This book modifies the concept of performativity with media theory in order to build a rigorous method for analyzing videogame performances. Beginning with an interdisciplinary exploration of performative motifs in Western art and literary history, the book shows the importance of framing devices in orienting audiences experience of art. The frame, as a site of paradox, links the books discussion of theory with close readings of texts, which include artworks, books and videogames. The resulting method is interdisciplinary in scope and will be of use to researchers interested in the performative aspects of gaming, art, digital storytelling and nonlinear narrative.
1. Introduction: Videogames as Performances
Part I. Framing Devices: Performative Loops in Literature and Art History
2. How to Do Things With Images
3. What is Rhyparography?: The Ambiguity of the Framing Device
4. 'Fanciful Microscopy': Framing Devices and Uncertainty in Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49
Part II. Anterior Motives: Performance in Videogames
5. Anterior Motives: From Subjective Shot to Portals Figure of Reversal
6. Performative Multiplicities
Part III. The Body Eclectic: Distortion, Distraction and Tactile Experience
7. Serial Aesthetics: Gamings Metamorphic Bodies and Baudelaire's 'Argot Plastique'
8. Physical Wit: Games and the 'Tactile Unconscious'
Part IV. Performative Multiplicities: A Method for Analyzing Videogame Performances
9. The Nip and the Byte: Analogue and Digital Performances in Videogames
10. Time Invaders: Conceptualizing Performative Game Time
Conclusion
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