MEGADUNGEONPub Date : 2023-12-19DOI: 10.30687/mag/2724-3923/2023/02/003
Paolo Berti
{"title":"Megadungeon: A Model for Media Complexity","authors":"Paolo Berti","doi":"10.30687/mag/2724-3923/2023/02/003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30687/mag/2724-3923/2023/02/003","url":null,"abstract":"The essay aims to propose the diagrammatic structure of the megadungeon as a metaphor to represent the complexity, interconnectedness, and multi-layered nature of the current media scenario, including its active branches such as new media art and Digital Humanities. The reference is drawn from the concept of the dungeon, which has been successfully introduced into the realm of role-playing games since the 1970s. Conventionally, a dungeon refers to a complex, multi-level maze of corridors, tunnels, rooms, and hidden chambers. The nature of dungeons is to be theoretically infinite floor plans that game designers have learned to produce algorithmically: when they cross a certain size threshold, they are known as megadungeons. In this article, I propose the megadungeon as a productive topological model that intersects different sociotechnical aspects of digital media, drawing on shared characteristics such as a layered structure, labyrinthine exploration, game-derived grammar, and an affinity with computational domain. Additionally, the essay proposes comparisons with similar representation models that challenge outdated cartographic metaphors and addresses specific connections between new media and the concepts of verticality and stratification","PeriodicalId":506971,"journal":{"name":"MEGADUNGEON","volume":"99 17","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139171337","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MEGADUNGEONPub Date : 2023-12-19DOI: 10.30687/mag/2724-3923/2023/02/002
Asa Roast
{"title":"A Preliminary Geography of the (Mega)Dungeon Spatial Practice and Tabletop Role-Playing Games","authors":"Asa Roast","doi":"10.30687/mag/2724-3923/2023/02/002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30687/mag/2724-3923/2023/02/002","url":null,"abstract":"The dungeon and megadungeon are imagined spaces of a complex and interconnected network that emerged in fantasy tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) from the 1970s. As a space distinctive to early TTRPGs it is characterised by asymmetry between the dungeon as an object of design, and the dungeon as a practice of play. The discourse of games manuals, independent publications and blogs emerging from the TTRPG scene tracks the origins and evolution of these procedural and labyrinthine spaces, and the distinct spatiality of the megadungeon as a geographical object. The space of the megadungeon can be mapped onto a Lefebvrian triad of spatial production: it exists as a representation of space produced by a dungeon master or algorithmic generation that forms an infrastructure of play; it exists as a spatial practice emerging out of the unique experience of players traversing the megadungeon; and it forms a space of representation by seeking to imagine the megadungeon as a living fictional world, intersecting with the assumptions about spatial norms and relations originating in tropes of fantasy fiction. Surveying these trends in conversation with recent insights from human geography illustrates the distinct spatiality of the megadungeon that is derived from its origins in TTRPG play. This brings forward important questions for the utility of the megadungeon as a metaphor for digital media ecologies, and asks whether the metaphor could be extended to enrich conceptual debates in human geography.","PeriodicalId":506971,"journal":{"name":"MEGADUNGEON","volume":"57 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139171829","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MEGADUNGEONPub Date : 2023-12-19DOI: 10.30687/mag/2724-3923/2023/02/007
Rebekah Rhodes
{"title":"Contemporary Adventures with The Garden of Earthly Delights: Open Worlds and Hieronymus Bosch","authors":"Rebekah Rhodes","doi":"10.30687/mag/2724-3923/2023/02/007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30687/mag/2724-3923/2023/02/007","url":null,"abstract":"Over 500 years after it was created, Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights continues to intrigue viewers. It has inspired contemporary artwork across diverse media including experimental film, digital animation and video games, as well as providing stimuli for curators, critics and collectors. This article maps present-day approaches to The Garden of Earthly Delights and links the enduring appeal of this painting to its interactive, multi-layered structure in which countless narrative vignettes play out simultaneously. Contemporary artworks that reference Bosch’s triptych are examined, with a special focus on digital creations by SMACK, Miao Xiaochun, Michael Bielicky and Kamila B. Richter. The exhibition The Garden of Earthly Delights Through the Artworks of Colección SOLO is also analyzed to illustrate how an understanding of Bosch’s work as interactive art informed the exhibition discourse, publication and architecture.","PeriodicalId":506971,"journal":{"name":"MEGADUNGEON","volume":"19 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139171447","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MEGADUNGEONPub Date : 2023-12-19DOI: 10.30687/mag/2724-3923/2023/02/004
