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Performative grammar

Well, I have finally managed to find the appropriate academic context for my continual research interest in gaming. Over the next three (yes I am going to try!) years I will be studying for a practice based phd in the area of digital games as a performative framework. Just to outline a little more of what this might mean I’m pasting a small extract of some of my preparatory writing. Im not sure if I will expand theis blog to keep track of my notes, or move that part of my work elsewhere, but I am expecting much more of my own practice to be diverted into tackling the issues that arise from my research.

Digital Media: Performativity in Creative Practices
Can gameplay mechanics reintroduce virtuosity, risk and competition to digital media performance?

Judith Butler identifies performativity as the “… reiterative power of discourse to produce the phenomena that it regulates and constrains.” This definition suggests an underlying vocabulary of rules and structures that contain and guide interaction. Although this definition was primarily developed in relationship to social control theories of linguistics we can easily translate the core concepts to other areas of language/rule based interaction.

Digital media is a practice area clearly driven by programmatic grammar, derived from the software code and technology that forms its foundation. Users, practitioners and audiences experience this framework as a performative interaction with the exposed user interface of a digital system. The specific forms of grammar available to the user in this context dictate the range of expression and feedback that can be created or experienced.

Despite the range of applications, public perception of digital media is that is presents a limited, sterile vocabulary. Symptomatic complaints include; a loss of physicality, alienation, little scope for virtuosity and a narrow expressive range. “These machines teach them nothing. They stimulate no ratiocination, discovery or feat of memory” Boris Johnson 2007. Digital games, although much maligned by the press, are a notable exception to this rule in that they frequently establish fluid access to engaging contexts for participants to demonstrate mastery, creativity, competition and expressive range. They represent possibly the most widespread performative digital experience in contemporary culture.