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Godwired offers an engaging exploration of religious practice in the digital age. It considers how virtual experiences, like stories, games and rituals, are forms of world-building or "cosmos construction" that serve as a means of making sense of our own world. Such creative and interactive activity is, arguably, patently religious. This book examines: the nature of sacred space in virtual contexts technology as a vehicle for sacred texts who we are when we go online what rituals have in common with games and how they work online what happens to community when people worship online how religious "worlds" and virtual "worlds" nurture similar desires. Rachel Wagner suggests that whilst our engagement with virtual reality can be viewed as a form of religious activity, today’s virtual religion marks a radical departure from traditional religious practice – it is ephemeral, transient, rapid, disposable, hyper-individualized, hybrid, and in an ongoing state of flux.
Computer games have become a major cultural and economic force, and a subject of extensive academic interest. Up until now, however, computer games have received relatively little attention from philosophy. Seeking to remedy this, the present collection of newly written papers by philosophers and media researchers addresses a range of philosophical questions related to three issues of crucial importance for understanding the phenomenon of computer games: the nature of gameplay and player experience, the moral evaluability of player and avatar actions, and the reality status of the gaming environment. By doing so, the book aims to establish the philosophy of computer games as an important strand of computer games research, and as a separate field of philosophical inquiry. The book is required reading for anyone with an academic or professional interest in computer games, and will also be of value to readers curious about the philosophical issues raised by contemporary digital culture.
The police drama has been one of the longest running and most popular genres in American television. In TV Cops, Jonathan Nichols-Pethick argues that, perhaps more than any other genre, the police series in all its manifestations--from Hill Street Blues to Miami Vice to The Wire--embodies the full range of the cultural dynamics of television. Exploring the textual, industrial, and social contexts of police shows on American television, this book demonstrates how police dramas play a vital role in the way we understand and engage issues of social order that most of us otherwise experience only in such abstractions as laws and crime statistics. And given the current diffusion and popularity of...
Verl Frehner's book, The Mysterious Howard Hughes Revealed, is a revealing new book, on a somewhat seasoned subject. It is an extensive and comprehensive work about the life of Howard Robert Hughes. It is biographical in nature and is thought to contain the most complete, in-depth, far-reaching, and extensive first-hand personal information available about him. As such, it promises to provide the reader with numerous additional insights into this man. Under normal circumstances this book about Howard Hughes would normally have been written years ago. Despite this, the mystery and intrigue attributed to him has only partially mellowed with the passing of time. The "wall of reclusiveness" that...
The last installment of the acclaimed Behind the Silver Screen series, Animation explores the variety of technologies and modes of production throughout the history of American animation. Drawing on archival sources to analyze the relationship between production and style, this volume provides also a unique approach to understanding animation in general.
This entertaining and innovative book focuses on vocal performance styles that developed in tandem with the sound technologies of the photograph, radio, and sound film. It looks at these media technologies and industries through the lens of performance, bringing to light a nexus of performer, technology, and audience.
How one company created the dominant aesthetic of digital realism. Just about every major film now comes to us with an assist from digital effects. The results are obvious in superhero fantasies, yet dramas like Roma also rely on computer-generated imagery to enhance the verisimilitude of scenes. But the realism of digital effects is not actually true to life. It is a realism invented by Hollywood—by one company specifically: Industrial Light & Magic. The Empire of Effects shows how the effects company known for the puppets and space battles of the original Star Wars went on to develop the dominant aesthetic of digital realism. Julie A. Turnock finds that ILM borrowed its technique from th...
"Spreadable Media" maps fundamental changes taking place in the contemporary media environment, a space where corporations no longer tightly control media distribution. This book challenges some of the prevailing frameworks used to describe contemporary media.
Since the mid-eighties, more audiences have been watching Hollywood movies at home than at movie theaters, yet little is known about just how viewers experience film outside of the multiplex. This is the first full-length study of how contemporary entertainment technologies and media—from cable television and VHS to DVD and the Internet—shape our encounters with the movies and affect the aesthetic, cultural, and ideological definitions of cinema. Barbara Klinger explores topics such as home theater, film collecting, classic Hollywood movie reruns, repeat viewings, and Internet film parodies, providing a multifaceted view of the presentation and reception of films in U.S. households. Balancing industry history with theoretical and cultural analysis, she finds that today cinema's powerful social presence cannot be fully grasped without considering its prolific recycling in post-theatrical venues—especially the home.