The Atomic Playboy and the Radiation Romeo

The button below will open a new browser window displaying the Flash interface for Atomic and Romeo (Version 16 with Preloader). You will find a page of introductory text, some instructions and then the interface where you can suggest a topic for conversation.





This version 16 uses the landscape layout, updates the heckler and end-of-conversation functions with an audio sign-off. All the features from previous versions remain - scroll bar control,custId variable allows me to better log and track conversations.


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Friday, December 11, 2009

The Literature Review Plan

The reading is slowly progressing. My search for an accessible text that introduces Raskin and Attardo linguistic theory has yielded surprising results. Victor Raskin has edited a Humor Theory Primer 2008. I've only read part of the introduction but it seems to be a 672 page literary review! It covers the historical development of humour research from multiple disciplines as well as dealing, in some detail, with the material I was looking for. The version I've found is through Ebooks Library - for as little as $176 I can get a PDF version of the beast. This seems like a good start for Christmas reading.

To be honest, the size of the literature review seems to be growing with every page I read. This seems to be the normal course of events.
However, the over-all plan is roughly as follows:

1. Humour Theory - an historical overview incorporating contributions from psychology, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, communication, literary criticism, mathematics etc. Philosophy needs to get a guernsey due to Bergson's contribution to the field - even if it isn't the most accepted theory in the current debates.

2. Artificial Intelligence - again an historical overview that traces the development of natural language agents. Largely this would deal with Reeves and Nass Media Equation, its detractors; the Turing Test, and its detractors. The aim is to situate my work outside Artificial Intelligence Computer Science domain and place it in a media context.

3. Scriptwriting - I'm undecided about this section covering heuristic comedy writing texts - these usually have some very loose basis in a theoretical perspective but they tend not to have much credibility in academic circles. Also, I'm hard pressed to think of an example that isn't inextricably tied to a single media form, e.g. writing for TV or radio or film etc.

4. Creativity research - This I would also approach from an historical perspective coming to a conclusion that a confluence model of creativity that incorporates the individual, social and cultural elements is most appropriate for academic research. Would this section be better used as an overarching theoretical perspective, particularly if I can make a successful hybrid with Actor Network Theory (a colleague has recently pointed me at a good resource for this)?

Is all of this possible in 10000 - 12000 words and in two months? I'm hoping that January will be largely clear for writing. Realistically I don't think I can get all of tis done. But the first section is the one I would like to attack first - I feel this is my weakest area and I need to get some handle on it.