Deus Ex Machinatio

Creative Spotlight: Jim Gramze

One of the things I most admire about all of the creators I'm highlighting this week is their independent spirit --nobody here is asking permission or looking for validation first. They're just sitting down and doing the work. This is especially true for my next creative superstar, Jim Gramze. 

Jim is a performer turned composer, and I admire him fiercely because he is absolutely not afraid to take creative risks and put the result out there. The results are tracks in a range of styles, from movie-soundtrack classical (Black Cloud) to quirky mysterious (the misleadingly named Self-Indulgent Crap) to trance-infused prog-rock (Pink Amber.) 

And I probably described all of it completely wrong, because I am really not qualified to be categorizing anybody's experimental music. 

Just take my word that it's positively brimming with awesome and go on over to his MySpace page to take a listen. It's like a candy sampler, except with music. I bet it'll inspire you, too!

Creative Spotlight: Haley Moore

You know the best part about working in transmedia? The company I get to keep. My world is filled with smart, crazy talented, creative people, and it's a gift to know them. But there's no reason I should have all the luck -- you should know them, too. 

I'm dedicating this week to shining a light on just a few of those amazing people and the work that they do.

First up: Haley Moore, artist, writer, prolific creator. Her most recent project is Rule of Three, an Etsy shop filled with arcane items 100% guaranteed not to be magical in any way whatsoever. Seems our Haley has become fed up with the con artists on Etsy and eBay who sell "fairies" and "ghosts" trapped in ten-cent tchotchkes at a 5000% markup. (Read more about it in her artist's statement.)

Her competing products, which come with a Certificate of Quackery, are beautiful to look at; there may not be real magic in them, but there is real craftsmanship. And the descriptions are pitch-perfect, if you're familiar with the genre:

 

A radical cleansing, not for the faint. Aural impurities are burnt to ash and flit or fall away from the space, based on the weather. The aura is reduced to its most basic, aligned form. Clean auras create a sense of peace, well being and balance, within and without.

Each scroll's core is formed from pinion-rosemary incense and birch twiglets.

This spell is intended for spaces only, and only where other spellwork has failed. It can be abrasive to spaces with especially subtle or mixed basic auras, removing subtleties that will take time to regrow. Do not use on the living!

While you're at it, check out some of Haley's other work. She also makes robots, jewelry, and an upcoming secret project involving sharp, pointy things that I can't wait to tell you about. Stay tuned, guys.

MovieViral

There's a strange thing that happens when you make an ARG. You get to know your players very well, from observing in silence everything they say to your characters and to each other. (Sometimes you really do know each other, at least generally, because you all come from the same community, and you all return to it when the curtain closes.) 

But there are many, many more players that you don't have an existing relationship with. While you may feel you know them by the end of the game, and maybe even feel like you are or should be friends, they still don't know a thing about you. You've been watching the whole time through a one-way mirror. It's the reverse of becoming a celebrity.

One way to deal with this is the customary wrap-up puppetmaster chat, a meet and greet so that players and developers can come together and enthuse about the experience they created together. But not every project permits this, and reaching out on your own can become... well, pretty awkward.

I am ever one to meet awkwardness head-on, however, and now that a respectful interval has passed since the 2012 Experience has ended, I'm reaching out to MovieViral to say: OMG I LOVE YOU GUYS THANK YOU SO MUCH. Your enthusiasm, good humor, and analysis of the experience were a tremendous help during the run. I owe you one.

And that's not even counting the awards. You guys, my projects have won a fair number of awards over the course of my career. But none of them have meant as much to me personally as the ones from you. You've actually participated in the experiences you're judging. You're in the trenches. You know what you're looking at. And if you say that the thing I made for you was rewarding to play and had a great story? That's some rare and wonderful feedback.

So yeah, long overdue. MovieViral, man. I love you guys. Thanks for playing. It's meant a lot to me.

Heroes: Kate Harding

If you haven't heard of Kate Harding, boy howdy are you missing out. Ms. Harding is a blogger and activist devoted to the shocking idea that fat people should be treated like intelligent human beings, and not stupid sacks of moral failure. It's an idea whose time has definitely come.

