| dc.description.abstract | this dissertation endeavours to create a conceptual frameworkwith which to examine “video games as postmodern magic.” i begin by defining the operative understanding of postmodernism for the purpose of this analysis, focusing on representation, power, and a critique of enlightenment assumptions, then using the work of deleuze and guatarri i construct a postmodern approach to the research, and suggest “resonance” as an alternative mode of evaluation and validation. i then turn to examine the concept of magic, before it was reduced and discredited by the enlightenment, and in so doing finding another way of looking at the world, a way that privileges imagination over rationality, spirit over
materialism, and multidimensionality over linear logic. having “reached back” to a time before the enlightenment, i then seek to connect those insights to “visual digital culture” where image, interactivity and immersion predominate. having created a framework that integrates the issues of postmodernism, magic, and visual digital culture, video games are analyzed within this structure. noting that magic plays a surface role in many games, i suggest that there is a more pervasive magical element to such games, and look at how video games expand the realm of possibility through simulation and simulacra, how they challenge the meta-narrative by shifting power and control of the narrative to the player,
and finally how video games augment our appropriation of reality by synaesthetically creating experiences and a “phenomenology of magic.” the dissertation is concluded with a discussion of a possible “pedagogy of enchantment” in which the insights gained from the analysis are applied to the educational environment, narrativity, intereactivity and immersion, are placed within a virtual environment for exploration. | |
