Computer Writing, Rhetoric and Literature

Susan Warshauer

<1> In the following, I examine the aesthetic approaches of people who designed two MUDs (Multi-User Domains, Dimensions or Dungeons) at the University of Texas at Austin. One of these MUDs is situated on a NeXT computer in the Computer Writing and Research Labs (CWRL) of the Division of Rhetoric and Composition, and until the fall of 1994 the other resided on a Sun SparcClassic in the Radio, Television, Film Department's Alternative Communication Technologies Lab (ACT Lab).

<2> In addition to shedding light on the perspectives of two MUD designers, I offer preliminary paradigms for analyzing dramatic interaction in these online environments. Models of roleplaying, imaginative space, and interface are used as organizing principles to ground discussion of dramatic interaction in MUDspace. Questions about real-time interaction, the stability of an environment or characters, and point of view are suggested as additional lines of inquiry in studying MUDs.

TinyMUD as Interface

<3> Although there are a number of different types of MUDs, this study concentrates on real-time interaction and creative writing decisions in TinyMUDs in particular. I consider the TinyMUD program as an interface and as an interactive, theatrical script that is left open-ended.

<4> Brenda Laurel, in Computers as Theatre, talks about computers as an "interactive, representational medium" (125), and identifies the "interface" as not merely the "means whereby a person and a computer represent themselves to one another," but rather as the "shared context for action in which both are agents" (4). My discussion of Laurel's work provides a starting point for plotting the interaction which occurs within a MUD.

<5> In Laurel's theatrical perspective on human-computer activity, "the stage is a virtual world...populated by agents, both human and computer-generated, and other elements of the representational context" (17). The critical difference between the participants in a MUD and theatergoers in physical space is that in the MUD, the distinctions between actor, audience and writer are collapsed, and the boundary between audience and stage space become blurred.

AcademICK and Point MOOt

<6> In examining the aesthetics of MUD designers, I foreground varied ways of constructing the relationship between a player, an environment, and other players in a Multi-User Domain. My analysis of AcademICK and Claire Benedikt's aesthetics focusses on Benedikt's concern for the agency of a player as this is manifested in textual, typically third-person descriptions of an environment. My study of Point MOOt and Allan Alford's aesthetics highlights Alford's concern for replicating realism in an online environment, particularly as it relates to the programming ability and interaction of players within this environment.

Boundaries between Physical, Virtual and Performative Environments

<7> Benedikt's and Alford's aesthetics contrast markedly with each other; the juxtaposition has caused me to interrogate the boundaries between physical, virtual and performative environments to conceptualize different approaches to interaction in Multi-User Domains.

<8> I establish and then critique the boundaries between physical, virtual and performance spaces and illustrate this analysis in:

Figure 2: Apples and Oranges?

<9> To provide a more integrated approach to conceptions of virtual and performative interactions, I posit a model of imaginative space which describes a series of spaces and interactions between them in:

Figure 3: Imaginative Space

<10> The single human being finds room for physical, performance, virtual, memory, and dream spaces to coexist in an imaginative space. What I attempt to plot in this framework is the image you have in your head of yourself and what's around you (an understanding of self and reality). Image is meant not only in a visual sense, but as a representation of who you are and of reality, which includes sensory and cognitive information. Such a framework questions the ontological basis of "being" that is set in linear time and physical space; "being" that is set in the imagination provides a more multiplicitous notion of environment and self. The dialectic between the different imaginative spaces working within each individual grounds a conception of personhood and reality. I consider drawbacks of this model of imaginative space though, particularly as they relate to representing thought processes which are non-spatial.

<11> The model of imaginative space asks the viewer to consider how descriptions of dramatic production modes in physical space relate to interaction in virtual environments. The figure also uses realism, happenings and Brechtian modes to describe productions in physical space which situate the audience differently vis-a-vis the imaginative world of the stage and the stage space itself. In addition, the dream and memory components of imaginative space might be situated in a number of ways; the model offers one possibility.

<12> This model of imaginative space, in its conception of multiple, simultaneous locations of self in imaginative space, is analogous to the work of Allucquere Rosanne Stone on the notion of multiplicity. Stone describes cultural anxiety in physical and virtual space about people who define or perceive themselves in a multi-selved fashion. Society polices the borders of multiplicity in diagnosing schizophrenia and multiple-personality-disorder as disorders; gender borders are policed in the naming of gender dysphoria syndrome (see Stone papers, "Violation and Virtuality" and unedited Mondo 2000 Interview, ACT Lab gopher). I would argue that the "policing" or structuring of character interaction occurs in TinyMUDspace also and could be interpreted as a response to the increased opportunities for interaction in MUDspace (as opposed to physical space) among people with multiple and potentially anonymous subjectivities.

<13> Stone challenges the concept of the autonomous individual who has a singular definiton of self in physical as well as virtual reality; she focuses on the instability of the borders of singular identities. I discuss Stone's approach to the concepts of self and audience, how her work relates to Herbert Blau's, and the implications of her perspective for dramatic and virtual systems theory.

