rock/talk
Monday, March 29, 2010 at 10:23AM 
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ROCK/TALK & THE NATIVE LANGUAGE OF VIDEOGAMES
Mr. Brandon Boyer, a contributing editor at the computerized internet website Boing Boing and friend of the people, has graciously chosen to showcase slides and an approximation of a talk given by a Superbrothers representative at the Independent Games Summit at the Game Developer's Conference 2010 in San Francisco.
The title of the talk was, ironically enough, "LESS TALK, MORE ROCK: the native language of videogames can be neither spoken nor written'. The feature was originally prepared as a five-minute 'indie rapidfire rant' and is thus a little fast-and-loose, but heartfelt. The talk suggests that there is a significant value in exploring nonverbal synesthetic audiovisual communication in videogames, and that verbal communication - text & speech - can be disruptive if used immoderately or without careful attention. Despite a few misunderstandings the response to the talk has been largely positive.
To see the slides & read the talk in its entirety, including never-before-seen Superbrothers interpretations of pioneering videogame characters from Jordan Mechner's Prince of Persia, Eric Chahi's Another World aka Out of this World, Shigeru Miyamoto's The Legend of Zelda (above) & Super Mario Bros., as well as Fumito Ueda's Ico, allow perhaps five minutes & click here to see the feature article on the Boing Boing: Less talk, more rock.
For further reading on the related topics of audiovisual literacy & aesthetic coherence, please take the time to read this much more fully formed essay by master animator David O'Reilly, available here: BASIC ANIMATION AESTHETICS.
For further reading on 'the conflict between words & images', you may enjoy a thought provoking book written by the late master neurosurgeon Leonard Schlain, described in detail here: THE ALPHABET VS THE GODDESS.
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