What does notpron do, specifically?

• Use the known to find the unknown: Google

As I’ve already discussed, notpron not only encourages, but almost requires the use of Google. It suggests the player to use perhaps the most well known site on the Internet in order to discover the unknown.

 

• Use the old: Morse code

Morse code was the product of limited technology. However, it was of undeniable importance during its era of usage. By making it the key clue to the fourth puzzle in a series of 140, notpron simultaneously represents its necessity in early telecommunications and strips Morse code of its current obsolete status. It essentially takes a dead language, a form of communication lost to technology, and reminds us of how it was once an extension of ourselves and forces us to make it an extension once more, if for only a brief period.

 

• Use the relatively unknown: ascii, page source

I honestly have no idea what percentage of the Internet users is aware of the existence of either ascii or page source, but I’d wager it’s rather minute. Level 6 requires decoding of ascii much in the same way level 4 required deciphering Morse code, however in order to find it, the user must look in the page source, the hidden skeleton of HTML that composes the site we see. After level 6, almost every single level contains a clue of some sort in the page source, making the clandestine background language a prime importance on the user’s experience. The invisible medium is now literally sending new messages in ways that no other medium has ever been able to do before.

• Use of cultural references: Voodoo Daddy, Twix, Devil/Hell

Notpron employs cultural references to perpetuate its puzzle. The band Voodoo Daddy comes into play more than once, and the obscure former name for the candy bar Twix is crucial to another level (as well as the ability to identify the Twix wrapper by its crumbled up picture from level 7). Furthermore, level 13 assumes its audience is well aware that the devil lives in hell, as hell is never mentioned in the puzzle itself, and no Google search bar is provided.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Use of data altering techniques: how to download specific files using page source, renaming files, altering sound clips, working anagrams

Advanced data altering techniques is truly where notpron identifies itself as a forms of entertainment rather than a purely didactic webtext. It offers little to no help to those who have never experienced the differences in .wav and .mp3, or who are not familiar with the KB size a .mp3 file should be versus what the KB size of a .jpeg file is. Prior knowledge of various techniques is crucial, and this site places a great deal of importance on that knowledge. It is clearly geared more toward furthering the techniques known by the web natives rather than toward developing new techniques for a web immigrant.

Google? Making us dumb? Unpossible.

I think I can say with true sincerity that notpron, or at the very least the creator of notpron, likes Google. Google is massively important to make notpron’s clues work. Without it, an absurd knowledge of all things would be necessary to complete the riddle (rather than absurd critical thinking and deductive reasoning skills).

And notpron is rather clear about when Google should be used, as he provides a search bar in the levels that would require most people to use it. The first instance of this is in level 4.

Like level 6, completion of this riddle would take some intense prior knowledge of different types of coding. Level 4′s coding isn’t as obscure as the ascii in level 6, but the number of people in this generation who can decipher morse code without Google is not a statement about Google’s ability to reduce the intelligence capacity of a society.

Used how notpron intends its audience to, Google doesn’t make us stupid like Carr claims here, but it is encouraging us to let it make us smarter, as Kelly believes here.

Notpron is a new use of a relatively new medium, and it forces its players to use the popular search engine to further their knowledge and advance on their quest, not to give up on maintaining information for ourselves.

We can use the vast libraries of information, be it Google or Wikipedia or any other source of a profusion of things we don’t know, and we can better ourselves with it. Notpron simply reminds us that with Google, you don’t have to know everything, you just have to know how to learn what you don’t know.

Kress “Reading Images”

In Kress’s “Reading Images”, he states

Writing can appear on the screen; but when it does it is subordinated to the logic of the image; just as image could appear on the page, though subordinated to the logic of writing. The logic image will more and more shape the appearance and the uses of writing, a process which is already apparent in many instances of public communication. In the former arrangement, the figure of the author and the mode of writing dominated; in the new arrangements the designer and the mode of image dominate; the story-board is an apt metaphor for this change – image led, and very often the product of a design-team.

Kress discusses the logic involved with the reader regarding writing on the page or images on a screen, but notpron takes that logic and challenges it.

In level 13, the writing is hidden within the image, but once the cursor inadvertently scrolls over a clandestine letter, a pop-up instructs the agent where the letter belongs in the word.

Since the writing is on the screen in a non-traditional fashion, we must use non-traditional logic for both it and the image.

The image here dominates the agent at first, but the image itself is a red-herring and completely arbitrary, except for its inclusion of the cryptic writing. Our logical inclinations of giving the image the forefront of our thought is erroneous, and thus notpron plays with the fabric of our minds and remolds them. From here onward, the image itself is rarely seen as helpful, and oftentimes it remains meaningless. This, of course, is also an erroneous assumption. We can never form a positive conclusion of all the forthcoming puzzles due to the leads and clues given in the previous puzzles, and we must continue to reinvent how we read the images on the screen or the writing in the page source.

 

The Cut-Up Method and Oulipo vs. Notpron

Fragmentation and reorganiztion are huge parts of some of notpron’s riddles. Level 6 is a good example of how notpron has influence from the French oulipo or Brion Gysin’s Cut-Up method. The ‘alternative,’ the ascii coding, the hidden numbers that I can’t even find in the source code, and finally the anagram to get the true answer all point to a largely fragmented site.

But there is a difference here, and an important one. The cut-up method and oulipo are largely about the art and beauty of randomness; it’s a demonstration of the chaos we live in and attempt to find order in.