<14> Stone's approach toward the people and the associated subjectivities they develop online rests on contingency, on a new perceptual order, a new cyberspatial realm in which positionality shifts, movement defines place, and multiplicity gravitates around a questionable singularity. Stone's more fluid sense of subjectivity provides a helpful context for understanding the acting, or what I would call "inter-acting" styles which Claire Benedikt delineates for players in TinyMUDspace.

Inter-acting and Roleplaying in TinyMUDs

<15> I provide a discussion of the 3 types of roleplaying Benedikt outlines for TinyMUDs: heavy, classic, and environmental, which have graphic depictions below (drawn April 1995):

Figure 4: Heavy Roleplaying

Figure 5: Classic Roleplaying

Figure 6: Environmental Roleplaying

<16> In addition, I discuss Benedikt's conception of chatting, another type of interaction she identifies for players in MUDspace, with an image that follows (drawn April 1995):

Figure 7: Chatting

<17> Working from Benedikt's model of roleplaying modes, I provide a model I call the "Dialectic of Interacting":

Figure 8: Dialectic of Interacting

<18> In this model, I set Benedikt's modes in the context of a traditional rhetorical model of acting styles that identifies acting awareness centering on the self, the actor, or the character. Movement between these aims or types of roleplaying, with a concomitant consciousness for each, becomes prevalent in MUD interaction. So pervasive is the dialectical movement between these acting styles, that it seems especially apt to describe the person engaged in them as "interacting."

<19> In explicating this dialectic of interacting model, I describe the consciousness of players and their objectives when interacting.

<20> I also highlight the movement between out-of-character and in-character roleplaying in the "Out-of-Character to In-Character Roleplay Dialectic" model:

Figure 9: Out-of-Character to In-Character Roleplay Dialectic

<21> A player's acting awareness as well as a description of their interactive behavior form a zig-zag pattern in this model, indicating that movement between one acting or consciousness mode and another may be more similar to the path of a billiard ball on a pool table than a uni-directional journey in any one acting or consciousness mode. In addition though, an individual may be simultaneously playing within more than one type of acting mode, or experiencing more than one type of consciousness for a single self/character or several selves/characters. So the billiard ball motif could be expanded to include a series of zig-zag interactions on a (non-linear) pool table among a number of balls traveling in 3-dimensional space.

<22> I describe the OOC-IC roleplay dialectic model further and consider the arbitrary distinction established in the use of the terms out-of-character and in-character as well as the need to consider point of view in discussions of roleplaying and dramatic theory.

<23>Finally, while these roleplaying models describe character interaction in TinyMUDspace, how does this interaction relate to the concept of interface?

<24> In considering computers "arenas for experience," Stone offers a conception of interface which is particularly suited to understanding virtual environments as interactive dramatic spaces (Unedited Mondo 2000 Interview). Unlike Laurel's view of interface mediating between, though affected by, computer and person, Stone focusses primarily on how interface mediates the relationship between a body and a subjectivity. Stone explains,

"You can look at interface...as anything across which agency changes form...that thing which mediates between a body and an associated subjectivity...That's the definition of interface that you use naturally when you're in the Internet, you know, when you are in your body at the terminal and your self is actually pouring out through your fingers to somewhere else in the world. The interface is the thing that mediates between them" (Unedited Mondo 2000 Interview).

<25> In AcademICK and Point MOOt, players have the associated subjectivities of their characters which they develop through using the capabilities of the MUSH or MOO program as presented to them in the textual environment. Bots have subjectivity and agency in MUD environments as well, at least the associated subjectivity of the bot-programmer, and the agency attributed to them by those who interact with them and sculpted for them by their programmer.

<26> What interests me most in Stone's conception of the interface is the move toward analyzing interaction, although she is mainly concerned with the interaction that occurs between a body and an associated subjectivity. I am most interested in analyzing the TinyMUD interface as mediating between sets of associated subjectivity(ies).

<27> Overall, a new vocabulary needs to emerge to help us understand dramatic interaction in virtual environments, including MUDspace. More attention should be given to paradigms of interface and roleplay, and conventions of behavior in these environments. Most importantly, we need to understand the "being" of the player in an imaginative virtual space, as that space and its designers are having a more pervasive influence on who players and people are and how they interact.

Figure 1: Multi-User Domain Design

Figure 2: Apples and Oranges?

Figure 3: Model of Imaginative Space

Figure 4: Heavy Roleplaying by Claire Benedikt

Figure 5: Classic Roleplaying by Claire Benedikt

Figure 6: Environmental Roleplaying by Claire Benedikt

Figure 7: Chatting by Claire Benedikt

Figure 8: Dialectic of Interacting

Figure 9: Out-of-Character to In-Character Roleplay Dialectic

If you have thoughts, comments or questions to contribute to this discussion, please fill out the form below and send it to me. Thanks, arigato & muchas gracias.

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