Daedalus: The Interactive Media Lab @UW

The Retro Video Game Tournament went off without a hitch on Saturday.  We had a good showing, and everyone was there to have fun and raise some money.  We played about an hour of warm-up games, as most of us (myself especially) have long forgotten the subtle nuances Mortal Kombat II’s fatality system.

Once we started the tournament we had a great time.  The quick Mortal Kombat tournament went to yours truly, as did the Quake ‘for fun’ tournament.  Our benefactor from Alltel, Trey, won the Mario Kart 64 tournament.  The 007 tournament was won by Cougar .44 master Shane.  And finally, our big winner of night, the undisputed winning of Halo was Zach.  We also had a special award for the first to die- the Bravest little soldier award went to… well, we wont use his name, but he did get a free copy of Sesame Street for the NES out of it.

All in all, we had a great time, and we raised a fair amount of money for a good cause.  We’re still waiting on the official count (to include fund matching and donations from local businesses) but just for the night, we took in almost 200$ in cash alone!

Thanks to everyone who made this possible, especially our generous donors:
Ace Hardware of Laramie
The Knothole clothing store
GameStop of Laramie
Walmart of Laramie
Hastings Video of Laramie
The Fox Theater of Laramie
And patrons like you!

Now, for the part you’ve all been waiting for… Pictures!

So last spring I was approached for a possible collaboration on the nature of video game collection and archiving, and seeing the three of us had experience with large holdings of video games, consoles, and printed matter, it seemed a good fit.  Here’s the result.

Thanks to Aaron for creating and uploading the GSN’s first demo on registration.  Check it out: http://bit.ly/NOY5R

The Game Lab is happy to host the first organizational meeting for the Upstart Crows, the undergraduate English club, this Thursday, September 3rd, from 5-6. For more, click here.

[T]he boy began to delight in his daring flight, and abandoning his guide, drawn by desire for the heavens, soared higher. His nearness to the devouring sun softened the fragrant wax that held the wings: and the wax melted: he flailed with bare arms, but…could not ride the air. Even as his mouth was crying his father’s name, it vanished into the dark blue sea, the Icarian Sea, called after him. The unhappy father, now no longer a father…caught sight of the feathers on the waves, and cursed his inventions. (Ovid, Metamorphosis)

And they said one to another, “Go to, let us build a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the earth….” And the Lord said, “Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language…and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.” (King James, Gen 11: 4-6)

The desire to transcend limitations marks human beings, as the quotation from Ovid demonstrates; young Icarus did not take the middle course, neither too high nor too low, and in his excess flew too high to the sun. His father, the master-crafter Daedalus, fashioned wings for their escape from Crete and its tyrannical ruler, King Minos. This myth speaks to the intersection of human limitation, technology, and the transcendence that it makes possible, but also to the pressing need for vigilance in the exercise of that new power. The Tower of Babel gets built through the technology of a common language, through massive participation; when God recognizes the human pride motivating it, he destroys the Tower, the universal language, the concord. New media poetics, as I argue in this dissertation, currently may be viewed neither in the detached wings fashioned by Daedalus nor in the ruin of the waves; neither in the participation of building the city nor in the discord that follows: new media poetics shapes a “desire for heaven” in the form of unlimited memory, a necessary component of the Cyborg dream.[1] Haraway’s work resonates with  this intersection of The Tower of Babel and the cyborg, and she anticipates the next chapter’s discussion of the labyrinth with she writes, “Cyborg imagery can suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves. This is a dream not of a common language, but of a powerful infidel heteroglossia” (181)

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[1] Here Haraway’s notion of the cyborg—and the dream it brings about—echoes this cluster of cooperation, universal language, and transcendence: “This is a dream not of a common language, but of a powerful infidel heteroglossia” (181). In other words, the cyborg embraces what Burke may term the “impieties” of many voices.