Expressive Processing

What matters in understanding digital media? Is looking at the external appearance and audience experience of software enough -- or should we look further? In Expressive Processing, Noah Wardrip-Fruin argues that understanding what goes on beneath the surface, the computational processes that make digital media function, is essential. Wardrip-Fruin looks at "expressive processing" by examining specific works of digital media ranging from the simulated therapist Eliza to the complex city-planning game SimCity. Digital media, he contends, offer particularly intelligible examples of things we need to understand about software in general; if we understand, for instance, the capabilities and histories of artificial intelligence techniques in the context of a computer game, we can use that understanding to judge the use of similar techniques in such higher-stakes social contexts as surveillance.

Review: "Expressive Processing has the perfect combination of technical expertise, historical rigor, and dogged determination to get inside of the black box to make it a kind of primer on what Henry Lowood once called 'the hard work of software history.' It is, therefore, a model of a new critical approach. This is a must read for anyone working in fields such as new media, game studies, software studies, and AI. Because Wardrip-Fruin writes so confidently and clearly about complex systems, this will be a powerfully enabling book for graduate students, and advanced undergraduates as well." --Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, Associate Professor of English, University of Maryland, author of Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination "At last, an analysis by somebody who truly 'gets it!' We have seen plenty of first-generation books on interactive entertainment, in which an author with expertise in another field presents a bystander's perceptions on the subject. But this is a second-generation book, written by an author whose background is entirely within the field. Wardrip-Fruin was brought up on computer games and educated in the thoughts of the first generation thinkers. Now he has integrated them into a new perspective that builds on those ideas at higher levels of abstraction. Looking back at my own ideas from Noah's new vantage point was an educational experience for me."--Chris Crawford, former head of Atari's Games Research Group, and co-founder of Storytron -- Chris Crawford "The perfect volume to begin the new publication series in software studies... Inspiring." Raine Koskima Game Studies "The perfect volume to begin the new publication series in software studies... Inspiring."--Raine Koskima, Game Studies "At last, an analysis by somebody who truly 'gets it'! We have seen plenty of first-generation books on interactive entertainment, in which an author with expertise in another field presents a bystander's perceptions on the subject. But this is a second-generation book, written by an author whose background is entirely within the field. Wardrip-Fruin was brought up on computer games and educated in the thoughts of the first generation thinkers. Now he has integrated them into a new perspective that builds on those ideas at higher levels of abstraction. Looking back at my own ideas from Noah's new vantage point was an educational experience for me." Chris Crawford , former head of Atari's Games Research Group, and cofounder of Storytron "I highly recommend this book to digital media -- games, movies, and fiction -- creators, AI students, and engineers." Irtaza Barlas Computing Reviews "In Wardrip-Fruin"s Expressive Processing, the field of "interactive entertainment" comes of age; its theories and methods are native to its medium, rather than borrowed from literature, film, or history...Required reading." Annette Vee JAC "Through insightful examinations of media ranging from simulations to computer games, the author presents an intriguing and cogent argument... Recommended." Albert Chen Choice "Wardrip-Fruin has given us an arsenal of rhetorical firepower and a powerful set of examples for how one might teach algorithmic literacy across the curriculum without delving into the syntax of any particular programming language." Doug Reside Digital Humanities Quarterly