Notpron, on the other hand, is not random. It is carefully contructed by an intelligent designer, and the beauty and art does not derive itself from the order found in chaos, but the chaos found in order.

 

 

Thus, while oulipo and notpron both focus on fragmentation and deracination, their methods of doing so are completely opposite. Oulipo and cut-up method cannot be controlled, only analyzed. Notpron can be both, and more, and is limited only by the willingness of the user to control  and decipher it.

Affordances

Just by looking at the first level, the affordances of notpron are clearly not as obvious as other websites. Perhaps purposefully, the “open door” barely looks open, and it certainly doesn’t look inviting.

However, the cursor does change from the pointing arrow to the grabbing hand, a metaphor extremely important to notpron and to the internet as a whole.

According to Norman,

“In the world of design, what matters is:

1. If the desired controls can be perceived
   1.a. In an easy to use design, if they can both readily be perceived and interpreted
2. If the desired actions can be discovered
   2.a. Whether standard conventions are obeyed”

This is true for notpron, with the clear exception of 1.a. “In an easy to use design, if they can both readily be perceived and interpreted”  Ease and readiness are not notpron’s objectives, they are its antithesis. However, notpron is also not designed to be purposefully muddled or unclear. The clues are not always hard to find, but hard to decipher.

McLuhan’s “The Medium is the Message”

The relationship among medium, message, and content is that the medium is how it is used, the content is what is being used (which is usually its own medium to begin with), and the message is what the content is about. In order to understand the message, the audience cannot simply look at the content; the medium itself, how the content is presented, means something on its own, and, in some ways, inherently alters the original message.
Notpron uses the medium of online websites, the digital coding coupled with the perceptual images and layouts, to send its message about the medium. In this sense, it is decidedly meta in its approach. It uses the hidden letters, numbers, and values of source code to provide hidden clues and messages. The content itself is hidden by the medium it is presented in.
The riddle’s message is that the Internet we know and the websites we use contain far more information than we ever lend credit. It sends this message through the structure of the clues in the medium.

What’s at stake?

Now, what’s at stake?
Notpron isn’t a formal learning tool, nor is it even the most efficient way to go about studying the quirks of the Internet. However, it is first a foremost a form of entertainment. This isn’t going to replace other forms of entertainment, since only seven people have ever actually completed the puzzle in its entirety. The stakes are essentially ignorance and lack of constructive thought, neither of which are a loss to society. Notpron forces the agent to learn new techniques that have always been available, but perhaps they are unaware of their existence prior to the game. They lose their bliss of user-friendly sites and are forced to examine every possible affordance and analysis their meaning.

Burke’s Pented

Let’s talk about Burke’s pentad:

• Act
o This is a riddle, a game, a form of entertainment. It’s simply a series of websites that work as riddles to get from one level to the next.
• Agent
o This is the audience member, the person playing the riddle. The agent directly controls how far into the site he or she can go. If the site is acted upon in the right way, it will change for the better. If it is acted upon incorrectly, it changes for the worse or not at all.
• Agency
o By locking the next level and making no obvious path, the act forces the agent to analyze and think critically about all the affordances they know to make it further.
• Scene
o The web, the entire web. And the site itself… the entire site. Every code, every letter, might make a difference.
• Purpose
o To create a more aware Internet community. To challenge the audience’s knowledge of web-based interface and push their critical thinking skills to the ultimate test.

Notpron analysis: a brief outline

Here’s my outline so comments on its direction may be posted. It’s obviously not done at this time, but the gist of my report is there.

Notpron

What is it?

Notpron is a web-based riddle that takes everything you know and don’t know about website layouts, designs, and coding and twists it to the point of confusion. Each level employs a different technique to challenge its audience to think about how websites work and how the Internet itself is constructed.

How is this relevant to the articles we’re read in class?

Let’s talk about Burke’s pentad:

• Act
• Agent
• Agency
• Scene
• Purpose

Now, what’s at stake?

Let’s discuss specific texts:

• McLuhan’s “The Medium is the Message”
• Norman and Spolsky’s works on affordances
• Burroughs and Oulipo
• Kress “Reading Images”
• Carr and Kelly Google talk

Now what does notpron do, specifically?
• Use the known to find the unknown: Google
• Use the old: Morse code
• Use the relatively unknown: ascii, page source
• Use of cultural references: Voodoo Daddy, Twix, Devil/Hell
• Use of data altering techniques: how to download specific files using page source, renaming files, altering sound clips, working anagrams

RR: The Cut-Up Method

William S. Burroughs seems to be very fond of the cut-up method for art. This reminds me of modernist artists such as Jackson Pollock, who brought the artist to the front of the art, and forced people to think about how the art came to be. This is a stark contrast from art that hides the artist, like painters who attempt to make their paintings as absolutely photo-realistic as possible.

The cut-up method makes you think about how the poems were created, and makes the creation of the poems perhaps more important than what they actually say.

But what kind of implication does this actually have? What to it mean to art if it is randomly or arbitrarily constructed? How can a critic analyze the deep and profound metaphors of the art to discover an insight into the mind and soul of an artist if the artist only controls how the art is constructed, not what specifically is created?

I think there is definitely some deeper meaning to the cut-up method, but perhaps all the meaning that is there is to prove how arbitrary trying to define meaning and metaphor in art really is to begin with.