Academic literature on the topic 'Secure non-interactive simulation'

Privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies, like Zcash or Monero, provide fair transaction anonymity and confidentiality, but lack important features compared to fully public systems, like Ethereum. Specifically, supporting assets of multiple types and providing a mechanism to atomically exchange them, which is critical for e.g. decentralized finance (DeFi), is challenging in the private setting. By combining insights and security properties from Zcash and SwapCT (PETS 21, an atomic swap system for Monero), we present a simple zk-SNARKs based transaction scheme, called Zswap, which is carefully malleable to allow the merging of transactions, while preserving anonymity. Our protocol enables multiple assets and atomic exchanges by making use of sparse homomorphic commitments with aggregated open randomness, together with Zcash friendly simulation-extractable non-interactive zero-knowledge (NIZK) proofs. This results in a provably secure privacypreserving transaction protocol, with efficient swaps, and overall performance close to that of existing deployed private cryptocurrencies. It is similar to Zcash Sapling and benefits from existing code-bases and implementation expertise.

Non-interactive zero-knowledge (NIZK) proofs for chosen-ciphertext security are generally considered to give an impractical construction. An interesting recent work by Seo, Abdalla, Lee, and Park (Information Sciences, July 2019) proposed an efficient semi-generic conversion method for achieving chosen-ciphertext security based on NIZK proofs in the random oracle model. The recent work by Seo et al. demonstrated that the semi-generic conversion method transforms a one-way (OW)-secure key encapsulation mechanism (KEM) into a chosen-ciphertext secure KEM while preserving tight security reduction. This paper shows that the security analysis of the semi-generic conversion method has a flaw, which comes from the OW security condition of the underlying KEM. Without changing the conversion method, this paper presents a revised security proof under the changed conditions that (1) the underlying KEM must be chosen-plaintext secure in terms of indistinguishability and (2) an NIZK proof derived from the underlying KEM via the Fiat–Shamir transform must have the properties of zero-knowledge and simulation soundness. This work extended the security proof strategy to the case of identity-based KEM (IBKEM) and also revise the security proof for IBKEM of previous method by Seo et al. Finally, this work gives a corrected security proof by applying the new proofs to several existing (IB)KEMs.

Internet of Things devices are responsible for collecting and transmitting data in smart cities, assisting smart cities to release greater potential. As Internet of Things devices are increasingly connected to smart cities, security and privacy have gradually become important issues. Recently, research works on mitigating security challenges of Internet of Things devices in smart cities mainly focused on authentication. However, in most of the existing authentication protocols, the trustworthiness evaluation of Internet of Things devices in smart cities is ignored. Considering the trustworthiness evaluation of Internet of Things devices is an important constituent of data source authentication, in this article, a cloud-aided trustworthiness evaluation mechanism is first designed to improve the credibility of the Internet of Things devices in smart cities. Furthermore, aiming at the problem that the user’s privacy is easy to leak in the process of authentication, an anonymous authentication and key agreement scheme based on non-interactive zero knowledge argument is proposed. The proposed scheme can ensure the privacy preservation and data security of Internet of Things devices in smart cities. The security analysis demonstrates that the proposed scheme is secure under q-SDH problem. The experimental simulation indicates that the performance of the proposal is greatly improved compared with other similar schemes.

In English, The game or game is an interactive activity that can quickly provide feedback between players and the system. Players can learn through discovery, practice, and feedback rather than absorb information so that it is easier to transfer the knowledge they gain from playing experience to the real world of work. The International Personality Item Pool - Neuroticism, Extraversion & Openness (IPIP-NEO) is a personality test based on the Big Five Personality theory in which the test takes the form of a questionnaire. The purpose of this research is to design an alternative media in using IPIP-NEO especially the neuroticism part in a simulation game. The problem raised was that IPIP-NEO's personality test was a questionnaire that did not provide a situation description of the questions asked to respondents. Based on existing problems, data collection in the form of literature studies, questionnaires, and interviews with experts, can be made the need for making games. The game results are then evaluated using a questionnaire aimed at samples from Non Probability Purposive Sampling. Based on the evaluation results from the questionnaire, NeuroTest gets 76% of users who feel that the results of the game provide the right depiction for themselves. Dalam Bahasa Indonesia, Permainan atau game merupakan aktivitas interaktif yang dapat secara cepat memberikan umpan balik antara pemain dan sistem. Pemain dapat belajar melalui penemuan, latihan, dan umpan balik daripada menyerap informasi sehingga lebih mudah melakukan transfer pengetahuan yang mereka dapatkan dari pengalaman bermain ke dunia kerja sesungguhnya. International Personality Item Pool - Neuroticism, Extraversion & Openness (IPIP-NEO) merupakan sebuah tes kepribadian yang didasari atas teori Big Five Personality di mana tes tersebut berbentuk kuesioner. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk merancang sebuah media alternatif dalam menggunakan IPIP-NEO khususnya bagian neurotisme ke dalam sebuah game simulasi. Masalah yang diangkat adalah tes kepribadian IPIP-NEO merupakan sebuah kuesioner yang tidak memberikan gambaran situasi akan pertanyaan yang ditanyakan kepada responden. Berdasarkan masalah yang ada, pengumpulan data berupa studi pustaka, kuesioner, dan wawancara kepada pakarnya, dapat dibuat kebutuhan pembuatan game. Hasil game kemudian dievaluasi menggunakan kuesioner yang ditujukan kepada sampel dari Non Probability Purposive Sampling. Berdasarkan hasil evaluasi dari kuesioner, NeuroTest mendapatkan 76% pengguna yang merasa bahwa hasil dari game memberikan penggambaran yang tepat untuk dirinya.