G. de Seta
{"title":"Digital Depth: A Volumetric Speculation","authors":"G. de Seta","doi":"10.30687/mag/2724-3923/2023/02/004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30687/mag/2724-3923/2023/02/004","url":null,"abstract":"Counter commonplace associations with superficial mediation and networked flatness, the digital seems to have its own peculiar depths, which range from the infrastructural (deep sea cables, deep packet inspection, crawl depth) to the metaphorical (Deep Web, deep learning, deepfakes). This article reviews recent discussions of digital depth and argues that this concept is central to understanding multiple aspects of digital media ranging from folk theorizations to technical expertise. What is digital depth? What is deep about digital media? How does this depth interface with volumes and scales beyond the digital? Through this effort, depth emerges as an underlying feature of deeply mediatized societies.","PeriodicalId":506971,"journal":{"name":"MEGADUNGEON","volume":"84 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139172664","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MEGADUNGEONPub Date : 2023-12-19DOI: 10.30687/mag/2724-3923/2023/02/005
Nicolas Nova
{"title":"Mapping Our Digital Menagerie: A Monster Manual for the Megadungeon","authors":"Nicolas Nova","doi":"10.30687/mag/2724-3923/2023/02/005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30687/mag/2724-3923/2023/02/005","url":null,"abstract":"Relying on a comparison between the complex spatial organization of our current digital ecosystem and the ones from dungeons in role-playing games, this article analyzes the multiple entities that populate our computers, smartphones and video game consoles. Trolls, bugs, worms, conversational AI agents, NPCs, daemons, ghosts, Trojan horses and others are presented and discussed with a focus on their different degree of agency, ranging from human-controlled to having a certain degree of autonomy. By addressing how we coexist with such beings, this paper contributes to the nascent field of digital folklore.","PeriodicalId":506971,"journal":{"name":"MEGADUNGEON","volume":"122 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139171748","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MEGADUNGEONPub Date : 2023-12-19DOI: 10.30687/mag/2724-3923/2023/02/008
Carolina Fernández-Castrillo
{"title":"The AI Work of Art in the Age of its Co-Creation","authors":"Carolina Fernández-Castrillo","doi":"10.30687/mag/2724-3923/2023/02/008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30687/mag/2724-3923/2023/02/008","url":null,"abstract":"Almost one century after Walter Benjamin’s dissertation on the value of the work of art under the impact of its technological reproduction on the roots of globalization and mass media society, the current research aims to provide some coordinates to approach the influence of AI co-creative processes in the artistic field. From a media archaeological approach, we will map the collaborative practices that emerge in the Generative Art landscape to understand the creative possibilities of interaction between humans and machine-driven artistic goals. By conceiving the Web 3.0 as an expansive megadungeon, we find an increasing number of projects based on participative dynamics where online communities join forces with AI decentralized artists to reshape the current state of the art. We will take as an example the Botto Project, a community-driven creator conceived by Mario Klingemann, a pioneer of AI artworks who employs machine learning methods to revolutionize the blockchain and crypto art market. This case study leads us to reconsider the (wo)man-machine co-creation as the base of the auratic experience of the work of art in the age of AI co-creativity.","PeriodicalId":506971,"journal":{"name":"MEGADUNGEON","volume":"478 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139171875","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MEGADUNGEONPub Date : 2023-12-19DOI: 10.30687/mag/2724-3923/2023/02/006
Luigi Monteanni
{"title":"Year of the Goblin Tracing New Developments of Digital Folklore and Urban Modes of Living in Online Music Subcultures","authors":"Luigi Monteanni","doi":"10.30687/mag/2724-3923/2023/02/006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30687/mag/2724-3923/2023/02/006","url":null,"abstract":"This paper sheds light on the connections between musical undergrounds and the global emergence of ‘goblin mode’ as a political aesthetic. In March 2022 The Guardian published an article discussing the popularity of a new locution emerging on social media: ‘goblin mode’. Characterized by a 'complete lack of aesthetic' and vaguely pointing towards ‘the opposite of trying to better oneself’, ‘goblin mode’ was linked to embracing dishevelment, rejecting societal expectations, and giving in to the heavy consumption of junk food and digital content in reaction to the pandemic obsession for domestic and personal improvement.","PeriodicalId":506971,"journal":{"name":"MEGADUNGEON","volume":"156 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139172246","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}