresent phenomenon in today’s metropolitan life. Mainly intended to solve crimes, to prevent them by realtime-monitoring or simply as a deterrent, video surveillance has also become interesting in economical contexts; e.g. to create customer profiles and analyse patterns of their shopping behaviour. The extensive use of video surveillance is challenged by legal claims and societal norms like not putting everybody under generalised suspicion or not recording people without their consent. In this work we propose a technological (...) solution to balance the positive and negative effects of video surveillance. With automatic image recognition algorithms on the rise, we suggest to use that technology to not just automatically identify people but blacken their images. This blackening is done with a cryptographic procedure allowing to revoke it with an appropriate key. Many of the legal and ethical objections to video surveillance could thereby be accommodated. In commercial scenarios, the operator of a customer profiling program could offer enticements for voluntarily renouncing one’s anonymity. Customers could e.g. wear a small infrared LED to signal their agreement to being tracked. After explaining the implementation details, this work outlines a multidisciplinary discussion incorporating an economic, ethical and legal viewpoint. (shrink)

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Is it ever morally wrong to enjoy fantasizing about immoral things? Many video games allow players to commit numerous violent and immoral acts. But, should players worry about the morality of their virtual actions? A common argument is that games offer merely the virtual representation of violence. No one is actually harmed by committing a violent act in a game. So, it cannot be morally wrong to perform such acts. While this is an intuitive argument, it does not resolve the (...) issue. -/- Focusing on why individual players are motivated to entertain immoral and violent fantasies, Video Games, Violence, and the Ethics of Fantasy advances debates about the ethical criticism of art, not only by shining light on the interesting and under-examined case of virtual fantasies, but also by its novel application of a virtue ethical account. Video games are works of fiction that enable players to entertain a fantasy. So, a full understanding of the ethical criticism of video games must focus attention on why individual players are motivated to entertain immoral and violent fantasies. -/- Video Games, Violence, and the Ethics of Fantasy engages with debates and critical discussions of games in both the popular media and recent work in philosophy, psychology, media studies, and game studies. (shrink)

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Video‐recording healthcare interactions provides important opportunities for research and service improvement. However, this method brings about tensions, especially when recording sensitive topics. Subsequent reflection may compel the researcher to engage in ethical and moral deliberations. This paper presents experiences from a South African genetic counselling study which made use of video‐recordings to understand communicative processes in routine practice. Video‐recording as a research method, as well as contextual and process considerations are discussed, such as researching one's own field, issues of trust (...) and anonymity, the challenge of providing true informed consent and capturing details which may cause psychological harm. Several recommendations for research practice in diverse healthcare settings are made. This includes the value of reflective pieces, the importance of retrospective consent, disclosure of the limitations to anonymity, as well as the collective responsibility of those involved to produce ethical research. These recommendations have value for genetic counselling and other healthcare fields. (shrink)

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The author reviews two symposia: 'The Video Arts: Demonstration and Discussion', The American Society for Aesthetics, New York City, 28 Oct. 1978, and 'The Aestheticians Look at Television', National Association of Education Broadcasters, Washington, D.C., 30 Oct. 1978. He also presents an evaluation of the current state of video art in terms of philosophical aesthetics. Furthermore, he attempts to make a clear distinction between television and video art. The differences cited include corporate studio efforts vs efforts of individual artists, commercial (...) vs artistic purpose and the substantial differences between production methods. Other issues considered are style, intimacy and narcissism. (shrink)

