Taken from Manovich (2001), who describes media as cultural interfaces, the term refers to the way that the compositional elements of media are arranged. This arrangement will reflect the preferences, values, and conventions of the culture it emerges out of. Cultural interfaces, such as cinema and the printed word, each have their own particular history of form and technique that we need to be attentive to in approaching them.
Published in Chapter:
Game Interfaces as Bodily Techniques
David Parisi (New York University, USA)
Copyright: © 2009
|Pages: 16
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-808-6.ch007
Abstract
This chapter discusses the way that new video game interfaces such as those employed by Guitar Hero™, Dance Dance Revolution, and the Nintendo Wii™ are being used to invoke the whole body as a participant in the game text. As such, new video games involve more than cognitive education; they impart a set of body habits to the player. Drawing on Marcel Mauss’s concept of “bodily technique,” I propose a new vocabulary for understanding these devices, referring to them as bodily interfaces. Next, I discuss three aspects of bodily interfaces: mode of capture, haptics, and button remapping. In order to help educators take advantage of these developments, I conclude by pointing to theoretical literature on the relationship between the physical and mental aspects of the learning process that may be useful in rethinking electronic games.