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This paper examines the function that cross-cultural competence (3C) has for NATO in a military context while focusing on two member states and their armed forces: the United States and Germany. Three dimensions were established to analyze 3C internally and externally: dimension A, dealing with 3C within the military organization; dimension B, focusing on 3C in a coalition environment/multicultural NATO contingent, for example while on a mission/training exercise abroad; and dimension C, covering 3C and NATO missions abroad with regard to interaction with the local population.
When developing the research design, the cultural studies-based theory of hegemony constructed by Antonio Gramsci was applied to a comprehensive document analysis of 3C coursework and regulations as well as official documents in order to establish a typification for cross-cultural competence.
As the result, 3C could be categorized as Type I – Ethical 3C, Type II – Hegemonic 3C, and Type III – Dominant 3C. Attributes were assigned according to each type. To validate the established typification, qualitative surveys were conducted with NATO (ACT), the U.S. Armed Forces (USCENTCOM), and the German Armed Forces (BMVg). These interviews validated the typification and revealed a varied approach to 3C in the established dimensions. It became evident that dimensions A and B indicated a prevalence of Type III, which greatly impacts the work atmosphere and effectiveness for NATO (ACT). In contrast, dimension C revealed the use of postcolonial mechanisms by NATO forces, such as applying one’s value systems to other cultures and having the appearance of an occupying force when 3C is not applied (Type I-II). In general, the function of each 3C type in the various dimensions could be determined.
In addition, a comparative study of the document analysis and the qualitative surveys resulted in a canon for culture-general skills. Regarding the determined lack of coherence in 3C correlating with a demonstrably negative impact on effectiveness and efficiency as well as interoperability, a NATO standard in the form of a standardization agreement (STANAG) was suggested based on the aforementioned findings, with a focus on: empathy, cross-cultural awareness, communication skills (including active listening), flexibility and adaptability, and interest. Moreover, tolerance of ambiguity and teachability, patience, observation skills, and perspective-taking could be considered significant. Suspending judgment and respect are also relevant skills here.
At the same time, the document analysis also revealed a lack of coherency and consistency in 3C education and interorganizational alignment. In particular, the documents examined for the U.S. Forces indicated divergent approaches. Furthermore, the interview analysis disclosed a large discrepancy in part between doctrine and actual implementation with regard to the NATO Forces.
The fourth volume of the DIGAREC Series holds the proceedings to the conference “Logic and Structure of the Computer Game”, held at the House of Brandenburg- Prussian History in Potsdam on November 6 and 7, 2009. The conference was the first to explicitly address the medial logic and structure of the computer game. The contributions focus on the specific potential for mediation and on the unique form of mediation inherent in digital games. This includes existent, yet scattered approaches to develop a unique curriculum of game studies. In line with the concept of ‘mediality’, the notions of aesthetics, interactivity, software architecture, interface design, iconicity, spatiality, and rules are of special interest. Presentations were given by invited German scholars and were commented on by international respondents in a dialogical structure.
This paper comprises four parts. Firstly, an overview of the mathematics of decision logic in relation to games and of the construction of narration and characters is given. This includes specific limits of the use of decision logic pertaining to games in general and to storytelling in particular. Secondly, the rule system as the medial unconsciousness is focused on. Thirdly, remarks are made on the debate between ludology and narratology, which had to fail as it missed the crucial point: the computer game as a medium. Finally, gaming in general, as well as its relationship to chance, coincidence, emergence, and event is discussed.
The claim is made, that in order to analyze them sufficiently, computer games first of all have to be described according to their mediality, understood as the very form in which possible contents are presented to be interacted with. This calls for a categorical approach that defines the condition of possible actions that are determined by the program, but that can only be perceived as aesthetic features.
The space-image
(2008)
In recent computer game research a paradigmatic shift is observable: Games today are first and foremost conceived as a new medium characterized by their status as an interactive image. The shift in attention towards this aspect becomes apparent in a new approach that is, first and foremost, aware of the spatiality of games or their spatial structures. This rejects traditional approaches on the basis that the medial specificity of games can no longer be reduced to textual or ludic properties, but has to be seen in medial constituted spatiality. For this purpose, seminal studies on the spatiality of computer games are resumed and their advantages and disadvantages are discussed. In connection with this, and against the background of the philosophical method of phenomenology, we propose three steps in describing computer games as space images: With this method it is possible to describe games with respect to the possible appearance of spatiality in a pictorial medium.
This paper highlights the different ways of perceiving video games and video game content, incorporating interactive and non-interactive methods. It examines varying cognitive and emotive reactions by persons who are used to play video games as well as persons who are unfamiliar with the aesthetics and the most basic game play rules incorporated within video games. Additionally, the principle of “Flow” serves as a theoretical and philosophical foundation. A small case-study featuring two games has been made to emphasize the numerous possible ways of perception of video games.