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In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Crushing Pressures and Radical IdeasJohn Z. Sadler, MD (bio)Back in 2011, I wrote a paper for the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, an Australian journal, for a special issue dedicated to ethical issues associated with psychiatric genetics research. The editor was particularly excited by the recent findings of the 5-HTT allele in psychiatric illness. I had different ideas about what I wanted to write about, and the editor, Michael Robertson, (...) graciously considered them and ultimately published the paper. At the time I was interested in the colossal investment of National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) research dollars in psychiatric genetic research; at the time I was troubled at the lack of on-the-ground clinical implications of this research investment, and figured an Australian journal and referees would be more generous to a critical paper on U.S. funding priorities. I dug into the National Institutes of Health (NIH), NIMH, and National Science Foundation websites and found some crude dollar evidence of respective expenditures for research funding in various disorders and focus areas, and compared these investments to psychiatric genetic research funding commitments. I will not go into details (Sadler, 2011), but the gist was that the psychiatric genetics research enterprise was and had been an extraordinarily expensive enterprise, when other research questions that could be immediately implementable into clinical care improvements remained marginally funded at best. The paper was not read widely and other than a couple of annoyed responses from psychiatric genetic researchers, not much came of it.This concern about funding priorities was one of the reasons why I was pleased to see this paper by Turkheimer and Greer which explores the long term results of the Spit for Science (S4S) initiative, which was launched grandly the same year as my paper’s whisper from down under. I hope this Philosophical Case Conference explores the many dimensions of interest for this paper, which is extraordinarily careful and even handed in its attitude, while at the same time being incisive in its analysis.My focus here is not in the science per se, which is beyond my competence. I’m interested in Turkheimer and Greer’s (T&G) conceptual overview of this research program. More specifically, I focus on T&G’s highlighting of the extraordinary willingness of the S4S authors to interpret prevailingly negative results in the most generous, even misleading, degree possible. I try to provide some possible ways of understanding this kind of research rhetoric exhibited by a cohort of highly respected, very successful scientists.I acknowledge the well-described varieties of interpretive bias that all of us are subject to. First on the list must be confirmation bias, our tendency to interpret situations in terms consistent [End Page 447] with our preconceived notions—in this case, the idea that genetics has something important to do with addictive disorders. Another might be epistemic overconfidence—the tendency to fail at interpretive skepticism in favor of one’s preferred conclusion. Related to this may also be interpretive momentum, the tendency to maintain a conviction about the correctness of one’s expectations and disregard inconsistent findings over the course of a research program—in this case, the multiple S4S studies (O’Sullivan & Schofeld, 2018). However, these kinds of biases tend to “blame” the individual authors’ thinking styles. I opine, though, that other vectors shaping the declaring-success rhetoric are more important.These sources have to do with the state of practice in doing biomedical science research in universities and particularly academic medical centers (AMCs) today. I identify several causal vectors that compel, however subtly, researchers to declare success in the face of failure. I have only picked three, and in no order of importance: 1) funding caps for NIH grants, 2) the overleveraging of university budgets and ballooning dependence on soft money, and 3) the incentivizing of intellectual property development within AMCs.Funding Caps for NIH GrantsIf you are a university or AMC, one way you hold onto your most productive scientists (e.g., grants, publications, discoveries, and status) is by paying them well. Single NIH grants today commonly amount to millions of dollars, and often tens of millions. These bring... (shrink)

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The canine photographs,videos, and photographic narratives of artist William Wegman frame questions of animal aesthetic agency. Over the past 30 years, Wegman's dog images shift in form and content in ways that reflect the artist's increasing anxiety over his control of the art-making process once he becomes identified, in his own words, as "the dog photographer". Wegman's dog images claim unique cultural prominence, appearing regularly in fine art museums as well as on broadcast television. But, as Wegman comes (...) to use these images to document his own transition from dog photographer to dog breeder, these texts also reflect increasing restrictions on what I term the "pack aesthetics," or collaborative production of art and artistic agency, that distinguish some of the early pieces. Accounting for the correlations between multiple and mongrel dogs in Wegman's experimental video work and exclusively Weimaraner-breed dogs with human bodies in his recent work in large-format Polaroid photography, this article explores how Wegman's work with his "video dog star," his first Weimaraner dog Man Ray, troubles the erasure of the animal in contemporary conceptions of artistic authority. (shrink)

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Accounts of video game play developed from an ethnomethodological and conversation analytic perspective remain relatively scarce. This study collects together an emerging, if scattered, body of research which focuses on the material, practical “work” of video game players. The study offers an example-driven explication of an EMCA perspective on video game play phenomena. The materials are arranged as a “tactical zoom.” We start very much “outside” the game, beginning with a wide view of how massive-multiplayer online games are played within (...) dedicated gaming spaces; here, we find multiple players, machines, and many different sorts of activities going on. Still remaining somewhat distanced from the play of the game itself, we then take a closer look at the players themselves by examining a notionally simpler setting involving pairs taking part in a football game at a games console. As we draw closer to the technical details of play, we narrow our focus further still to examine a player and spectator situated “at the screen” but jointly analyzing play as the player competes in an online first-person shooter. Finally, we go “inside” the game entirely and look at the conduct of avatars on-screen via screen recordings of a massively multiplayer online game. Having worked through specific examples, we provide an elaboration of a selection of core topics of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis that is used to situate some of the unstated orientations in the presentation of data fragments. In this way, recurrent issues raised in the fragments are shown as coherent, interconnected phenomena. In closing, we suggest caution regarding the way game play phenomena have been analyzed in this study, while remarking on challenges present for the development of further EMCA-oriented research on video game play. (shrink)

