When I built my hen house, I had two objectives in mind. Build a chicken coop that doesn’t look like a utilitarian box of death (see above) Elegantly figure out some sort of wheat harvesting production to more easily hatch lots of chicks In Minecraft, feeding wheat seeds to two chickens standing near each other will Read More
A month has passed since we started construction in Minecraft, and now, at the end of the line – our project reach it’s end, I find myself going back through my week notes. With the BFC practically completed, and the major mechanisms functions, I am starting to ask myself what I have learned through this Read More
What happens when you take the “fun” out of a game? What is “fun” and can it become work? In Homo Ludens, Huizinga explains that, “all play is a voluntary activity” (7) “it is never imposed by physical necessity or moral duty. It is never a task. It is done at leisure, during “free time”, Read More
Over the last week and some, I have explored the idea of play-labour, of social-investment, and how these might affect the amount of “fun” a player perceives they are having. The term itself comes from Juliam Kucklich, a video-game theorist, and applies to any form of activity that someone may profit from – Gold Farming Read More
This week was a busy one. Yesterday, I presented at the Northeast Popular Culture Association Conference. The conference was held at St. Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont. My presentation, “Like a Bird on a Wire: A Study of the Rediscovery, Preservation, and Circulation of Ephemeral Texts,” was well received, and I thoroughly enjoyed the presentations Read More
This week I feel that I have no choice but to continue my discussion of cultural prizes. Not only have I spent the week with my nose buried deep in the pages of James English’s The Economy of Prestige, but yesterday Alice Munro was announced as the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature – Read More
Over the past few months my proposed research has not only been shaped by what I have been reading, but has become much stronger by talking about new ideas as well as by writing, editing, and rearticulating my program of study for grant applications. The refining of my proposed research, I believe, has become increasingly Read More
In The Economy of Prestige, James English argues that scandal is the lifeblood of cultural prizes, contributing to its effectiveness as “an instrument of the cultural economy” (208). Pointing to the Booker Prize as an example, he highlights how its success is “bound up with the annual flurry of scandal that attends it in the Read More
For the first time in a while, this week I went into a Chapters Indigo bookstore. On this occasion, my experience was altered by the literature I have been reading recently, and thus my experience became highly mediated by my thoughts on literary prizes. As I walked into the store, the first thing I noticed Read More
“Known for his striking imagery and evocative descriptions of the human condition, Leonard Cohen has the distinction of creating a body of work that has remained contemporary and significant through three decades of shifting musical and aesthetic tastes. His 1992 album, The Future, introduced his poetic style to a new generation of listeners. In 2001, Read More