[Reader-list] [Announcements] Turbulence Commission: "Mystery House Taken Over" by Nick Montfort, Dan Shiovitz, and Emily Short

[Turbulence]

March 15, 2005
Turbulence Commission: "Mystery House Taken Over" by Nick Montfort, Dan 
Shiovitz, and Emily Short
http://turbulence.org/works/mystery/index.php

"Mystery House," the first graphical adventure game, has been reverse 
engineered by The Mystery House Advance Team; they have reimplemented it 
in a modern, cross-platform, free language for interactive fiction 
development. Visitors to "Mystery House Taken Over" can either play 
modified versions of the game created by the elite Mystery House 
Occupying Force, or create their own versions to offer on the site. The 
Mystery House Occupation Kit allows artists and authors, with or without 
programming experience, to hack at and reshape "Mystery House," easily 
modifying the 'surface' aspects. Artists and writers may also choose to 
undertake more substantial renovations, engaging with, commenting on, 
and transforming this historic interactive program.

"Mystery House" was developed for the Apple II in 1980; it sold more 
than 10,000 copies in a very small, new market for home computer 
software. In 1987 it was placed in the public domain. The modifiable 
"Mystery House Taken Over" reimplementation has also been placed in the 
public domain.

"Mystery House Taken Over" is a 2005 commission of New Radio and 
Performing Arts, Inc. (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web site. It 
was made possible with funding from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the 
Visual Arts.

BIOGRAPHIES

NICK MONTFORT is an interactive fiction author and a scholar of 
interactive fiction, electronic literature, computer games, and other 
sorts of new media. He wrote "Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to 
Interactive Fiction" and co-edited, with Noah Wardrip-Fruin, the book 
and CD "The New Media Reader." In 2004, Montfort and Scott Rettberg 
co-authored "Implementation," a novel published on stickers that were 
placed by participants in various locations around the world. Montfort 
holds masters degrees in media arts and sciences, creative writing, and 
computer science, from MIT, Boston University, and the University of 
Pennsylvania. He blogs at Grand Text Auto.

DAN SHIOVITZ writes code for a Seattle-area Internet company for pay, 
and writes code for other people for free. He is the author and 
co-author of a number of interactive fiction games, ranging from hard 
science fiction (Bad Machine) to space opera (Max Blaster and Doris de 
Lightning Against the Parrot Creatures of Venus). Shiovitz has also 
produced IF-related paraphernalia, including Jetty, and Snap!, and 
several essays on game design ("How to Write a Great Game"). He has also 
been reviewing games in the text interactive fiction community for the 
last seven years. Shiovitz has a masters in computer science from the 
University of Wisconsin-Madison.

EMILY SHORT is the author of several award-winning works of interactive 
fiction including "Best of Three," "Metamorphoses," "Pytho's Mask," and 
"Savoir Faire." "Galatea," winner of the 2000 IF Art Show, is assigned 
reading in several new media courses. Her most recent game, "City of 
Secrets," was listed among the Games Magazine "Top 100 Electronic Games 
of 2003." Short has written about interactive fiction, and reviewed 
dozens of games. She is currently editing IF Theory which explores 
interactive fiction both as literature and as game. Short is a graduate 
student in classical studies at The University of Pennsylvania, and is 
completing her dissertation on the roles of Hermes in Athenian drama.

For more information about Turbulence, please visit 
http://turbulence.org <http://turbulence.org/>

-- 
Jo-Anne Green, Co-Director
New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.: http://new-radio.org
New York: 917.548.7780 . Boston: 617.522.3856
Turbulence: http://turbulence.org
New American Radio: http://somewhere.org
Networked_Performance Blog and Conference: http://turbulence.org/blog
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050315/a0cebb03/attachment.html 
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
announcements mailing list
announcements at sarai.net
https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements