Shelf of Curios
It’s easy to gain insight into another person’s mind by glimpsing their bookshelf. Since I don’t want the whole internet visiting my room, and since I get almost all of my internet content through RSS feeds at this point, I’ve broken my Google Reader library into a few OPML links, posted below. I’ll also take this opportunity to step away from the business-oriented About Matt page and go into some more casual information about who I am.
Or you can just skip this next bit. Your call.
I’ve always been a nerd, although I didn’t realize it for quite a few years. Glossing over my extended life story, I started following webcomics during my first degree program. My relationship with podcasts was on-again, off-again until I finished school. I’ve always had an interest in radio production and voice acting but focused my studies on visual media. Once I was out of the classroom, I realized audio was something I could produce by myself regardless of my dayjob. I studied various styles of writing for similar reasons, and the two fit together fairly well.
All of that serves as a backdrop to the reasoning behind my library categories, but one of the most important considerations to me in seeking out entertainment and career-related interests is narrative. As my theatrical studies wore on, I began to realize that the history of media is the evolution of narrative delivery. The move from lone narrator dictating allegorical tales to multi-part authored and performance works makes for what I consider to be a fascinating discussion, but left me with a sense of incompleteness as a theater major.
As a child of the 80′s, my relationship with video games goes back to my earliest memories. Even without the advancements of the digital age, games are as old or (arguably) older than traditional non-interactive narrative media. Without digressing too wildly, I suppose it’s more fair to say that “play” is older than narrative, if not the concept of a codified “game.” Certainly, I’d grown up with any number of readily available interactive, if abstract and ill defined, stories. By the time I graduated from the theater program, I was asking myself why my interest in theater was looked upon with an air of tasteful respectability while my interest in gaming was dismissed as a childish past time.
When I went back to school to study game design, the concept of truth to materials was introduced to me and has remained a power influence in my creative pursuits. That’s not to say I stick rigidly to the doctrine, but it introduces some interesting considerations to the creative process. If I have to provide a character with dialog, for instance, how is my writing supporting that character as a representation of a consistent personality? How is that character supporting the spirit of the piece as a whole? On the rare occasions when I get to design a game from start to finish, I tend to venture into what most critics would consider abstract representation. I don’t do this with any lofty aesthetic intention. I use minimalism and reduction because I don’t want the player to forget they are soliciting a computer for an emotional experience. That, and I’ve always found Realism tedious.
In retrospect, this explains two opinions of mine: the current state of 3D TV is a waste of time and the answer to the uncanny valley as concerns visual media is to run screaming in the opposite direction. Suprematism, if you’ve ever heard of it, is one of my favorite artistic movements, as much because of it’s simplistic reduction of form as for my general admiration for Soviet-era graphic arts.
There’s some irony in that last bit, because my political views are about as rabidly anti-Soviet as one can get. Whereas one might expect an artsy-minded theater kid to go off to college and fall under the sway of Marxist professors and literature, I was bitten by a radio-active Ayn Rand in my senior year of high school and imbued with the powers of borderline-extremist fiscally conservative Libertarianism. Such are the practices I tend to endorse, at least. I have the good sense to ignore my actual leanings. Guy Fawkes, anyone?
As I’ve been writing, it’s occurred to me that RSS media doesn’t quite cover the gestalt of my personal interests. Unfortunately, I can’t think of any decent way to list out my book, game and music collection without sounding like a dating profile. I’ve only recently started turning to The Cloud for music and literature, though, so that issue might resolve itself with time. I’ll say one last thing before getting to the previously promised OPML files: my two favorite books are Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and Robert Heilein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. I’ve been trying to square my Buddhist sense of spirituality with my Objectivist sociopolitical bent for a very long time. I should probably write my thoughts down about that some time…
Anyway, I’ve rambled more than I should have, so here are a few OPML files for anyone interesting in exploring the multitude of entertainment and news media I scour daily. For easy of use, those who lack all discretion can just take the whole thing right up front. Be warned, though, I offer no apologies for content I openly admit I find interesting.
For the entire library, click here.
For everything else, click where you will: