User:Thijshijsijsjss/Gossamery

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A gossamery glossary cemetery, parce que 解読 est un cadeau wanneer je het liebst / lebst.

La Musée Bibliotheque

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A History of Play in Print: Board Games from the Renaissance to Milton Bradley, Kelli Wood

Read it here.

Color lithography; combining lithos; Francesco Berni (1526):

He who knows without the use of a compass,
that nature, fortune, and skill make up the parts of [~ Primiera ~]
And if you look closely part by part
There are things there you will not find elsewhere.
If you want a hundred thousand cards.
Things useful, beautiful, and new.
Things to take up in the summer, and the winter.
The night and day, when it is sunny and when it rains.”

English translator and poet Charles Cotton wrote The compleat gamester [...] in 1674, which became a hallmark work describing the rules of games for polite British society [...].

Terence (BC):

The life of men is like the game of dice: If the throw
you need does not happen,
Then that which has happened through fate, you must
correct through skill.

In the 16th century, concerns over such gambling games started to arise. Of course excused for nobility -- '"it [gambling] can be a virtuous act" if it is done in moderation by those who do not undertake it to earn money'

Buoninsegni also situates the role of chance in gambling games as guided by ‘infallible providence of God’ and ‘divine will,’ excusing another problematic aspect of printed games- the act of telling the future [...].

'Fortune Book games', interweaving divinity, chance and play. Wheel of fortune representing player turns. Game of Goose as a metaphor for reincarnation

Other printed game boards of the late 16th century also visually evoke these earlier fortune book games, sharing their structure of a central image surrounded by an outward radiating wheel of symbols and text with directions for the player [...].

the kabalistic number 63, the final space, represented the number of years of human life, and the space of death near the end, which sends the player back to the beginning of the game.

Board game names used to be really uninspiring. The New Game of Honor, The New Game of Human Life. Path racing with vices and virtues. Later used in Milton Bradley's Chackered Game of Life, reproducing Victorian middle class values:

ruin and poverty -> caused by gambling and intemperance 
wealth and happiness -> caused by industry, honor, and bravery. 

In newer games of life, morality slowly being replaced by material goals. Allocation of wealth not solely based on fate anymore, but also by player actions, reflecting American 20th century capitalism. Obligatory John Green video on the history of Monopoly.

(Summarize a bit; talk about eurogames and amerigames; Catan; typical moral themes; link to video games)

Ccru Writings 1997-2003

I was interested to read up on Fiction Theory, after I heard about its connection to modal logic. In particular, to Kripke's application of modal logic to semantics, something I'm vaguely familiar with from previous (intuistionistic) endeavors into the foundations of mathematics.

This is how I stumbled upon the Ccru Writings (1997-2003). Upon looking for some context, it seems to be ununtangleably intertwined with the radicalization of some of its members, Nick Land in particular. (Is this the material I was looking for...?)

The Ccru does not, has not, and will never exist

Reminiscent of Smalfilm, the second song from Spinvis's excellent 2002 debut album.

Volumetric Regimes

Exploring a new umbrella of literature is a concious effort. I've been trying to look for some work in the intersection of the academic, scientific texts I would read at M/CS and GMT, and sources I'm exposed to at xpub. I found Volumetric Regimes through Stephen's readings list, where Manetta's name caught my eye.

Volumetric Regimes emerges from Possible Bodies, a collaborative, multi-local and polyphonic project situated on the intersection of artistic and academic research, developing alongside an inventory of cases through writing, workshops, visual essays and performances.

The So-called Lookalike

We’re working with a self-hosted MediaWiki platform, a wiki in short, that we as editors and designer can use to edit and structure the materials. From this wiki, we download and reformat everything into a single webpage, which becomes the main document that will be styled and turned into a layout using CSS3 paged media standards. We use the Javascript library Paged.js to paginate this layout in the browser and render it as a PDF. The designer and editors both have access to this rendering process, which allows us to approach the editing and design as one continuous process.

Very much applicable to our work in xpub so far. In particular conversations we've had with Steve concerning the Wordhole Glossary.

Also reminds me that I'm -- aside from being passively interested in web-to-print -- intrigued by print-to-web exploration.

[...] the assumptions of optimisation, agility and efficacy as editorial values [...]

The curious dynamic of editor and designer.

I decided to write you a letter as a way to reflect on this strangeness [...]

In the 3 months I have been able to wikify myself -- and read others' wikifications -- I've come to find it as a very honest medium. But my relationship with it is ever evolving, and I feel a tug of war between this honesty and some kind of curated abstraction. Sometimes I need a reminder that honesty in itself is a valuable and worthy medium.