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In this digital age the use of video in social science research has become commonplace. As sophistication has increased along with usability, as spiralling staff costs push out direct observation, the researchers training today are grasping video as a means of coming to terms with the continued pressure to produce accessible research. However, the ‘fit’ of technology with research is far from simple. Ideally placed to offer guidance to developing researchers, this new text draws together the theoretical, methodological and practical (...) issues of effectively using video across the social sciences. This book concentrates on how researchers can benefit from the use of video in their own research, whether it is: Video as representation Video as an aid to reflection Video that generates participation Video, voice and articulation, or Video that acts as a provocation. In turn each of these five central functions is discussed in relation to different stages of the research process, consisting of: Research design Fieldwork and data collection Analysis of data and findings Dissemination. As a practical research tool this book shows how, why and when video should be used, representing an invaluable guide for postgraduate and doctoral students conducting research in the social sciences, as well as any researchers, academics or professionals interested in developing technologically informed research. (shrink)

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In the 1960s, there were efforts to move broadcast television in the direction of the experimental video art by altering television's conventional format. Fred Barzyk, in his role as a producer and director at WGBH-TV in Boston, was uniquely positioned to act as a link between television and experimental video artists who normally would not have had access to the technology available at a major broadcast facility. As the leading innovator in the beginnings of video art, the Korean American Nam (...) June Paik (1932-2006) deserves special mention. His work bridges the worlds of art, video technology, and television. The video works of Nan June Paik, Amy Greenfield, Peter Campus, Feng Meng Bo, Elizabeth Sussman and other video artists are considered in this essay as key contributors to the development of video art. The selection is based on my experience with the artists cited. Despite video art's growing popularity among contemporary artists in the 1970s and beyond, the museums were slow to acknowledge this development. One of the problems was deciding where, among the existing museum collections, to locate video art. In its 50 some years of history, video art has enjoyed a remarkable success in its artistic innovations while undergoing changes in formats virtually at the speed of rapid advances in electronic visual technology. Ironically, the legacy of creative television set in motion by Barzyk and his generation has been largely coopted by the television broadcasting industry, which mainly serves as a platform for mass media advertising. (shrink)

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In this paper, I deal with video data not as a transparent window on social interaction but as a situated product of video practices. This perspective invites an analysis of the practices of video-making, considering them as having a configuring impact on both on the way in which social interaction is documented and the way in which it is locally interpreted by video-makers. These situated interpretations and online analyses reflexively shape not only the record they produce but also the interactional (...) order itself as it is documented. Dealing with practices of video-making not as a resource but as a topic, I explore a particular editing practice, the use of the split-screen technique, consisting in combining various camera views within the same image. This technique is now widely used in cinema, professional settings, TV, and social research. I focus on its uses in TV talk shows and debates: through a systematic sequential analysis of the positions where split screen is introduced, I show that directors do orient to the sequential features of interaction in using this technique and that, conversely, their uses of split screen reveal their local understanding—and configuring—of what the interactional dimension of debates and interviews consist of, for all practical purposes. (shrink)

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The present study aimed to integrate findings from technology acceptance research with research on applicant reactions to new technology for the emerging selection procedure of asynchronous video interviewing. One hundred six volunteers experienced asynchronous video interviewing and filled out several questionnaires including one on the applicants’ personalities. In line with previous technology acceptance research, the data revealed that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use predicted attitudes toward asynchronous video interviewing. Furthermore, openness revealed to moderate the relation between perceived usefulness (...) and attitudes toward this particular selection technology. No significant effects revealed for computer self-efficacy, job interview self-efficacy, extraversion, neuroticism, and conscientiousness. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