Simultaneously speculative and inspired by everyday experiences, this volume develops an aesthetics of metabolism that offers a new perspective on the human-environment relation, one that is processual, relational, and not dependent on conscious thought. In art installations, design prototypes, and researchcreation projects that utilize air, light, or temperature to impact subjective experience the author finds aesthetic milieus that shift our awareness to the role of different sense modalities in aesthetic experience. Metabolic and atmospheric processes allow for an aesthetics besides and beyond the usually dominant visual sense.
From object to process
(2019)
One of the most difficult tasks today is trying to grasp the presence of computing. The almost ubiquitous and diverse forms of networked computers (in all their stationary, mobile, embedded, and autonomous modes) create a nearly overwhelming complexity. To speak of what is here evading and present at the same time, the paper proposes to reconsider the concept of interface, its historical roots, and its heuristic advantages for an analysis and critique of the current and especially everyday spread of computerization. The question of interfaces leads to isolable conditions and processes of conduction, as well as to the complexity of the cooperation formed by them. It opens both an investigative horizon and a mode of analysis, which always asks for further interface levels involved in the phenomenon I am currently investigating. As an example, the paper turns to the displacement of the file with the launch of the iPhone in 2007 and its comeback in 2017 with the "Files" apps. Both developments are profoundly related to the establishment of computers as permanently networked machines, whereby their functionality, depresentations, and ideology come into focus.
Social media and self-esteem
(2022)
The relationship between social media and self-esteem is complex, as studies tend to find a mixed pattern of relationships and meta-analyses tend to find small, albeit significant, magnitudes of statistical effects. One explanation is that social media use does not affect self-esteem for the majority of users, while small minorities experience either positive or negative effects, as evidenced by recent research calculating person specific within-person effects. This suggests that the true relationship between social media use and self-esteem is person-specific and based on individual susceptibilities and uses. In recognition of these advancements, we review recent empirical studies considering differential uses and moderating variables in the social media-self-esteem relationship, and conclude by discussing opportunities for future social media effects research.
Communication, simulation, interactive narrative and ubiquitous computing are widely accepted as perspectives in humancomputer interaction. This paper proposes play as another possible perspective. Everyday uses of the computer increasingly show signs of similarity to play. This is not discussed with regard to the so-called media society, the playful society, the growing cultural acceptance of the computer, the spread of computer games or a new version of Windows, but in view of the playful character of interaction with the computer that has always been part of it. The exploratory learning process involved with new software and the creative tasks that are often undertaken when using the computer may support this argument. Together with its high level of interactivity, these observations point to a sense of security, autonomy and freedom of the user that produce play and are, in turn, produced by play. This notion of play refers not to the playing of computer games, but to an implicit, abstract (or symbolic) process based on a certain attitude, the play spirit. This attitude is discussed regarding everyday computer use and related to the other mentioned perspectives.
The paper aims to bring the experience of playing videogames closer to objective knowledge, where the experience can be assessed and falsified via an operational concept. The theory focuses on explaining the basic elements that form the core of the process of the experience. The name of puppetry is introduced after discussing the similarities in the importance of experience for both videogames and theatrical puppetry. Puppetry, then, operationalizes the gaming experience into a concept that can be assessed.
Affect Disposition(ing)
(2018)
The “affective turn” has been primarily concerned not with what affect is, but what it does. This article focuses on yet another shift towards how affect gets organized, i.e., how it is produced, classified, and controlled. It proposes a genealogical as well as a critical approach to the organization of affect and distinguishes between several “affect disposition(ing) regimes”—meaning paradigms of how to interpret and manage affects, for e.g., encoding them as byproducts of demonic possession, judging them in reference to a moralistic framework, or subsuming them under an industrial regime. Bernard Stiegler’s concept of psychopower will be engaged at one point and expanded to include social media and affective technologies, especially Affective Computing. Finally, the industrialization and cybernetization of affect will be contrasted with poststructuralist interpretations of affects as events.
Normality is one of the defining categories of our society. Statistics of all kinds play a crucial part in establishing the normal. Computers, on the other hand, have a very close connection to statistics as the digital world is a statistical one in itself. In a multitude of games statistics are used as an element of gameplay. In this perspective, games can be regarded as a training in self-normalization. However, it is still questionable whether this leads to a genuine production of normality.
This paper is a critical examination of the relationship between reality and simulation. After a brief theoretical introduction, it unfolds its argument on an empirical level, using a thick game playing description of GRAND THEFT AUTO IV. This in-game experience serves as material for the subsequent analysis, in the course of which defining characteristics of computer game playing are formulated. Finally, on the basis of this analysis, the paper postulates the hypothesis that playing computer games like GTA IV promotes competency in deconstructing simulations and implements a cyclic logic of recreation.