She founded a blog, Shapely Prose, some years ago, that has been instrumental in forming a lot of my current thinking on feminism, fat, prejudice, and self-acceptance. This was my gateway to such earth-shaking ideas as "Eating a cupcake is not a morally charged act," and "Women should not be obligated to look hot for the benefit of random strangers." Through her blog I learned that people in the overweight BMI category are actually the ones likely to live the longest, and got some amazing perspective on what BMI looks like in practice. It's eyebrow-raising.

That blog is still active, though these days it's run largely by her equally witty co-bloggers; Harding herself has been busy using her pen for the forces of good on such topics as Roman Polanski, plus-size model Crystal Renn, and cyberbullying. Oh, and: She's got a book out.

Kate Harding, y'all. She's smart and funny. She tells it like it is and backs it up with science. She, too, isn't afraid of any consequences for sticking up for herself and what she believes in. 

This post is a part of Heroes Week 2010. Please post a link to a post about your own heroes in the open thread!

Heroes: Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert is an amazing, smart, warm human being, and it pains me that he walked the face of pop culture for decades before I knew it. It's possibly you still don't know, so let me share. The famous movie critic was diagnosed with thyroid cancer some years ago, and the winding course of treatment, recurrence, and complications has left him lacking a lower jaw and unable to speak or eat. 

There's an amazing profile of him on Esquire. Here's Ebert's own essay about his medical adventures and the role of conversation in his life. Scratch that: Read his whole blog, man. It's brimming with so much wisdom and evidence of the greatness humanity is capable of -- both on the part of its host and the community of commenters -- that I admit I'm tearing up just writing about it right now.

In the face of disability and death, Roger Ebert has built an edifice of intellect that humbles me. He writes about movies, of course, but movies are a gateway he uses to look at all of the big issues of life: Politics. Love. Death.  

Mr. Ebert, for this grace in adversity, you are one of my creative heroes. I salute you. I hope that I, too, will have the strength and will to continue the work that matters to me, even when my body fails.

This post is a part of Heroes Week 2010. Please post a link to a post about your own heroes in the open thread!

Heroes: Lady Gaga

Yes, I am totally serious. I adore Lady Gaga, I admire her like the blazes, and I won't hear anyone speak ill of her. I can see you sitting there rolling your eyes at me, but stop and listen for a minute, OK? 

Lady Gaga is a pop star, and as such, I know a lot of people dismiss her and her work out of hand. Dig deeper, dear reader. She owns the "pop star" thing completely, and her public persona is so completely flamboyant that you might as well consider it a disguise. At the same time, her private life is very much not playing out in front of the cameras. Where Britney, LiLo and a bevy of other young starlets were photographed in clubs and at beaches, drinking and exhibiting more than too much PDA, Lady Gaga retains an air of mystery. 

Now that's some fantastic separating of your personal and professional lives. She knows just where she wants that line drawn, and nobody crosses it.

Then there's that public persona itself. Her image is obviously painstakingly crafted so that she's sexy, but not sexually available. She's not the slack-lipped receptacle for desire, she's the one with agency. She pushes the boundaries of sex appeal, always with a hint (or more) of danger, of sharp edges and teeth that bite. It's a far cry from the pop-tart naughty-school-girl trope we've seen play out over the last several years. (And not a moment too soon, if you ask me.)

But I've saved the best and biggest part for last. Why do I love and admire Lady Gaga? It's because of that tea cup, the bubble dress, the masks. Lady Gaga is not afraid of making art for its own sake. She's not concerned somebody will think she's weird or too outré. She's not afraid to dream big. 

You hear that? She is NOT AFRAID. That, my friends, is the biggest lesson to learn from Lady Gaga. What would your creative work look like if you entered it with a spirit of complete fearlessness? I'm not there, but I sure hope I find my way before I go.

It helps that I love her music, too.

This post is a part of Heroes Week 2010. Please post a link to a post about your own heroes in the open thread!

Welcome to Heroes Week 2010!

