With the discussion of academia vs. industry/practice blossoming at Intelligent Artifice and Terra Nova, a comment at the Zen of Design blog strikes a chord:
Double-coding is the practice of creating a work of art that speaks to two different audiences in different ways. It’s most often used to describe Children’s shows that also entertain adults. For example, Animaniacs and the classic Bugs Bunny cartoons are double-coded well – they have many references that a child won’t get but will amuse an adult. ‘Blues Clues’ is not double-coded – and as such, an adult watching it will be put to sleep.
Double-coding is what we, the academics (pick one) are / should be / shouldn’t be doing: Creating work that speaks to academics and to developers at the same time.
Double coding seems the ideal to me, but I can see a problem: different audiences ask for different discourses. A developer will never read long pages full of footnotes, and academics tend to despise writings in which the ideas are exposed in a clear way and that do not quote Aristotle at least twice.
I think the best idea is to have a double coded research interest, and to understand the needs of the different audiences, writing accordingly to the target group.
And perhaps “target groups” should be a little bit more open: footnotes have not killed anybody, and I have heard that it is possible to do game research without Aristotle’s presence (this one, yet to be confirmed).
Or not.
I can’t believe you took a post designed solely to showcase a borderline obscene clip of a children’s show, and bent it to be included in the argument.
Friggin’ academics. =)
What can I say? It pays the rent.
More of this in games, also, please! I’m (unfortunately) always picking up messages through the game mechanics which probably aren’t intentional. Once they are, I think I’ll be happy, and no longer quite firmly stuck up my own arse when I mention that Tony Hawks Pro Skater is an analogue of Oliver Stone’s Wall Street.
Is Tony Hawks Pro Skater is an analogue of Oliver Stone?s Wall Street? How?
Strong themes of Risk vs. Reward in both.
But I guess that’s true of many, many games, and many, many movies. As I said, my head’s firmly up my own arse on this one.
But then most things have strong elements of risk and reward – what’s with Tony Hawk and Wall Street?
The problem or phenomena of double-coding is specially interesting in other way: fiction can be double-coded in order to engage both in avant-garde art and entertainment (for example, in “New Latin American Narrative”), and not just to approach different age groups (parents/kids). Thus we can speak of a form of “structural coupling” between two social systems – following the thoughts of sociologyst Niklas Luhmann. These (double-coded) works of fiction can then be read by the same person from two divergent points of view (or social systems). The problem of focalizing an audience is not then only a matter of distinguishing among people (parents/kids, or other distinctions of the like), but a matter of distinguishing among communicational “modus”.