It is our pleasure to present this special issue of scientific journal Scalable Computing: Practice and Experience. In this issue (Volume 19, No 2 – June 2018), we selected 14 papers which have gone through review and revision, and represent novel results in Life Sciences, Digital Cultural Heritage, Climatology using state-of-the-art e-infrastructures. E-Infrastructures are currently addressing the challenging needs of researchers for digital services in terms of networking, computing and data management. Virtual research environments (VRE) integrate resources across all layers of the e-infrastructure (networking, computing, data, software, user interfaces) to foster cross-disciplinary data interoperability. VRE are supporting innovation in research via an integrated access to potentially unlimited digital research resources, tools and services across disciplines and user communities. In the content of this special issue the papers are ordered in 4 groups: Climatology (5 papers), Life Sciences (3 papers), Digital Cultural Heritage (2 papers) and Tools and Services (4 papers). Inside the groups, the papers are ordered by alphabetical order (the family name of the first author). Climatology. The first paper presents an online interactive platform that aims to provide weather information about Armenia by integrating observations, model and satellite data. The topic is interesting from the practical point of view and might be very useful, especially for meteorologists. The second paper studies the effect of the dust on climate in the Caucasus region, with a specific focus on Georgia, using the Regional Climate Model RegCM interactively coupled to a dust model. The simulations cover the period 1985-2014 encompassing most of the Sahara, the Middle East, the Great Caucasus with adjacent regions. The third paper provides insight in the performances of wind simulations for high resolution models of the terrain. The presented results rationalize the possibility to run in reasonable time high resolution models, while showing that the impact of turbulence does not have significantly increases the computing requirement. The fourth paper presents adaptation and tuning of the RegCM model for the Balkan Peninsula and Bulgaria and development of a methodology able to predict possible changes of the regional climate for different global climate change scenarios and their impact on spatial/temporal distribution of precipitation, hence the global water budgets, to changes of the characteristics and spatial/temporal distribution of extreme, unfavorable and catastrophic events. The fifth paper presents comparison of two approaches (static and dynamical) used to compute the vibrational spectra of two conformers of the free formic acid molecule. The topic is interesting within the context of the atmospheric chemistry research field and it is of sufficient importance regarding the vibrational spectroscopic data and induced temperature effects of intramolecular motions. Life Sciences. The manuscript from Astsatryan et al. describes a platform, which consists of data repository and workflow management services for Molecular Dynamics simulations. The platform focuses on an interactive data visualization workflow service as a key to perform more in-depth analyzing of research data outputs. The manuscript from Bigovic et al. describes the organic synthesis of three enol carbonate derivatives and the analysis of their interactions with T4 lysozyme L99A/M102Q using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The results obtained by different software packages are discussed. The manuscript from Koteska et al. describes a semi-empirical Molecular Dynamics study of irinotecan, a colon cancer drug, using the atom-centered density matrix propagation approach. The described methodology was used to study the structure, dynamics, and rovibrational spectrum of irinotecan. DCH. The paper of Charalambous and Artopoulos presents the deployment of the Clowder CMS system and the development of extraction services to handle, manage and automatically process Digital Cultural Heritage data in order to enable virtual collaboration for research in the South East and Eastern Mediterranean region. Technical descriptions of the system are given and some results are provided. In the paper of Elfarargy and Rizq a software system called Virtual Museum Framework (VirMuF), which is a set of tools that can be used by non-developers to easily create and publish 3D virtual museums in a very short time is presented. VirMuF is an open-source and teams including software developers can further extend VirMuF to fit their needs. Software Tools and Services. Dimitrov and Stoyanov present the Data Discovery Service supporting the VI-SEEM project Virtual Research Environment - VRE. The solution is based on an open source platform with special customization regarding the data harvesting methods from diverse data sources and updating the available content so that the users will seamlessly access all the data from a single point. The paper of Golubev et al. addresses the problems of optimization of medical image storing and secure access, using the DICOM system. Based on the Moldova DICOM Network architecture, the system enables distributed search, and transportation of DICOM images. Additionally, several optimization problems are addressed by the authors, along with the integration challenges within the VI-SEEM VRE. In the paper of Mishev et al. the design, requirements and implementation of a federated virtual research environment, based on the service orientation paradigm, offering anything as a service solutions, have been considered. The challenges of the service management implementation focusing on interoperability by design and service management standards have been discussed. The manuscript of Vudragovic et al. gives an extensive insight of the development and implementation of the DREAM dust model (DREAMCLIMATE service). Additionally, a use-case study of the premature mortality due to the desert dust in the North Africa - Europe - Middle East region for the 2005 obtained by the application of this model is presented, justifying the model and the applicability of the service itself. We would like to thank all those who kindly contributed to this Special Issue: the authors who submitted their papers, reviewers for their kind help and cooperation, especially to Dr. Zoe Curnia, Dr. Theodoros Christoudias and Dr. George Artopoulos for their valuable remarks and suggestions. Our special gratitude is for the Editor-in-Chief, Professor Dana Petcu, for her constant support.

As I round the corner from Church Street onto Vesey, I am abruptly met with the façade of St. Paul’s Chapel and by the sudden memory of two things, both of which have not yet happened. I think about how, in a couple of decades, the area surrounding me will be burnt to the ground. I also recall how, just after the turn of the twenty-first century, the area will again crumble onto itself. It is 1759, and I—via my avatar—am wandering through downtown New York City in the videogame space of Assassin’s Creed: Rogue (AC:R). These spatial and temporal memories stem from the fact that I have previously (that is, earlier in my life) played an AC game set in New York City during the War for Independence (later in history), wherein the city’s lower west side burns at the hands of the British. Years before that (in my biographical timeline, though much later in history) I watched from twenty-something blocks north of here as flames erupted from the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Complicating the situation further, Michel de Certeau strolls with me in spirit, pondering observations he will make from almost this exact location (though roughly 1,100 feet higher up) 220 years from now, around the time I am being born. Perhaps the oddest aspect of this convoluted and temporally layered experience is the fact that I am not actually at the corner of Church and Vesey in 1759 at all, but rather on a couch, in Virginia, now. This particular type of sudden arrival at a space is only possible when it is not planned. Prior to the moment described above, I had finished a “mission” in the game that involved my coming to the city, so I decided I would just walk around a bit in the newly discovered digital New York of 1759. I wanted to take it in. I wanted to wander. Truly Being-in-a-place means attending to the interconnected Being-ness and Being-with-ness of all of the things that make up that place (Heidegger; Haraway). Conversely, to travel to or through a place entails a type of focused directionality toward a place that you are not currently Being in. Wandering, however, demands eschewing both, neither driven by an incessant goal, nor stuck in place by introspective ruminations. Instead, wandering is perhaps best described as a sort of mobile openness. A wanderer is not quite Benjamin’s flâneur, characterised by an “idle yet assertive negotiation of the street” (Coates 28), but also, I would argue, not quite de Certeau’s “Wandersmünner, whose bodies follow the thicks and thins of an urban ‘text’ they write without being able to read it” (de Certeau 93). Wandering requires a concerted effort at non-intentionality. That description may seem to fold in on itself, to be sure, but as the spaces around