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Some video games are said to be philosophical. Despite video games having received some attention in academic philosophy, that contention has not been sufficiently addressed. This paper investigates in what sense video games might be properly called “philosophical”. To this end, I utilize Wittgenstein’s distinction between saying and showing to get into view how some video games might be properly called philosophical. This leads to two senses of being philosophical: a conventional sense of expressing philosophy through propositions, i.e., through saying, (...) and a sense of being genuinely philosophical by expressing philosophical thought through showing. I argue that the conventional sense is not sufficient to call video games philosophical, leaving the question whether there are video games which satisfy the conditions of being genuinely philosophical. I furthermore contend that there are at least some examples of video games which qualify as being philosophical, e.g., Papers, Please and The Stanley Parable. (shrink)

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Many theories of complex cognitive-motor skill learning are built on the notion that basic cognitive processes group actions into easy-to-perform sequences. The present work examines predictions derived from laboratory-based studies of motor chunking and motor preparation using data collected from the real-time strategy video game StarCraft 2. We examined 996,163 action sequences in the telemetry data of 3,317 players across seven levels of skill. As predicted, the latency to the first action is delayed relative to the other actions in the (...) group. Other predictions, inspired by the memory drum theory of Henry and Rogers, received only weak support. (shrink)

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Genes adjacent to species-specific loci are 6.2% older than genes adjacent to other dynamic loci (P< 10−2 by randomization; gray bars in Fig. 3); thus, species-specific genes are not randomly distributed but are found preferentially in the older regions, indicating that the incipient Escherichia and Salmonella lineages continued to participate in recombination at loci unlinked to lineage-specific genes.

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One of the most pleasurable aspects of video games is their ability to induce immersive experiences. However, there appears to be a tentative conceptualization of what an immersive experience is. In this short review, we specifically focus on the terms of flow and immersion, as they are the most widely used and applied definitions in the video game literature, whilst their differences remain disputable. We critically review the concepts separately and proceed with a comparison on their proposed differences. We conclude (...) that immersion and flow do not substantially differ in current studies and that more evidence is needed to justify their separation. (shrink)

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The gamer’s dilemma offers three plausible but jointly inconsistent premises: (1) Virtual murder in video games is morally permissible. (2) Virtual paedophelia in video games is not morally permissible. (3) There is no morally relevant difference between virtual murder and virtual paedophelia in video games. In this paper I argue that the gamer’s dilemma can be understood as one of three distinct dilemmas, depending on how we understand two key ideas in Morgan Luck’s (2009) original formulation. The two ideas are (...) those of (1) occurring in a video game and (2) being a virtual instance of murder or paedophelia. Depending on the weight placed on the gaming context, the dilemma is either about in-game acts or virtual acts. And depending on the type of virtual acts we have in mind, the dilemma is either about virtual representations or virtual partial reproductions of murder and paedophelia. This gives us three dilemmas worth resolving: a gaming dilemma, a representation dilemma, and a simulation dilemma. I argue that these dilemmas are about different issues, apply to different cases, and are susceptible to different solutions. I also consider how different participants in the debate have interpreted the dilemma in one or more of these three ways. (shrink)

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Violent video games (VVGs) are a source of serious and continuing controversy. They are not unique in this respect, though. Other entertainment products have been criticized on moral grounds, from pornography to heavy metal, horror films, and Harry Potter books. Some of these controversies have fizzled out over time and have come to be viewed as cases of moral panic. Others, including moral objections to VVGs, have persisted. The aim of this paper is to determine which, if any, of the (...) concerns raised about VVGs are legitimate. We argue that common moral objections to VVGs are unsuccessful, but that a plausible critique can be developed that captures the insights of these objections while avoiding their pitfalls. Our view suggests that the moral badness of a game depends on how well its internal logic expresses or encourages the players’ objectionable attitudes. This allows us to recognize that some games are morally worse than others—and that it can be morally wrong to design and play some VVGs—but that the moral badness of these games is not necessarily dependent on how violent they are. (shrink)

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Commercial video games are popular entertainment media and part of students’ media reality. While commercial video games’ main purpose is not learning, they nonetheless could and should serve as objects of reflection in formal educational settings. Teachers could guide student learning and reflection as well as motivate students with commercial video games, but more evidence from formal educational settings is required. We conducted two mixed methods case studies to investigate students’ reflection processes using commercial video games in regular formal high (...) school teaching. In a double lesson, 29 students of a 10th-grade biology course and 17 students of a 12th-grade advanced course on history played and discussed a commercial video game related to the current curricular topic. We examined the reflection processes of students in terms of their reactions to the teachers’ game-related statements and questions. Regarding teachers’ statements, students discussed several topics related to game enjoyment and the games’ representation of topic-related content. Regarding teachers’ questions, students discussed multiple goals in each game, how the games represented topic-related content, and how the games could be appropriate for learning. In Study 2, students additionally discussed emotions, stereotypes, violence, and the narrative related to the digital history game. We found that the discussions provided students opportunities to reflect on their game experiences and the current curricular topic as well as to practice media criticism. We further provide quantitative results on students’ perceived topic knowledge, on several facets of their learning motivation, and on their acceptance of video games. Overall, our findings illustrate the educational value of using commercial video games as objects of reflection. (shrink)

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The most cursory look at video games raises several interesting issues that have yet to receive any consideration in the philosophy of art, such as: Are videogames art and, if so, what kind of art are they? Are they more closely related to film, or are they similar to performance arts, such as dance? Perhaps they are more akin to competitive sports and games like diving and chess? Can we even define “video game” or “game”? We often say that video (...) games are interactive, but what is interactivity and what are the effects of interactivity on eliciting emotional responses from players? (shrink)

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Video games and virtual worlds play substantial roles in contemporary transhumanism. Many transhumanists appreciate the freedom and power that accompany these digital landscapes and recognize that they can promote transhumanist ways of thinking beyond the borders of explicitly transhumanist groups. Video games and virtual worlds enable transcendence through their design and contribute to transhumanism through the options they enable and the influence they have. Because of their significant place in transhumanism, video games and virtual worlds are thus important to the (...) study of religion and science in the twenty‐first century. (shrink)

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Video games fictions are interactive: some of the content is set by the game designer and some is set by the player. However, philosophers disagree over how this interaction is reflected within the fictional content of video games. First, I will show that games and playthroughs are two distinct works of fiction with their associated fictional content. Second, I argue that players engage with both fictional works when playing a video game. They imagine the fictional truths associated with the game (...) and those associated with their playthrough. Thus, I defend what I will call a Dual-Work View of our engagement with video game fictions. To do so, I show that games have accessible fictional content, that games are distinctively incomplete fictions, and that players engage with this distinctive incompleteness. My goal is to offer a clear account of the fictional content of video games. (shrink)

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Arts, Real-Time Video and Interactivity for Sustainability is an ongoing collaborative research project investigating how real-time video, DIY surveillance technologies and sensor data can be used as a tool for environmental awareness, activism and artistic explorations. The project consists of a series of digital contexts for aesthetic contemplation of nature and civic engagement, aiming to foster awareness and empowerment of local populations through DIY surveillance. At the core of the ARTIVIS efforts are a series of interactive installations, that make use (...) of surveillance technologies and real-time video as raw material to promote environmental awareness through the emotion generated by real-time connections with nature. Throughout the project development, the surveillance concept has been shifting from the use of surveillance technology in a centralized platform, to the idea of veillance with distributed peer-to-peer networks that can be used for science and environmental monitoring. In this paper we present the history of the ARTiVIS project, related and inspiring work, describe ongoing research work and explore the present and future challenges of appropriating surveillance technology for artistic, educational and civic engagement purposes. (shrink)

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Background: Conducting video-research in birth settings raises challenges for ethics review boards to view birthing women and research-midwives as capable, autonomous decision-makers. Aim: This study aimed to gain an understanding of how the ethical approval process was experienced and to chronicle the perceived risks and benefits. Research design: The Birth Unit Design project was a 2012 Australian ethnographic study that used video recording to investigate the physical design features in the hospital birthing space that might influence both verbal and non-verbal (...) communication and the experiences of childbearing women, midwives and supporters. Participants and research context: Six women, 11 midwives and 11 childbirth supporters were filmed during the women’s labours in hospital birth units and interviewed 6 weeks later. Ethical considerations: The study was approved by an Australian Health Research Ethics Committee after a protracted process of negotiation. Findings: The ethics committee was influenced by a traditional view of research as based on scientific experiments resulting in a poor understanding of video-ethnographic research, a paradigmatic view of the politics and practicalities of modern childbirth processes, a desire to protect institutions from litigation, and what we perceived as a paternalistic approach towards protecting participants, one that was at odds with our aim to facilitate situations in which women could make flexible, autonomous decisions about how they might engage with the research process. Discussion: The perceived need for protection was overly burdensome and against the wishes of the participants themselves; ultimately, this limited the capacity of the study to improve care for women and babies. Conclusion: Recommendations are offered for those involved in ethical approval processes for qualitative research in childbirth settings. The complexity of issues within childbirth settings, as in most modern healthcare settings, should be analysed using a variety of research approaches, beyond efficacy-style randomised controlled trials, to expand and improve practice-based results. (shrink)

