digitaldust

The submission for next months Computational Turn workshop was accepted. Will be an interesting event with both Lev Manovich and Katherine Hayles presiding over it.

Analysis Tool or Design Methodology? Is There an Epistemological Basis of Patterns?

The idea of patterns as a means of inquiry seems to be increasing in popularity, in many different ways, across many different disciplines. Partly this has to do with new tools and techniques which allow us to discover, analyse or visualise patterns, and partly from our long history of systems thinking. Though the concept of patterns and pattern recognition are not new and have been strong across the 20th century, from structuralism, through cybernetics and into complex systems theory.

However there is no robust epistemology for justifying what they are, how they are used and in what context they are interpreted. Also there are few comparisons or linkages between different disciplines use of them.

This position paper asks questions about what patterns fundamentally are, whilst also providing a pragmatic epistemological basis for using them founded in the interventionist practice of action research. Problems concerning the abductive reasoning process and apophenic outcomes are also highlighted.

Paper presented at the Philosophy of Computer Games 2009 conference.

download link

Roger Caillois’ Man, Play and Games is a seminal book in Game Studies and his taxonomy of play and games has framed much of the debate while the field has been active. However
this book was published half a century ago and does not provide much help in understanding computer games. A number of academics have raised the point that computer games are significantly different from traditional gaming or real world play activity and should be treated differently.

According to Caillois play and games fall on a continuum between what he terms ludus, rule
bound games and paidia, anarchic playing. Computer games can be seen as heavily rule bound in that the limits of a participant’s actions are controlled by a codified simulation. But am I playing a game when I sight-see in GTA4, dance with friends in World of Warcraft, or chase someone through SecondLife?

In this paper I argue that Caillois’ approach is mistakenly essentialist and that the aesthetic experience must be given pre-eminence. Based on this I propose two related points. Firstly that there is no continuum between the experiences of gaming and playing; these are two separate aesthetic qualities. Secondly, I explore these aesthetic experiences along Apollonian and Dionysian lines, using Nietzsche’s work in The Birth of Tragedy. In the process particular care is paid to applying the terms playing and gaming and this leads to a basis for a philosophical reinterpretation of gameplay as an experience.

Video of my talk

Slideshare of the presentation slides

Basically I argue that a higher level socio-technical pattern language is required and that just using something like interface patterns doesn’t cut it for designing social tools. For example, designing at the level of tag clouds is useless if you haven’t designed the human-computational manner in which the folksonomy works.

Pattern Languages for Computer Mediated Communication Design

Three decades ago the concept of pattern languages were introduced in the field of architecture and they have since become widely used in object-oriented programming and HCI. However their use in computing is divergent from Alexander’s original goals on two main points. Firstly, they were largely intended to describe the spaces formed by or for human activities and events. Secondly, they were intended as a way for profession-als and lay people to communicate whilst designing buildings. This chapter suggests that the socio-technical design of social software should rediscover both these principles, firstly in a fuller appreciation of the wider human angle, and secondly in the participative design approach. Indeed, a pattern language approach within a socio-technical framework seems the ideal way to design the next generation of computer-mediated communication applications, as it will do so in a social context and in partnership with end users.