us are increasingly “canalized” (Rabinow and Foucault) and designed with specific trajectories and narratives in mind, inaction leads to the unconscious enacting of an externally derived intention; whereas any attempt to subvert that design is itself a wholly intentional act. This is why wandering is so difficult. It requires shedding layers. It takes practice, like meditation.In what follows, I will explore the possibility of revelatory moments enabled by the shedding of these layers of intention through my own experience in digital space (maybe the most designed and canalized spaces we inhabit). I come to recognise, as I disavow the designed narrative of game space, that it takes on other meanings, becomes another space. I find myself Being-there in a way that transcends the digital as we understand it, experiencing space that reaches into the past and future, into memory and fiction. Indeed, wandering is liminal, betwixt fixed points, spaces, and times, and the text you are reading will wander in this fashion—between the digital and the physical, between memory and experience, and among multiple pasts and the present—to arrive at a multilayered subjective sense of space, a palimpsest of placemaking.Before charging fully into digital time travel, however, we must attend to the business of context. In this case, this means addressing why I am talking about videogame space in Certaudian terms. Beginning as early as 1995, videogame theorists have employed de Certeau’s notion of “spatial stories” in their assertions that games allow players to construct the game’s narrative by travelling through and “colonizing” the space (Fuller and Jenkins). Most of the scholarship involving de Certeau and videogames, however, has been relegated to the concepts of “map/tour” in looking at digital embodiment within game space as experiential representatives of the place/space binary. Maps verbalise spatial experience in place terms, such as “it’s at the corner of this and that street”, whereas tours express the same in terms of movement through space, as in “turn right at the red house”. Videogames complicate this because “mapping is combined with touring when moving through the game-space” (Lammes).In Games as Inhabited Spaces, Bernadette Flynn moves beyond the map/tour dichotomy to argue that spatial theories can approach videogaming in a way no other viewpoint can, because neither narrative nor mechanics of play can speak to the “space” of a game. Thus, Flynn’s work is “focused on completely reconceiving gameplay as fundamentally configured with spatial practice” (59) through de Certeau’s concepts of “strategic” and “tactical” spatial use. Flynn explains:The ability to forge personal directions from a closed simulation links to de Certeau’s notion of tactics, where users can create their own trajectories from the formal organizations of space. For de Certeau, tactics are related to how people individualise trajectories of movement to create meaning and transformations of space. Strategies on the other hand, are more akin to the game designer’s particular matrix of formal structures, arrangements of time and space which operate to control and constrain gameplay. (59)Flynn takes much of her reading of de Certeau from Lev Manovich, who argues that a game designer “uses strategies to impose a particular matrix of space, time, experience, and meaning on his viewers; they, in turn, use ‘tactics’ to create their own trajectories […] within this matrix” (267). Manovich believes de Certeau’s theories offer a salient model for thinking about “the ways in which computer users navigate through computer spaces they did not design” (267). In Flynn’s and Manovich’s estimation, simply moving through digital space is a tactic, a subversion of its strategic and linear design.The views of game space as tactical have historically (and paradoxically) treated the subject of videogames from a strategic perspective, as a configurable space to be “navigated through”, as a way of attaining a certain goal. Dan Golding takes up this problem, distancing our engagement from the design and calling for a de Certeaudian treatment of videogame space “from below”, where “the spatial diegesis of the videogame is affordance based and constituted by the skills of the player”, including those accrued outside the game space (Golding 118). Similarly, Darshana Jayemanne adds a temporal element with the idea that these spatial constructions are happening alongside a “complexity” and “proliferation of temporal schemes” (Jayemanne 1, 4; see also Nikolchina). Building from Golding and Jayemanne, I illustrate here a space wherein the player, not the game, is at the fulcrum of both spatial and temporal complexity, by adding the notion that—along with skill and experience—players bring space and time with them into the game.Viewed with the above understanding of strategies, tactics, skill, and temporality, the act of wandering in a videogame seems inherently subversive: on one hand, by undergoing a destination-less exploration of game space, I am rejecting the game’s spatial narrative trajectory; on the other, I am eschewing both skill accrual and temporal insistence to attempt a sense of pure Being-in-the-game. Such rebellious freedom, however, is part of the design of this particular game space. AC:R is a “sand box” game, which means it involves a large environment that can be traversed in a non-linear fashion, allowing, supposedly, for more freedom and exploration. Indeed, much of the gameplay involves slowly making more space available for investigation in an outward—rather than unidirectional—course. A player opens up these new spaces by “synchronising a viewpoint”, which can only be done by climbing to the top of specific landmarks. One of the fundamental elements of the AC franchise is an acrobatic, free-running, parkour style of engagement with a player’s surroundings, “where practitioners weave through urban environments, hopping over barricades, debris, and other obstacles” (Laviolette 242), climbing walls and traversing rooftops in a way unthinkable (and probably illegal) in our everyday lives. People scaling buildings in major metropolitan areas outside of videogame space tend to get arrested, if they survive the climb. Possibly, these renegade climbers are seeking what de Certeau describes as the “voluptuous pleasure […] of ‘seeing the whole,’ of looking down on, totalizing the most immoderate of human texts” (92)—what he experienced, looking down from the top of the World Trade Center in the late 1970s.***On digital ground level, back in 1759, I look up to the top of St. Paul’s bell tower and crave that pleasure, so I climb. As I make my way up, Non-Player Characters (NPCs)—the townspeople and trader avatars who make up the interactive human scenery of the game—shout things such as “You’ll hurt yourself” and “I say! What on earth is he doing?” This is the game’s way of convincing me that I am enacting agency and writing my own spatial story. I seem to be deploying “tricky and stubborn procedures that elude discipline without being outside the field in which it is exercised” (de Certeau 96), when I am actually following the program the way I am supposed to. If I were not meant to climb the tower, I simply would not be able to. The fact that game developers go to the extent of recording dialogue to shout at me when I do this proves that they expect my transgression. This is part of the game’s “semi-social system”: a collection of in-game social norms that—to an extent—reflect the cultural understandings of outside non-digital society (Atkinson and Willis). These norms are enforced through social pressures and expectations in the game such that “these relative imperatives and influences, appearing to present players with ‘unlimited’ choices, [frame] them within the parameters of synthetic worlds whose social structure and assumptions are distinctly skewed in particular ways” (408). By using these semi-social systems, games communicate to players that performing a particular act is seen as wrong or scandalous by the in-game society (and therefore subversive), even when the action is necessary for the continuation of the spatial story.When I reach the top of the bell tower, I am able to “synchronise the viewpoint”—that is, unlock the map of this area of the city. Previously, I did not have access to an overhead view of the area, but now that I have indulged in de Certeau’s pleasure of “seeing the whole”, I can see not only the tactical view from the street, but also the strategic bird’s-eye view from above. From the top, looking out over the city—now The City, a conceivable whole rather than a collection of streets—it is difficult to picture the neighbourhood engulfed in flames. The stair-step Dutch-inspired rooflines still recall the very recent change from New Amsterdam to New York, but in thirty years’ time, they will all be torched and rebuilt, replaced with colonial Tudor boxes. I imagine myself as an eighteenth-century de Certeau, surveying pre-ruination New York City. I wonder how his thoughts would have changed if his viewpoint were coloured with knowledge of the future. Standing atop the very symbol of global power and wealth—a duo-lith that would exist for less than three decades—would his pleasure have been less “voluptuous”? While de Certeau considers the viewer from above like Icarus, whose “elevation transfigures him into a voyeur” (92), I identify more with Daedalus, preoccupied with impending disaster. I swan-dive from the tower into a hay cart, returning to the bustle of the street below.As I wander amongst the people of digital 1759 New York, the game continuously makes phatic advances at me. I bump into others on the street and they drop boxes they are carrying, or stumble to the side. Partial overheard conversations going on between townspeople—“… what with all these new taxes …”, “… but we’ve got a fine regiment here …”—both underscore the historical context of the game and imply that this is a world that exists even when I am not there. These characters and their conversations are as much a part of the strategic makeup of the city as the buildings are. They are the text, not the writers nor the readers. I am the only writer of this text, but I am merely transcribing a pre-programmed narrative. So, I am not an author, but rather a stenographer. For this short moment, though, I am allowed by the game to believe that I am making the choice not to transcribe; there are missions to complete, and I am ignoring them. I am taking in the city, forgetting—just as the design intends—that I am the only one here, the only person in the entire world, indeed, the person for whom this world exists.While wandering, I also experience conflicts and mergers between what Maurice Halbwachs has called historical, autobiographical, and collective memory types: respectively, these are memories created according to historical record, through one’s own life experience, and by the way a society tends to culturally frame and recall “important” events. De Certeau describes a memorable place as a “palimpsest, [where] subjectivity is already linked to the absence that structures it as existence” (109). Wandering through AC:R’s virtual representation of 1759 downtown New York, I am experiencing this palimpsest in multiple layers, activating my Halbwachsian memories and influencing one another in the creation of my subjectivity. This is the “absence” de Certeau speaks of. My visions of Revolutionary New York ablaze tug at me from beneath a veneer of peaceful Dutch architecture: two warring historical memory constructs. Simultaneously, this old world is painted on top of my autobiographical memories as a New Yorker for thirteen years, loudly ordering corned beef with Russian dressing at the deli that will be on this corner. Somewhere sandwiched between these layers hides a portrait of September 11th, 2001, painted either by collective memory or autobiographical memory, or, more likely, a collage of both. A plane entering a building. Fire. Seen by my eyes, and then re-seen countless times through the same televised imagery that the rest of the world outside our small downtown village saw it. Which images are from media, and which from memory?Above, as if presiding over the scene, Michel de Certeau hangs in the air at the collision site, suspended a 1000 feet above the North Pool of the 9/11 Memorial, rapt in “voluptuous pleasure”. And below, amid the colonists in their tricorns and waistcoats, people in grey ash-covered suits—ambulatory statues; golems—slowly and silently march ever uptown-wards. Dutch and Tudor town homes stretch skyward and transform into art-deco and glass monoliths. These multiform strata, like so many superimposed transparent maps, ground me in the idea of New York, creating the “fragmentary and inward-turning histories” (de Certeau 108) that give place to my subjectivity, allowing me to Be-there—even though, technically, I am not.My conscious decision to ignore the game’s narrative and wander has made this moment possible. While I understand that this is entirely part of the intended gameplay, I also know that the design cannot possibly account for the particular way in which I experience the space. And this is the fundamental point I am asserting here: that—along with the strategies and temporal complexities of the design and the tactics and skills of those on the ground—we bring into digital space our own temporal and experiential constructions that allow us to Be-in-the-game in ways not anticipated by its strategic design. Non-digital virtuality—in the tangled forms of autobiographical, historic, and collective memory—reaches into digital space, transforming the experience. Further, this changed game-experience becomes a part of my autobiographical “prosthetic memory” that I carry with me (Landsberg). When I visit New York in the future, and I inevitably find myself abruptly met with the façade of St Paul’s Chapel as I round the corner of Church Street and Vesey, I will be brought back to this moment. Will I continue to wander, or will I—if just for a second—entertain the urge to climb?***After the recent near destruction by fire of Notre-Dame, a different game in the AC franchise was offered as a free download, because it is set in revolutionary Paris and includes a very detailed and interactive version of the cathedral. Perhaps right now, on sundry couches in various geographical locations, people are wandering there: strolling along the Siene, re-experiencing time they once spent there; overhearing tense conversations about regime change along the Champs-Élysées that sound disturbingly familiar; or scaling the bell tower of the Notre-Dame Cathedral itself—site of revolution, desecration, destruction, and future rebuilding—to reach the pleasure of seeing the strategic whole at the top. And maybe, while they are up there, they will glance south-southwest to the 15th arrondissement, where de Certeau lies, enjoying some voluptuous Icarian viewpoint as-yet unimagined.ReferencesAtkinson, Rowland, and Paul Willis. “Transparent Cities: Re‐Shaping the Urban Experience through Interactive Video Game Simulation.” City 13.4 (2009): 403–417. DOI: 10.1080/13604810903298458.Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Ed. Rolf Tiedmann. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2002. Coates, Jamie. “Key Figure of Mobility: The Flâneur.” Social Anthropology 25.1 (2017): 28–41. DOI: 10.1111/1469-8676.12381.De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Translated by Steven Rendall. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.Flynn, Bernadette. “Games as Inhabited Spaces.” Media International Australia, Incorporating Culture and Policy 110 (2004): 52–61. 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DOI: 10.1177/1555412019845593.Lammes, Sybille. “Playing the World: Computer Games, Cartography and Spatial Stories.” Aether: The Journal of Media Geography 3 (2008): 84–96. DOI: 10.1080/10402659908426297.Landsberg, Alison. Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.Laviolette, Patrick. “The Neo-Flâneur amongst Irresistible Decay.” Playgrounds and Battlefields: Critical Perspectives of Social Engagement. Eds. Martínez Jüristo and Klemen Slabina. Tallinn: Tallinn University Press, 2014. 243–71.Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2002.Nikolchina, Miglena. “Time in Video Games: Repetitions of the New.” Differences 28.3 (2017): 19–43. DOI: 10.1215/10407391-4260519.Rabinow, Paul, and Michel Foucault. “Interview with Michel Foucault on Space, Knowledge and Power.” Skyline (March 1982): 17–20.

IntroductionWhat can we learn about anomaly from the strangeness of a puppet, a lifeless object, that can both bleed and die? How does the filming process of a puppet’s death engage across media and produce a new media genre that is not easily classified within traditional conventions? Why do these fighting and bleeding puppets’ scenes consistently attract audiences? This study examines how Pili puppetry (1984-present), a popular TV series depicting martial arts-based narratives and fight sequences, interacts with digital technologies and constructs a new media genre. The transmedia constitution of a virtual world not only challenges the stereotype of puppetry’s target audience but also expands the audience’s bodily imagination and desires through the visual component of death scenes. Hence, the show does not merely represent or signify an anomaly, but even creates anomalous desires and imaginary bodies.Cultural commodification and advancing technologies have motivated the convergence and displacement of traditional boundaries, genres, and media, changing the very fabric of textuality itself. By exploring how new media affect the audience’s visual reception of fighting and death, this article sheds light on understanding the metamorphoses of Taiwanese puppetry and articulates a theoretical argument regarding the show’s artistic practice to explain how its form transverses traditional boundaries. This critical exploration focusses on how the form represents bleeding puppets, and in doing so, explicates the politics of transmedia performing and viewing. Pili is an example of an anomalous media form that proliferates anomalous media viewing experiences and desires in turn.Beyond a Media Genre: Taiwanese Pili PuppetryConverging the craft technique of puppeteering and digital technology of filmmaking and animation, Pili puppetry creates a new media genre that exceeds any conventional idea of a puppet show or digital puppet, as it is something in-between. Glove puppetry is a popular traditional theatre in Taiwan, often known as “theatre in the palm” because a traditional puppet was roughly the same size as an adult’s palm. The size enabled the puppeteer to easily manipulate a puppet in one hand and be close to the audience. Traditionally, puppet shows occurred to celebrate the local deities’ birthday. Despite its popularity, the form was limited by available technology. For instance, although stories with vigorous battles were particularly popular, bleeding scenes in such an auspicious occasion were inappropriate and rare. As a live theatrical event featuring immediate interaction between the performer and the spectator, realistic bleeding scenes were rare because it is hard to immediately clean the stage during the performance. Distinct from the traditional puppet show, digital puppetry features semi-animated puppets in a virtual world. Digital puppetry is not a new concept by any means in the Western film industry. Animating a 3D puppet is closely associated with motion capture technologies and animation that are manipulated in a digitalised virtual setting (Ferguson). Commonly, the target audience of the Western digital puppetry is children, so educators sometimes use digital puppetry as a pedagogical tool (Potter; Wohlwend). With these young target audience in mind, the producers often avoid violent and bleeding scenes.Pili puppetry differs from digital puppetry in several ways. For instance, instead of targeting a young audience, Pili puppetry consistently extends the traditional martial-arts performance to include bloody fight sequences that enrich the expressiveness of traditional puppetry as a performing art. Moreover, Pili puppetry does not apply the motion capture technologies to manipulate the puppet’s movement, thus retaining the puppeteers’ puppeteering craft (clips of Pili puppetry can be seen on Pili’s official YouTube page). Hence, Pili is a unique hybrid form, creating its own anomalous space in puppetry. Among over a thousand characters across the series, the realistic “human-like” puppet is one of Pili’s most popular selling points. The new media considerably intervene in the puppet design, as close-up shots and high-resolution images can accurately project details of a puppet’s face and body movements on the screen. Consequently, Pili’s puppet modelling becomes increasingly intricate and attractive and arguably makes its virtual figures more epic yet also more “human” (Chen). Figure 1: Su Huan-Jen in the TV series Pili Killing Blade (1993). His facial expressions were relatively flat and rigid then. Reproduced with permission of Pili International Multimedia Company.Figure 2: Su Huan-Jen in the TV series Pili Nine Thrones (2003). The puppet’s facial design and costume became more delicate and complex. Reproduced with permission of Pili International Multimedia Company.Figure 3: Su Huan-Jen in the TV series Pili Fantasy: War of Dragons (2019). His facial lines softened due to more precise design technologies. The new lightweight chiffon yarn costumes made him look more elegant. The multiple-layer costumes also created more space for puppeteers to hide behind the puppet and enact more complicated manipulations. Reproduced with permission of Pili International Multimedia Company.The design of the most well-known Pili swordsman, Su Huan-Jen, demonstrates how the Pili puppet modelling became more refined and intricate in the past 20 years. In 1993, the standard design was a TV puppet with the size and body proportion slightly enlarged from the traditional puppet. Su Huan-Jen’s costumes were made from heavy fabrics, and his facial expressions were relatively flat and rigid (fig. 1). Pili produced its first puppetry film Legend of the Sacred Stone in 2000; considering the visual quality of a big screen, Pili refined the puppet design including replacing wooden eyeballs and plastic hair with real hair and glass eyeballs (Chen). The filmmaking experience inspired Pili to dramatically improve the facial design for all puppets. In 2003, Su’s modelling in Pili Nine Thrones (TV series) became noticeably much more delicate. The puppet’s size was considerably enlarged by almost three times, so a puppeteer had to use two hands to manipulate a puppet. The complex costumes and props made more space for puppeteers to hide behind the puppet and enrich the performance of the fighting movements (fig. 2). In 2019, Su’s new modelling further included new layers of lightweight fabrics, and his makeup and props became more delicate and complex (fig. 3). Such a refined aesthetic design also lends to Pili’s novelty among puppetry performances.Through the transformation of Pili in the context of puppetry history, we see how the handicraft-like puppet itself gradually commercialised into an artistic object that the audience would yearn to collect and project their bodily imagination. Anthropologist Teri Silvio notices that, for some fans, Pili puppets are similar to worship icons through which they project their affection and imaginary identity (Silvio, “Pop Culture Icons”). Intermediating with the new media, the change in the refined puppet design also comes from the audience’s expectations. Pili’s senior puppet designer Fan Shih-Ching mentioned that Pili fans are very involved, so their preferences affect the design of puppets. The complexity, particularly the layer of costumes, most clearly differentiates the aesthetics of traditional and Pili puppets. Due to the “idolisation” of some famous Pili characters, Shih-Ching has had to design more and more gaudy costumes. Each resurgence of a well-known Pili swordsman, such as Su Huan-Jen, Yi Ye Shu, and Ye Hsiao-Chai, means he has to remodel the puppet.Pili fans represent their infatuation for puppet characters through cosplay (literally “costume play”), which is when fans dress up and pretend to be a Pili character. Their cosplay, in particular, reflects the bodily practice of imaginary identity. Silvio observes that most cosplayers choose to dress as characters that are the most visually appealing rather than characters that best suit their body type. They even avoid moving too “naturally” and mainly move from pose-to-pose, similar to the frame-to-frame techne of animation. Thus, we can understand this “cosplay more as reanimating the character using the body as a kind of puppet rather than as an embodied performance of some aspect of self-identity” (Silvio 2019, 167). Hence, Pili fans’ cosplay is indicative of an anomalous desire to become the puppet-like human, which helps them transcend their social roles in their everyday life. It turns out that not only fans’ preference drives the (re)modelling of puppets but also fans attempt to model themselves in the image of their beloved puppets. The reversible dialectic between fan-star and flesh-object further provokes an “anomaly” in terms of the relationship between the viewers and the puppets. Precisely because fans have such an intimate relationship with Pili, it is important to consider how the series’ content and form configure fans’ viewing experience.Filming Bleeding PuppetsDespite its intricate aesthetics, Pili is still a series with frequent fighting-to-the-death scenes, which creates, and is the result of, extraordinary transmedia production and viewing experiences. Due to the market demand of producing episodes around 500 minutes long every month, Pili constantly creates new characters to maintain the audience’s attention and retain its novelty. So far, Pili has released thousands of characters. To ensure that new characters supersede the old ones, numerous old characters have to die within the plot.The adoption of new media allows the fighting scenes in Pili to render as more delicate, rather than consisting of loud, intense action movements. Instead, the leading swordsmen’s death inevitably takes place in a pathetic and romantic setting and consummates with a bloody sacrifice. Fighting scenes in early Pili puppetry created in the late 1980s were still based on puppets’ body movements, as the knowledge and technology of animation were still nascent and underdeveloped. At that time, the prestigious swordsman mainly relied on the fast speed of brandishing his sword. Since the early 1990s, as animation technology matured, it has become very common to see Pili use CGI animation to create a damaging sword beam for puppets to kill target enemies far away. The sword beam can fly much faster than the puppets can move, so almost every fighting scene employs CGI to visualise both sword beams and flame. The change in fighting manners provokes different representations of the bleeding and death scenes. Open wounds replace puncture wounds caused by a traditional weapon; bleeding scenes become typical, and a special feature in Pili’s transmedia puppetry.In addition to CGI animation, the use of fake blood in the Pili studio makes the performance even more realistic. Pili puppet master Ting Chen-Ching recalled that exploded puppets in traditional puppetry were commonly made by styrofoam blocks. The white styrofoam chips that sprayed everywhere after the explosion inevitably made the performance seem less realistic. By contrast, in the Pili studio, the scene of a puppet spurting blood after the explosion usually applies the technology of editing several shots. The typical procedure would be a short take that captures a puppet being injured. In