In this cartography, I examine M.K. Gandhi’s practice of fasting for political purposes from a specifically aesthetic perspective. In other words, to foreground their dramatic qualities, how they in their expressive repetition, patterning and stylization produced a/effected heightened forms of emotions. To carry out this task, I follow the theater scholar Erika Fischer-Lichte’s features that give name to her book Äesthetik des Performativen (2004). The cartography is framed in a philosophical presentation of Gandhi’s discourse as well as of his historical sources. Moreover, as a second frame, I historicize the fasts, by means of a typology and teleology in context.
The historically and discoursively framed cartography maps four main dimensions that define the aesthetics of the performative: mediality, materiality, semioticity and aestheticity. The first part analyses the medial platforms in which the fasts as events have been historically recorded and in which they have left their traces and inscriptions. These historical sources are namely, newspapers, images, newsreels and a documentary film. Secondly, the material dimension depicts Gandhi’s corporeal condition, as well as the spatiality and temporality of the fasts. In the third place, I revise and reformulate critically Fischer-Lichte’s concepts of “presence” and “representation” with resonating concepts of G. C. Spivak and J. Rancière. This revision illustrates Gandhi’s fasts and shows the process of how an individual may become the embodiment or representation of a national body-politic. The last chapter of the cartography explores the autopoetic-feedback loop between Gandhi and the people and finishes with a comparison of the mise en scène of the hunger artists with the fasts of the Indian the politician, social reformer, and theologian. The text concludes interpreting Gandhi’s practice of fasting under the light of the concepts of “intellectual emancipation” and “de-subjectivation” of the philosopher J. Rancière.
The four main concerns of this cartography are: Firstly, in the field of Gandhi’s reception, to explore the aesthetic dimension as both alternative and complementary to the two hegemonic interpretative lenses, i.e. a hagiographic or a secular political understanding of the fasts. From a theoretical perspective, the cartography pursues to be a transdisciplinary experiment that aims at deploying concepts that have been traditionally developed, derived from and used in the field of the arts (theater, film, literature, aesthetic performance, etc.) in the field of the political. In brief, inverting an expression of Rancière, to understand politics as aesthetics. Thirdly, from a thematic point of view, the cartography inquires the historical forms of staging and perception of hunger. Last yet importantly, it is an inquiry of the practice of fasting as nonviolence, what Gandhi, its most sophisticated modern theoretician and practitioner considered its most radical expression.
Jesper Juul has convincingly argued that the conflict over the proper object of study has shifted from “rules or story” to “player or game.” But a key component of digital games is still missing from either of these oppositions: that of the computer itself. This paper offers a way of thinking about the phenomenology of the videogame from the perspective of the computer rather than the game or the player.
Purpose - To provide illumination of how systems tend to produce an output nobody expected. It is in these moments that observers may learn something about their own expectations. Design/methodology/approach - The paper discusses two cases in the history of art: faked Vermeer paintings and a test Heinz von Foerster did in the art department at the University of Illinois. Findings - McLuhan's notion "collide-oscope" is applied to the way Heinz von Foerster (ab)uses images in his own texts; furthermore it is applied to the way the Biological Computer Laboratory (BCL) was organized. The formal structure of the "collide-oscope" offers a model of perception. Originality/value - Provides a discussion of a fundamental message of cybernetics - that we cannot escape collisions and disturbances. They are its essence
One of the informal properties often used to describe a new virtual world is its degree of openness. Yet what is an “open” virtual world? Does the phrase mean generally the same thing to different people? What distinguishes an open world from a less open world? Why does openness matter anyway? The answers to these questions cast light on an important, but shadowy, and uneasy, topic for virtual worlds: the relationship between those who construct the virtual, and those who use these constructions.
Insight by de—sign
(2023)
The calculus of design is a diagrammatic approach towards the relationship between design and insight. The thesis I am evolving is that insights are not discovered, gained, explored, revealed, or mined, but are operatively de—signed. The de in design neglects the contingency of the space towards the sign. The — is the drawing of a distinction within the operation. Space collapses through the negativity of the sign; the command draws a distinction that neglects the space for the form's sake. The operation to de—sign is counterintuitively not the creation of signs, but their removal, the exclusion of possible sign propositions of space. De—sign is thus an act of exclusion; the possibilities of space are crossed into form.
The talk will focus on a few central problems in Game Studies: The question of where to locate game meaning, game defintions and how to avoid them, and the conundrum of games vs stories. In all these problems, the choice of ludic perspective (e.g. are games artifacts, systems or activities?) limits our ability to discuss games across disciplinary boundaries. What is needed is a metaperspective that will offer the field a chance to move on.
Define real, Moron!
(2011)
Academic language should not be a ghetto dialect at odds with ordinary language, but rather an extension that is compatible with lay-language. To define ‘game’ with the unrealistic ambition of satisfying both lay-people and experts should not be a major concern for a game ontology, since the field it addresses is subject to cultural evolution and diachronic change. Instead of the impossible mission of turning the common word into an analytic concept, a useful task for an ontology of games is to model game differences, to show how the things we call games can be different from each other in a number of different ways.