February is kind of a lousy month. It's transitional; not yet spring, not really winter anymore, gray and salt-crusted and slushy. That's what makes it the perfect time of year to get in touch with the secret wellsprings that keep us going. Heroes Week is a time to celebrate the people who motivate and inspire you, particularly in your creative life. 

This comment thread is an open forum for people who want to participate by writing about their own heroes this week. I have some guidelines written up, but only you can say if they're right for you. Go ahead and pop a link to your post in the comments. I'd love to read about your heroes, and as the week goes on I'll post about some of my own. 

 Let's rock this thing!

Happy Ada Lovelace Day

Today, March 24, is Ava Lovelace Day, "an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology." I'm thrilled to see the day getting lots of publicity. If you've been following along here at DeusXM, you know that issues of gender equality are near and dear to my heart.

I signed the pledge weeks ago, intending to write about Roberta Williams, pioneering game designer and co-founder of Sierra On-Line. When you wax nostalgic for the halcyon days of King's Quest, you should take a second to think of Roberta and be grateful for her contributions to the canon of modern computer gaming.

But one of the things I absolutely love about the ARG community is the way it has historically attracted girls and women, both as players and as developers. So let me shout out to some of the women working in our cutting-edge, innovative field, who are excelling in technology and showing little girls that yes, they can come to the party, too. In no particular order, I give you:

• Jan Libby
• Maureen McHugh 
• Naomi Alderman 
• Krystyn Wells 
• Marie Lamb 
• Wendy Despain 
• Dee Cook 
• Brooke Thompson 
• Geneviève Cardin  
• Michelle Senderhauf 
• and (of course) Jane McGonigal 

Every one of these women has done something amazing, and I expect further amazement as the days go by.

If you're a woman who makes ARGs and I've left you off the list, I'm so sorry! I mean no disrespect; this is just the few I thought of on the spur of the moment -- and the fact that the list is as long as it is is a massive credit to us all, don't you think? But consider this an open thread to talk up the women in tech you admire -- particularly the women in games in general and ARGs in specific -- even if that woman is yourself.

Updated to add: So of course I leave off Kim Plowright, who has been my link to sanity lo these many months during the Routes development cycle and run. Sorry, Kim! You know I loves you!

Update 2: And of course Catherine Herdlick, too. Sheesh!

Heroes Week: Merlin Mann

Once upon a time, Merlin Mann was a slinger of productivity porn. His website 43 Folders was a mecca for idle eyes looking for the latest and greatest in aspirational geekware. He sang the praises of the Hipster PDA, the DIY pocket planner, the Moleskine, Quicksilver, GTD, kGTD, the now-defunct Stikkit, and much, much more. It was a fantastic, shiny way to imagine yourself as a doer with a rock-solid tasklist and a squeaky-clean inbox. (Even if you weren't.)

And don't get me wrong: It was awesome and I read it. But that's not enough to make him one of my creative heroes.

Then, sometime last year, Merlin had something of an epiphany and stopped writing about all of that stuff for a while. When he emerged from his months-long radio silence, he wrote a lovely essay on how he'd been blind but now he could see. The problem is this: Reading about all of that shiny stuff -- software, business books and office supplies, basically -- is not productive. It's the opposite of productive -- in fact, a killer way to keep yourself from doing productive things. So now he's become a prophet, speaking the holy words we all need to hear:

Doing stuff is way better than reading about doing stuff.

I don't know about you, but that's a message I need kicked into my head. And not once, but over and over and over again. So I read the Mann, and I am reminded: Andrea, you are only doing actual work when you're actually creating something. And while some thinking, planning and research may be necessary for you to create, don't for a second confuse those things with actual working, because they're just not the same thing. At the end of the day, no matter how many cool apps and calendar hacks and email foldering strategies you've got, you still have to do the work to get it done.

That bears repeating: The only way to get work done is by working.

So now Merlin's posting again, a bit sporadically, perhaps. And each time he does, there's a new subtext to it: This is how Twyla Tharp or Ze Frank get on with just trying to make their best stuff. This is the point. Aspiration without action is completely worthless.