its injury location, puppeteers sprinkle red confetti to represent scattered blood clots in the following shot. Sometimes the fake blood was splashed with the red confetti to make it further three-dimensional (Ting). Bloody scenes can also be filmed through multiple layers of arranged performance conducted at the same time by a group of puppeteers. Ting describes the practice of filming a bleeding puppet. Usually, some puppeteers sprinkle fake blood in front of the camera, while other puppeteers blasted the puppets toward various directions behind the blood to make the visual effects match. If the puppeteers need to show how a puppet becomes injured and vomits blood during the fight, they can install tiny pipes in the puppet in advance. During the filming, the puppeteer slowly squeezes the pipe to make the fake blood flow out from the puppet’s mouth. Such a bloody scene sometimes accompanies tears dropping from the puppet’s eyes. In some cases, the puppeteer drops the blood on the puppet’s mouth prior to the filming and then uses a powerful electric fan to blow the blood drops (Ting). Such techniques direct the blood to flow laterally against the wind, which makes the puppet’s death more aesthetically tragic. Because it is not a live performance, the puppeteer can try repeatedly until the camera captures the most ideal blood drop pattern and bleeding speed. Puppeteers have to adjust the camera distance for different bleeding scenes, which creates new modes of viewing, sensing, and representing virtual life and death. One of the most representative examples of Pili’s bleeding scenes is when Su’s best friend, Ching Yang-Zi, fights with alien devils in Legend of the Sacred Stone. (The clip of how Ching Yang-Zi fights and bleeds to death can be seen on YouTube.) Ting described how Pili prepared three different puppets of Ching for the non-fighting, fighting, and bleeding scenes (Ting). The main fighting scene starts from a low-angle medium shot that shows how Ching Yang-Zi got injured and began bleeding from the corner of his mouth. Then, a sharp weapon flies across the screen; the following close-up shows that the weapon hits Ching and he begins bleeding immediately. The successive shots move back and forth between his face and the wound in medium shot and close-up. Next, a close-up shows him stepping back with blood dripping on the ground. He then pushes the weapon out of his body to defend enemies; a final close-up follows a medium take and a long take shows the massive hemorrhage. The eruption of fluid plasma creates a natural effect that is difficult to achieve, even with 3D animation. Beyond this impressive technicality, the exceptional production and design emphasise how Pili fully embraces the ethos of transmedia: to play with multiple media forms and thereby create a new form. In the case of Pili, its form is interactive, transcending the boundaries of what we might consider the “living” and the “dead”.Epilogue: Viewing Bleeding Puppets on the ScreenThe simulated, high-quality, realistic-looking puppet designs accompanying the Pili’s featured bloody fighting sequence draw another question: What is the effect of watching human-like puppets die? What does this do to viewer-fans? Violence is prevalent throughout the historical record of human behaviour, especially in art and entertainment because these serve as outlets to fulfill a basic human need to indulge in “taboo fantasies” and escape into “realms of forbidden experience” (Schechter). When discussing the visual representations of violence and the spectacle of the sufferings of others, Susan Sontag notes, “if we consider what emotions would be desirable” (102), viewing the pain of others may not simply evoke sympathy. She argues that “[no] moral charge attaches to the representation of these cruelties. Just the provocation: can you look at this? There is the satisfaction of being able to look at the image without flinching. There is the pleasure of flinching” (41). For viewers, the boldness of watching the bloody scenes can be very inviting. Watching human-like puppets die in the action scenes similarly validates the viewer’s need for pleasure and entertainment. Although different from a human body, the puppets still bears the materiality of being-object. Therefore, watching the puppets bleeding and die as distinctly “human-like’ puppets further prevent viewers’ from feeling guilty or morally involved. The conceptual distance of being aware of the puppet’s materiality acts as a moral buffer; audiences are intimately involved through the particular aesthetic arrangement, yet morally detached. The transmedia filming of puppetry adds another layer of mediation over the human-like “living” puppets that allows such a particular experience. Sontag notices that the media generates an inevitable distance between object and subject, between witness and victim. For Sontag, although images constitute “the imaginary proximity” because it makes the “faraway sufferers” be “seen close-up on the television screen”, it is a mystification to assume that images serve as a direct link between sufferers and viewers. Rather, Sontag insists: the distance makes the viewers feel “we are not accomplices to what caused the suffering. Our sympathy proclaims our innocence as well as our impotence” (102). Echoing Sontag’s argument, Jeffrey Goldstein points out that “distancing” oneself from the mayhem represented in media makes it tolerable. Media creates an “almost real” visuality of violence, so the audience feels relatively safe in their surroundings when exposed to threatening images. Thus, “violent imagery must carry cues to its unreality or it loses appeal” (280). Pili puppets that are human-like, thus not human, more easily enable the audience to seek sensational excitement through viewing puppets’ bloody violence and eventual death on the screen and still feel emotionally secure. Due to the distance granted by the medium, viewers gain a sense of power by excitedly viewing the violence with an accompanying sense of moral exemption. Thus, viewers can easily excuse the limits of their personal responsibility while still being captivated by Pili’s boundary-transgressing aesthetic.The anomalous power of Pili fans’ cosplay differentiates the viewing experience of puppets’ deaths from that of other violent entertainment productions. Cosplayers physically bridge viewing/acting and life/death by dressing up as the puppet characters, bringing them to life, as flesh. Cosplay allows fans to compensate for the helplessness they experience when watching the puppets’ deaths on the screen. They can both “enjoy” the innocent pleasure of watching bleeding puppets and bring their adored dead idols “back to life” through cosplay. The onscreen violence and death thus provide an additional layer of pleasure for such cosplayers. They not only take pleasure in watching the puppets—which are an idealized version of their bodily imagination—die, but also feel empowered to revitalise their loved idols. Therefore, Pili cosplayers’ desires incite a cycle of life, pleasure, and death, in which the company responds to their consumers’ demands in kind. The intertwining of social, economic, and political factors thus collectively thrives upon media violence as entertainment. Pili creates the potential for new cross-media genre configurations that transcend the traditional/digital puppetry binary. On the one hand, the design of swordsman puppets become a simulation of a “living object” responding to the camera distance. On the other hand, the fighting and death scenes heavily rely on the puppeteers’ cooperation with animation and editing. Therefore, Pili puppetry enriches existing discourse on both puppetry and animation as life-giving processes. What is animated by Pili puppetry is not simply the swordsmen characters themselves, but new potentials for media genres and violent entertainment. AcknowledgmentMy hearty gratitude to Amy Gaeta for sharing her insights with me on the early stage of this study.ReferencesChen, Jasmine Yu-Hsing. “Transmuting Tradition: The Transformation of Taiwanese Glove Puppetry in Pili Productions.” Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia 51 (2019): 26-46.Ferguson, Jeffrey. “Lessons from Digital Puppetry: Updating a Design Framework for a Perceptual User Interface.” IEEE International Conference on Computer and Information Technology, 2015.Goldstein, Jeffrey. “The Attractions of Violent Entertainment.” Media Psychology 1.3 (1999): 271-282.Potter, Anna. “Funding Contemporary Children’s Television: How Digital Convergence Encourages Retro Reboot.” International Journal on Communications Management 19.2 (2017): 108-112.Schechter, Harold. Savage Pastimes: A Cultural History of Violent Entertainment. New York: St. Martin’s, 2005.Silvio, Teri. “Pop Culture Icons: Religious Inflections of the Character Toy in Taiwan.” Mechademia 3.1 (2010): 200-220.———. Puppets, Gods, and Brands: Theorizing the Age of Animation from Taiwan. Honolulu: U Hawaii P, 2019. Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2004.Ting, Chen-Ching. Interview by the author. Yunlin, Taiwan. 24 June 2019.Wohlwend, Karen E. “One Screen, Many Fingers: Young Children's Collaborative Literacy Play with Digital Puppetry Apps and Touchscreen Technologies.” Theory into Practice 54.2 (2015): 154-162.