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Video ethics in educational research involving children is a recent topic that has arisen since the increase in the use of visual mediums in research especially with the development of new and ubiquitous internet technologies and social media. This paper emerged as an expressed concerned by a group of scholars associated with the new Video Journal of Education and Pedagogy that was established in 2016. The paper is the result of a collective writing process over a period of a few (...) months that discusses visual studies in education and visual ethics in relation to qualitative research in education, and as it applies to children. The article also uses the newly established convention of open review, publishing the results with the paper. (shrink)

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Daga (the Bulgarian word for “rainbow”) was a Bulgarian comic magazine launched in 1979 and regularly published until 1992. Its remarkably westernized aesthetic greatly impacted an entire generation of readers. Included in its variety of stories (history, sci-fi, literary classics) is an action-packed account of Spartacus’ exploits. For ten consecutive issues (1979–1983), the story spanned the hero’s life from a more fanciful narrative of his early years in Thrace to the better-documented events in Italy and his death. The paper explores (...) the plotline, characterization, and visual aspects of “Spartak” to reveal the eponymous hero’s significance for young Bulgarian readers in the 1980s. Drawing on the cultural and historical context, I argue that Spartacus was well suited to serve as a role model and a national hero by embodying the proletarian anti-imperialist struggle and also, notably, because of his supposed place of birth near the river Strimon in modern-day Bulgaria. I also look at examples of contemporary comics, including a new graphic novel based on Daga’s story published in 2020, and consider the transmutations of the hero to suit the post-communist (and anti-communist) ideological agenda, characterized by a departure from the proletarian image of Spartacus in favor of more conservative, aristocratic features. (shrink)

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In this book, the author explores how video-image technology shapes our psychic and social environments from an art historiographical perspective. We know media technology is dramatically shaping our political and epistemological landscape: this book foregrounds the emergence of performative video images as a key factor in the revaluation of culture and politics. -/- Performative Images draws upon the work of video artists and activists in France between the 1970s and the early 2020s and focuses on significant practices with technology. Video (...) art and video activism are analysed together in the book to revaluate key concepts in media studies and foreground a performative approach to the theory of image technology. -/- The book engages works in visual culture, performance studies, digital studies, critical race theory, and feminist methodologies to account for the changes brought about by video technology in social and psychic life. Performative Images is about art and activists’ engagement in video technology—an engagement that unsettles the hegemonic narrative of dominant media, as well as the apparently politically neutral dimension of communication technology. (shrink)

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The aesthetics of video games has as much to do with the player as it has to do with the game itself. The aesthetic values that players find in video games depends on the kind of attitude that the player takes toward playing the game. There are three distinct attitudes that players take when they play video games. I call these the goal-seeking attitude, the narrative attitude, and the dollhouse attitude. Each of these attitudes has a distinctive impact on the (...) player’s aesthetic experience. There are certain qualities of games that appeal to one attitude or another, while there are other qualities that can be aesthetically transformed when players take different attitudes toward their play. The aesthetics of video games must account for how the game is crafted alongside the player’s attitude toward their play (2024: 3-4). (shrink)

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Video data has now become the most common form of data for educational researchers studying classroom interaction and school culture. Software protocols for analysing vast archives of video data are deployed regularly, allowing researchers to annotate, code and sort images. These protocols are often applied by researchers without reflection or reference to the extensive philosophical work in film and media studies. Without exception, this research treats the video image as movement-image or picture, a recording of ‘raw data’, indexical of a (...) given time-space relationship. In this article I situate this kind of research within the history of scientific cinema, drawing on Deleuze's books on cinema, as well as his ideas on colour and figure from The Logic of Sensation, to propose an alternative way of analysing video data. One of the central claims of Deleuze in Cinema 2 is that the time-image reconfigures bodies as expressions of force – the body becomes a ‘shock of forces’. I argue that such an approach allows us to study the student body as less a phenomenological organism with built-in ‘I can’ cognitive and motor capacities, and more an indeterminate crystalline contraction and expansion of intensity. I present an example of how to study classroom video data as time-image, and explore the implications of such work for education research. (shrink)

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