eXistenZ

The movie starts out by already being in the game but we do not find this out till the end of the movie. Their are a group of people gathered to try out a new game that was just designed. The game immerses you in an alternate world by connecting to what is called a bio-port. While you are in the game your body enters a coma like state and time in the game goes by much faster the in real life much like a dream. While the group is testing out the game a man enters but is there to kill the designer of it. The guard at the event scans the guy with a wand but it does not detect the gun he has because of it being organic. The guy shoots the designer of the game but does not kill her and the guard kills the shooter and takes the designer and drives off to save and protect her. She has her pod and needs to see if anything happened to it in the attack but the guard does not have a bio-port so they must first get him one but the port he gets is bad and ruins the pod. So they go to some people that she thinks will help her but end up destroying the pod while fixing it. Before they find out the pod was fixed to be ruined they enter another world where the guard makes the same gun that we see at the beginning of the movie and uses it to kill his waiter at the restaurant but before he does this he points it at the designer of the game and she realizes that he could not stop himself from doing that. There are some things that have to be done in the game to continue on. While going in and out of the game throughout the movie they begin to struggle with what is the real world and what is the game. At this point a "war" breaks out and she shoots someone and the guard wonders why because they think they are in the real world and he begins to question some things. Then it goes back to a scene like the movie started out in only for you to realize the whole movie is the game. The creator and the guard are in a relationship that the game picked up on. All and all it was a strange movie to say the least but was good at the same time.

Should Games Count?

I believe that this same question came about when the internet and television first came out and that is one reason I believe that they should. I would have to say yes games should count and I will explain why. There are a wide variety of video games out there such as: first person shooters like Call of Duty, Mass Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games or MMORPG like World of Warcraft, Skyrim, or the Sims, and Sports and racing games. I think that the MMORPG games make the claim for video games to count because of the fact that you are you own character in a whole other alternate reality world with the capability to do just about anything and choose what you want to do and when and how you will go about doing so. You can interact with people you have never met or will never meet in person on these games and live a second life within them. You can be who you wish you were or anything that you wanted to be. There is a movement in society were people judge you for how good you are at games more than they would be judging other things about you. Even in the sports game you can customize you own character to play wherever you want and make them as good as you want to be. With games evolving to the point where you customize your own person to do what you want is the big step for games counting because this is where it starts for your own story in the game to progress from. Game can teach us about our culture because they have such a huge impact as to where people will wait for hours or days for their release. Some say the the First Person Shooter games where developed for the military to desensitize the population to killing people and make it easier for them in basic training to teach them their ways. There is a lot that goes into game from what type of game, the type of mythical creature or real people to the music that is in the games to influence what kind of music you listen to outside the game because it was in the game that you played. These are the reasons i think games should count and I look forward to reading everyone else opinions on this topic.