Practically any good story follows certain narrative conventions in order to hold its readers' attention and leave them with a feeling of satisfaction -- this goes for fictional tales as well as for many news reports (we do tend to call them 'news stories', after all), for idle gossip as well as for academic papers. In the Western tradition of storytelling, it's customary to start with the exposition, build up to major events, and end with some form of narrative closure. Indeed, audience members will feel disturbed if there is no sense of closure at the end -- their desire for closure is a powerful one. From this brief description of narrative patterns it is also clear that such narratives depend crucially on linear progression through the story in order to work -- there may be flashbacks and flashforwards, but very few stories, it seems, could get away with beginning with their point of closure, and work back to the exposition. Closure, as the word suggests, closes the story, and once reached, the audience is left with the feeling of now knowing the whole story, of having all the pieces necessary to understand its events. To understand how important the desire to reach this point is to the audience, just observe the discussions of holes in the plot which people have when they're leaving a cinema: they're trying to reach a better sense of closure than was afforded them by the movie itself. In linearly progressing media, this seems, if you'll pardon the pun, straightforward. Readers know when they've finished an article or a book, viewers know when a movie or a broadcast is over, and they'll be able to assess then if they've reached sufficient closure -- if their desires have been fulfilled. On the World Wide Web, this is much more difficult: "once we have it in our hands, the whole of a book is accessible to us readers. However, in front of an electronic read-only hypertext document we are at the mercy of the author since we will only be able to activate the links which the author has provided" (McKnight et al. 119). In many cases, it's not even clear whether we've reached the end of the text already: just where does a Website end? Does the question even make sense? Consider the following example, reported by Larry Friedlander: I watched visitors explore an interactive program in a museum, one that contained a vast amount of material -- pictures, film, historic explanations, models, simulations. I was impressed by the range of subject matter and by the ambitiousness and polish of the presentation. ... But to my surprise, as I watched visitors going down one pathway after another, I noticed a certain dispirited glaze spread over their faces. They seemed to lose interest quite quickly and, in fact, soon stopped their explorations. (163) Part of the problem here may just have been the location of the programme, of course -- when you're out in public, you might just not have the time to browse as extensively as you could from your computer at home. But there are other explanations, too: the sheer amount of options for exploration may have been overwhelming -- there may not have been any apparent purpose to aim for, any closure to arrive at. This is a problem inherent in hypertext, particularly in networked systems like the Web: it "changes our conception of an ending. Different readers can choose not only to end the text at different points but also to add to and extend it. In hypertext there is no final version, and therefore no last word: a new idea or reinterpretation is always possible. ... By privileging intertextuality, hypertext provides a large number of points to which other texts can attach themselves" (Snyder 57). In other words, there will always be more out there than any reader could possibly explore, since new documents are constantly being added. There is no ending if a text is constantly extended. (In print media this problem appears only to a far more limited extent: there, intertextuality is mostly implicit, and even though new articles may constantly be added -- 'linked', if you will -- to a discourse, due to the medium's physical nature they're still very much separate entities, while Web links make intertextuality explicit and directly connect texts.) Does this mark the end of closure, then? Adding to the problem is the fact that it's not even possible to know how much of the hypertextual information available is still left unexplored, since there is no universal register of all the information available on the Web -- "the extent of hypertext is unknowable because it lacks clear boundaries and is often multi-authored" (Snyder 19). While reading a book you can check how many more pages you've got to go, but on the Web this is not an option. Our traditions of information transmission create this desire for closure, but the inherent nature of the medium prevents us from ever satisfying it. Barrett waxes lyrical in describing this dilemma: contexts presented online are often too limited for what we really want: an environment that delivers objects of desire -- to know more, see more, learn more, express more. We fear being caught in Medusa's gaze, of being transfixed before the end is reached; yet we want the head of Medusa safely on our shield to freeze the bitstream, the fleeting imagery, the unstoppable textualisations. We want, not the dead object, but the living body in its connections to its world, connections that sustain it, give it meaning. (xiv-v) We want nothing less, that is, than closure without closing: we desire the knowledge we need, and the feeling that that knowledge is sufficient to really know about a topic, but we don't want to devalue that knowledge in the same process by removing it from its context and reducing it to trivial truisms. We want the networked knowledge base that the Web is able to offer, but we don't want to feel overwhelmed by the unfathomable dimensions of that network. This is increasingly difficult the more knowledge is included in that network -- "with the growth of knowledge comes decreasing certainty. The confidence that went with objectivity must give way to the insecurity that comes from knowing that all is relative" (Smith 206). The fact that 'all is relative' is one which predates the Net, of course, and it isn't the Internet or the World Wide Web that has destroyed objectivity -- objectivity has always been an illusion, no matter how strongly journalists or scientists have at times laid claims ot it. Internet-based media have simply stripped away more of the pretences, and laid bare the subjective nature of all information; in the process, they have also uncovered the fact that the desire for closure must ultimately remain unfulfilled in any sufficiently non-trivial case. Nonetheless, the early history of the Web has seen attempts to connect all the information available (LEO, one of the first major German Internet resource centres, for example, took its initials from its mission to 'Link Everything Online') -- but as the amount of information on the Net exploded, more and more editorial choices of what to include and what to leave out had to be made, so that now even search engines like Yahoo! and Altavista quite clearly and openly offer only a selection of what they consider useful sites on the Web. Web browsers still hoping to find everything on a certain topic would be well-advised to check with all major search engines, as well as important resource centres in the specific field. The average Web user would probably be happy with picking the search engine, Web directory or Web ring they find easiest to use, and sticking with it. The multitude of available options here actually shows one strength of the Internet and similar networks -- "the computer permits many [organisational] structures to coexist in the same electronic text: tree structures, circles, and lines can cross and recross without obstructing one another. The encyclopedic impulse to organise can run riot in this new technology of writing" (Bolter 95). Still, this multitude of options is also likely to confuse some users: in particular, "novices do not know in which order they need to read the material or how much they should read. They don't know what they don't know. Therefore learners might be sidetracked into some obscure corner of the information space instead or covering the important basic information" (Nielsen 190). They're like first-time visitors to a library -- but this library has constantly shifting aisles, more or less well-known pathways into specialty collections, fiercely competing groups of librarians, and it extends almost infinitely. Of course, the design of the available search and information tools plays an important role here, too -- far more than it is possible to explore at this point. Gay makes the general observation that "visual interfaces and navigational tools that allow quick browsing of information layout and database components are more effective at locating information ... than traditional index or text-based search tools. However, it should be noted that users are less secure in their findings. Users feel that they have not conducted complete searches when they use visual tools and interfaces" (185). Such technical difficulties (especially for novices) will slow take-up of and low satisfaction with the medium (and many negative views of the Web can probably be traced to this dissatisfaction with the result of searches -- in other words, to a lack of satisfaction of the desire for closure); while many novices eventually overcome their initial confusion and become more Web-savvy, others might disregard the medium as unsuitable for their needs. At the other extreme of the scale, the inherent lack for closure, in combination with the societally deeply ingrained desire for it, may also be a strong contributing factor for another negative phenomenon associated with the Internet: that of Net users becoming Net junkies, who spend every available moment online. Where the desire to know, to get to the bottom (or more to the point: to the end) of a topic, becomes overwhelming, and where the fundamental unattainability of this goal remains unrealised, the step to an obsession with finding information seems a small one; indeed, the neverending search for that piece of knowledge surpassing all