I don't want to be Merlin when I grow up, so he's not in quite the same category as my other People I Admire. I'm not sure the internet could handle more than one of him anyway. But his work is actively trying to help people like me become what it is they want to be when they grow up, and hot damn if that isn't intensely admirable.

Heroes Week: Roger Zelazny

I missed yesterday's entry in my self-declared People I Admire Week (more deftly called Heroes Week by my pal Tom Bridge). Sorry about that, folks; much of my life was temporarily disrupted over an amusing vignette involving my husband, a side-impact airbag, and a little old lady in a Chrysler Sebring*.

There's also a Facebook group for like minds now; please play along!

But enough meta-level stuff, let's get to the point, shall we? My next personal creative hero is Roger Zelazny. This one requires a bit of exposition first, so please bear with me.

When I was growing up, everybody was always telling me how I should grow up to be a writer. Teachers, relatives, friends. Me? I never really thought about it one way or the other, to be honest. And sure, I knew how to string words together to make my point in an essay, and I spent more than one summer writing incredibly embarrassing adolescent ElfQuest fanfic with and for a close friend, but I never had that moment when lightning strikes and you think: "THAT. That is what I want to be doing." It was my path of least resistance, and like any good electron, I went along for the ride. There was no element of volition for me.

I did have a different sort of moment, though, one sultry Florida summer when I was dawdling in the bath and reading a book, as was my habit. My mom had an occasional subscription to the Science Fiction Book Club, and this time around I was reading a book of short stories I'd read a few years before -- probably closer to when it came out. At the time I'd been too young to get the most out of it, but old enough to know bits of it were passing me by.

So there I was, maybe 13 or 14 years old, bored, wet, re-reading a book of shorts by Roger Zelazny. Unicorn Variations, to be precise. There's a story in it called Recital. The first time I found it... kind of dull, really. Excessively sentimental, and rough-hewn, not like the stuff I was used to reading at all. Recital starts in present tense, describing an older woman singing at a microphone. Then came my lightning bolt, starting in the second paragraph:

Let's call her Mary. I don't know that much about her yet, and the name has just occurred to me. I'm Roger Z., and I'm doing all of this on the spot, rather than in the standard smooth and clean fashion. This is because I want to watch it happen and find things out along the way.

So Mary is a character and this is a story, and I know that she is over the hill and fairly sick. I try to look through her eyes now and discover that I cannot. It occurs to me that she is probably blind and that the great hall in which she is singing is empty.

Why? And what is the matter with her eyes?

Were you struck by the bolt, too? Do you understand what happened to me?

Probably no. There are as many paths to enlightenment as there are people, yes? But there, explicitly there in the story, I saw something I'd never noticed before, something crucial to anyone who wants to make stuff up for a living. I saw a creative process in action. My bolt wasn't so much "I want to do THAT." No, it was more like "Oh, THAT'S how you do it!"

I did a lot of writing in school. I even did a lot of creative writing, equal measures tepid stories and vapid poetry. But it had honestly never occurred to me that you could make it up as you go along, so to speak. I thought the way to write a story was:

1. Think up an idea
2. Write it down
3. Hand it in for your grade

This three-step process is sometimes still there in the back of my brain, and frankly, it's a terrible model. (Or for me it is, anyway.) I find some of my most magnificent ideas, some of my most subtle touches, they come when I work and let the ideas come from the mystic place where they spawn and swim down through my fingers without interference from that no-good meddlesome brain. And beyond that: "Think up an idea" is so huge, so intimidating, that if you wait on that step before starting to write, why, you might never write anything at all!

And here Zelazny published a rough-hewn bit of work -- he even says it's not "the standard smooth and clean fashion" -- and puts it out there where readers like me could see the raw process and have a revelation. So I admire Roger Zelazny, not just for being an amazing wordsmith and reputedly a magnificent human being, but for taking creative risks and pushing the envelope even after achieving recognition as a celebrated author.

Thanks, Roger, wherever you are now. I wish I could have met you.