A Day in the Life of

Seven a.m. the alarm goes off so Jon hits the snooze button and five minutes later he does the same thing. Jon hits the snooze button ten more times before finally waking up for his eight thirty Sociology class. As he walks to class on a cold and windy Johnstown morning he notices the dew on the bench in the quad. Once he is past the bench he runs into his roommate Zac and stops and talks to him about the miserable cold morning. Jon goes to his eight thirty Sociology class and takes a seat in the back of the room. The teacher enters the room and talks for a few minutes before telling the class that they will be watching a movie on boot camp and it reform methods. Once Jon hears the new about the movie he knows exactly what he is going to do and that is sleep. Jon sleeps through the movie and after class finds out that there is a paper due the next class about the movie and is mad that he slept. When he gets back to his room he tries to look up the movie but cannot find the full movie online. He talks to his roommate and suite-mates about the class only to find that his one suite-mate Mig took the class last semester so he tells him the basics of it to write the papers to get some credit instead of now because of sleeping. Before his eleven o’clock class Jon and some of his friends go to the student union to the cafeteria to enjoy the fine Sodexo food that is available on campus. Jon leave the cafe to go to him eleven o’clock biology class. He finds out the worst new in that class which is he has and exam the next day in that class the he has not started study for because of his lack of priorities. Jon realizes he has to do what is nearly impossible not to happen in college and that is to pull the all-nighter. Jon come back from biology only to watch the dukes of hazard and cops reloaded until he goes to dinner at five with his roommate and suite-mates. On the way back from the cafe they decide to go to the gym after they wait a little bit after gorging on the excellent food. After half an hour past by they head down the hill from Hemlock to the gym where Jon does some curl for the girls and some shrugs for hugs. After his highly intense workout Jon makes a protein shake and chugs it before showering. Once he gets out the shower he is really tired so he decides to take a short nap. Jon short nap quickly evolves into a much longer one than he had anticipated to be. It is now nine o’clock and he has yet to begin studying for his biology exam tomorrow. He goes out to the lobby to see what everyone is doing and takes a seat to watch the hockey game. During the game he talks about pulling an all-nighter to study and two friends agree to stay up and study with him for their upcoming exams. They all agree to meet in Jon’s room at midnight to begin on their adventure of the night. Aaron come over to meet Jon and his roommate at midnight but he brings a pillow and blanket so Jon ask “Why” and Aaron replied with “To be comfortable.” Jon look at Zac with the nonverbal message that he will be sleeping before tonight is over. The first two hours go by and everyone is still up and studying but as they enter the third Zac notices Aaron is beginning to nod his head. Within a few minute Aaron is out so Jon and Zac plan on pranking him because he fell asleep first. So Jon and Zac do the sleeping air guitar to Aaron and take snap chat pictures and videos to send to the rest of their friends of what happens when you fall asleep first. After their prank Aaron wakes up and they all agree to go and take a walk of campus because Jon and Zac are getting bored with studying. Their adventure they walk past a bench to go to the mountain cat statue in front of Blackington where they all take turns of getting the iconic picture with the statue. At the statue they decide that they will go to the gym when it opens at 6 but what will they do until then considering they have over an hour. They go back to Jon and Zac’s room where the all-nighter is starting to catch up to Jon to the point where he starts to share those things no one wants to catch called feelings with Zac and Aaron. Jon go on and on about how much he likes this girl but how he does not know what to do because of what she has done to him over the semester with all the mixed signals that he has been thrown at him all along. Zac and Aaron try to tell Jon to move on but he does not want to listen to them because he is stubborn and caught between a rock and a hard place. A little before six they go outside to go to the gym and when they leave Hemlock the sun is beginning to rise so they stop and watch before heading down to get their pump on. At the gym Jon wears himself out a little too much so he says he is going to take a nap when he gets back before his class. Once they get back Aaron calls it quits and goes back to his room to sleep and Jon falls asleep but will regret the decision later. When Zac comes back from his nine a.m. class he wakes Jon up so he does not miss his class and so he can study a little beforehand. Jon wakes up and attempts to study a little before heading off to take an exam that he is ill prepared for and knows in the back of his mind that he probably is not going to do well.

Google Maps

Join me on this journey across the United States on a classic roadway known as the mother road of
America or better known as route 66. Along the way I will be stopping at some roadside attractions and historical sites. Here i the link to my Google Maps Essay. https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?hl=en&authuser=0&mid=zkw3CTsHGxLo.keemvyr6U3wM

Memes

week fives material

I found the use of the poem to create a landscape in “That Sweet Old Etcetera” by Clifford to be very interesting. He used the poem to create this landscape in a certain order that you had to do it chronologically. For him to use the poems words to create the landscape itself is interesting and that he use how the poem was originally wrote within the story line. I found “The Silent History” to be interesting because of the fact that you can interact with it more than the normal e-lit story. Not only do you interact on an electronic device but you also interact with it in real life because of how they set up the location based stories. The fact that it’s not only from one view point but from multiple view point to create a multiply side of the story and for you to have different viewpoints of the story. The only thing about this I did not like is the fact of the limitation of access to it being that it’s only available to apple users and not for everyone.

week four materials

The article from this week that I found interesting were “88 Constellations” by David Clark, “Index for X and the Origin of Fires” by Ander Monson, and “Pieces of Herself” by Davis. They struck my interest because of the way the authors created and how they presented their work within them. In “88 constellations” David tell his stories through the constellations of the stars at night and uses them to create an image before to listen and view the story. Ander Monson got creative in “Index for X and the Origin of Fires” because he tell his story using alphabetical order so you can keep track of how far you are within the story and to tell you that there is a definite end to the story. “Pieces of Herself” caught my attention Because of how you navigate the story. It seems plan but Davis uses this so when you come across certain areas colors show up to indicate that you can use these things to decorate or create the image of the person on the right. Davis also use certain points that play music throughout the story. These are the article that I thought were interesting this week and what I thought about them.