previously found ones seems to have obvious similarities to drug addiction with its search for the high to better all previous highs. And most likely, the addiction is only heightened by the knowledge that on the Web, new pieces of information are constantly being added -- an endless, and largely free, supply of drugs... There is no easy solution to this problem -- in the end, it is up to the user to avoid becoming an addict, and to keep in mind that there is no such thing as total knowledge. Web designers and content providers can help, though: "there are ways of orienting the reader in an electronic document, but in any true hypertext the ending must remain tentative. An electronic text never needs to end" (Bolter 87). As Tennant & Heilmeier elaborate, "the coming ease-of-use problem is one of developing transparent complexity -- of revealing the limits and the extent of vast coverage to users, and showing how the many known techniques for putting it all together can be used most effectively -- of complexity that reveals itself as powerful simplicity" (122). We have been seeing, therefore, the emergence of a new class of Websites: resource centres which help their visitors to understand a certain topic and view it from all possible angles, which point them in the direction of further information on- and off-site, and which give them an indication of how much they need to know to understand the topic to a certain degree. In this, they must ideally be very transparent, as Tennant & Heilmeier point out -- having accepted that there is no such thing as objectivity, it is necessary for these sites to point out that their offered insight into the field is only one of many possible approaches, and that their presented choice of information is based on subjective editorial decisions. They may present preferred readings, but they must indicate that these readings are open for debate. They may help satisfy some of their readers' desire for closure, but they must at the same time point out that they do so by presenting a temporary ending beyond which a more general story continues. If, as suggested above, closure crucially depends on a linear mode of presentation, such sites in their arguments help trace one linear route through the network of knowledge available online; they impose a linear from-us-to-you model of transmission on the normally unordered many-to-many structure of the Net. In the face of much doomsaying about the broadcast media, then, here is one possible future for these linear transmission media, and it's no surprise that such Internet 'push' broad- or narrowcasting is a growth area of the Net -- simply put, it serves the apparent need of users to be told stories, to have their desire for closure satisfied through clear narrative progressions from exposition through development to end. (This isn't 'push' as such, really: it's more a kind of 'push on demand'.) But at the same time, this won't mean the end of the unstructured, networked information that the Web offers: even such linear media ultimately build on that networked pool of knowledge. The Internet has simply made this pool public -- passively as well as actively accessible to everybody. Now, however, Web designers (and this includes each and every one of us, ultimately) must work "with the users foremost in mind, making sure that at every point there is a clear, simple and focussed experience that hooks them into the welter of information presented" (Friedlander 164); they must play to the desire for closure. (As with any preferred reading, however, there is also a danger that that closure is premature, and that the users' process or meaning-making is contained and stifled rather than aided.) To return briefly to Friedlander's experience with the interactive museum exhibit: he draws the conclusion that visitors were simply overwhelmed by the sheer mass of information and were reluctant to continue accumulating facts without a guiding purpose, without some sense of how or why they could use all this material. The technology that delivers immense bundles of data does not simultaneously deliver a reason for accumulating so much information, nor a way for the user to order and make sense of it. That is the designer's task. The pressing challenge of multimedia design is to transform information into usable and useful knowledge. (163) Perhaps this transformation is exactly what is at the heart of fulfilling the desire for closure: we feel satisfied when we feel we know something, have learnt something from a presentation of information (no matter if it's a news report or a fictional story). Nonetheless, this satisfaction must of necessity remain intermediate -- there is always much more still to be discovered. "From the hypertext viewpoint knowledge is infinite: we can never know the whole extent of it but only have a perspective on it. ... Life is in real-time and we are forced to be selective, we decide that this much constitutes one node and only these links are worth representing" (Beardon & Worden 69). This is not inherently different from processes in other media, where bandwidth limitations may even force much stricter gatekeeping regiments, but as in many cases the Internet brings these processes out into the open, exposes their workings and stresses the fundamental subjectivity of information. Users of hypertext (as indeed users of any medium) must be aware of this: "readers themselves participate in the organisation of the encyclopedia. They are not limited to the references created by the editors, since at any point they can initiate a search for a word or phrase that takes them to another article. They might also make their own explicit references (hypertextual links) for their own purposes ... . It is always a short step from electronic reading to electronic writing, from determining the order of texts to altering their structure" (Bolter 95). Significantly, too, it is this potential for wide public participation which has made the Internet into the medium of the day, and led to the World Wide Web's exponential growth; as Bolter describes, "today we cannot hope for permanence and for general agreement on the order of things -- in encyclopedias any more than in politics and the arts. What we have instead is a view of knowledge as collections of (verbal and visual) ideas that can arrange themselves into a kaleidoscope of hierarchical and associative patterns -- each pattern meeting the needs of one class of readers on one occasion" (97). To those searching for some meaningful 'universal truth', this will sound defeatist, but ultimately it is closer to realism -- one person's universal truth is another one's escapist phantasy, after all. This doesn't keep most of us from hoping and searching for that deeper insight, however -- and from the preceding discussion, it seems likely that in this we are driven by the desire for closure that has been imprinted in us so deeply by the multitudes of narrative structures we encounter each day. It's no surprise, then, that, as Barrett writes, "the virtual environment is a place of longing. Cyberspace is an odyssey without telos, and therefore without meaning. ... Yet cyberspace is also the theatre of operations for the reconstruction of the lost body of knowledge, or, perhaps more correctly, not the reconstruction, but the always primary construction of a body of knowing. Thought and language in a virtual environment seek a higher synthesis, a re-imagining of an idea in the context of its truth" (xvi). And so we search on, following that by definition end-less quest to satisfy our desire for closure, and sticking largely to the narrative structures handed down to us through the generations. This article is no exception, of course -- but while you may gain some sense of closure from it, it is inevitable that there is a deeper feeling of a lack of closure, too, as the article takes its place in a wider hypertextual context, where so much more is still left unexplored: other articles in this issue, other issues of M/C, and further journals and Websites adding to the debate. Remember this, then: you decide when and where to stop. References Barrett, Edward, and Marie Redmont, eds. Contextual Media: Multimedia and Interpretation. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT P, 1995. Barrett, Edward. "Hiding the Head of Medusa: Objects and Desire in a Virtual Environment." Barrett & Redmont xi- vi. Beardon, Colin, and Suzette Worden. "The Virtual Curator: Multimedia Technologies and the Roles of Museums." Barrett & Redmont 63-86. Bolter, Jay David. Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1991. Friedlander, Larry. "Spaces of Experience on Designing Multimedia Applications." Barrett & Redmont 163-74. Gay, Geri. "Issues in Accessing and Constructing Multimedia Documents." Barrett & Redmont 175-88. McKnight, Cliff, John Richardson, and Andrew Dillon. "The Authoring of Hypertext Documents." Hypertext: Theory into Practice. Ed. Ray McAleese. Oxford: Intellect, 1993. Nielsen, Jakob. Hypertext and Hypermedia. Boston: Academic Press, 1990. Smith, Anthony. Goodbye Gutenberg: The Newspaper Revolution of the 1980's [sic]. New York: Oxford UP, 1980. Snyder, Ilana. Hypertext: The ELectronic Labyrinth. Carlton South: Melbourne UP, 1996. Tennant, Harry, and George H. Heilmeier. "Knowledge and Equality: Harnessing the Truth of Information Abundance." Technology 2001: The Future of Computing and Communications. Ed. Derek Leebaert. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT P, 1991. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Axel Bruns. "What's the Story: The Unfulfilled Desire for Closure on the Web." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.5 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9907/closure.php>. Chicago style: Axel Bruns, "What's the Story: The Unfulfilled Desire for Closure on the Web," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 5 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9907/closure.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Axel Bruns. (1999) What's the story: the unfulfilled desire for closure on the Web. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(5). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9907/closure.php> ([your date of access]).