Last month at the Open University, I not-quite-livetweeted Tim Hutchings’s excellent talk on digital bibles. Last week at King’s College London, I found myself – for the first time ever! – being livetweeted (actually livetweeted, no time delays). I’d been liveblogged before, but this was different. So forgive my gauche enthusiasm, but I can’t get over the novelty. It also formed a tidy little record of what I spoke about – as opposed to what I thought I might speak about, or what I promised to speak about. Thanks are due to everyone, but especially to Simon Rowberry.
Here are the tweets (including the excessively nice ones that I ought to have more taste than to repost):
#cerchseminars @dr_d_allington is going channel Bourdieu for tonight’s talk
— Simon Rowberry (@sprowberry) 6:20 PM – October 1, 2013
#cerchseminars @dr_d_allington is predominantly interested in Bourdieu’s field theory
— Simon Rowberry (@sprowberry) 6:21 PM – October 1, 2013
#cerchseminars @dr_d_allington: amateurs tend to be ignored in such distinctions
— Simon Rowberry (@sprowberry) 6:22 PM – October 1, 2013
N.B. Simon is referring to my emphasis on Bourdieu’s analysis of amateur artists etc as located outside the field of cultural production.
#cerchseminars @dr_d_allington: the genius first work is seen as unacceptable within Bourdieu’s analyse. Genius must accumulate.
— Simon Rowberry (@sprowberry) 6:23 PM – October 1, 2013
N.B. That isn’t quite what I meant. In the field of restricted production, the ideal is to produce a work of such genius that almost nobody understands it at the time. By persisting in the thankless ploughing of a lonely, brilliant furrow, one is supposed to win admirers gradually. The contrast is with those who are assumed to have succeeded quickly by ‘selling out’. Success ideally accumulates from long term investment in an uncompromising creative vision.
#cerchseminars @dr_d_allington: Bourdieu’s analysis is aimed primarily at French culture, although this dimensions is often ignored
— Simon Rowberry (@sprowberry) 6:24 PM – October 1, 2013
.@dr_d_allington: example of poetry – no poets making money immediately, but eventually may gain cultural prestige
— Simon Rowberry (@sprowberry) 6:27 PM – October 1, 2013
.@dr_d_allington: artists want recognition from people who recognise each other as artists – akin to a social network
— Simon Rowberry (@sprowberry) 6:29 PM – October 1, 2013
@dr_d_allington is talking about the field theory, reputation and quantitative analysis @KingsCeRch
— Antonio Rojas Castro (@Rojas_Castro_A) 6:30 PM – October 1, 2013
@dr_d_allington Bourdieu: lets have a less romantic ideas of how value is perceived-it’s about belief within a cultural field #cerchseminars
— Centre for eResearch (@KingsCeRch) 6:32 PM – October 1, 2013
.@dr_d_allington uses eigenvector centrality to judge the structural inequalities of the field of cultural production
— Simon Rowberry (@sprowberry) 6:37 PM – October 1, 2013
.@dr_d_allington uses the case study of IF!
— Simon Rowberry (@sprowberry) 6:39 PM – October 1, 2013
N.B. ‘IF’ = ‘Interactive Fiction’ (formerly, ‘Text Adventure Games’)
.@dr_d_allington: Mentula Macanus: Apocolocyntosis as an advanced IF based on older IF conventions — Simon Rowberry (@sprowberry) 6:40 PM – October 1, 2013
.@dr_d_allington: rec.arts.inf-fiction initially for hypertext fiction but colonised by IF fans — Simon Rowberry (@sprowberry) 6:42 PM – October 1, 2013
.@dr_d_allington collected his data from the Interactive Fiction Database, set up in 2007, probably modelled on IMDB — Simon Rowberry (@sprowberry) 6:43 PM – October 1, 2013
.@dr_d_allington: IF authors of high esteem are active contributors to the site, which aids analysis — Simon Rowberry (@sprowberry) 6:44 PM – October 1, 2013
Check out the Interactive Fiction Database mentioned by @dr_d_allington http://t.co/ufIGEdfyna — Antonio Rojas Castro (@Rojas_Castro_A) 6:44 PM – October 1, 2013
Brilliant analysis of the IFDB by @dr_d_allington! — Simon Rowberry (@sprowberry) 6:49 PM – October 1, 2013
@sprowberry @dr_d_allington thx for tweeting, makes up for not being there — onlinereaders (@onlinereaders1) 8:18 PM – October 1, 2013
@sprowberry @dr_d_allington I’m reasonably sure that I was the first IFDB user to give Mentula five stars. Also was a beta-tester. — Jonathan Goodwin (@joncgoodwin) 8:28 PM – October 1, 2013
N.B. This means that, in one of the graphs that I presented, there was a node that represented one of the editors of Reading graphs, maps, and trees. Had I but known!
Fantastic talk by @dr_d_allington on network analysis of cultural value tonight at KCL. Now home and cooking lunch for the next 2 days.
— Casey Brienza (@CaseyBrienza) 9:05 PM – October 1, 2013
@onlinereaders1 @dr_d_allington I slowed down at the end as I couldn’t do the analysis justice in 140 characters
— Simon Rowberry (@sprowberry) (:12 PM – October 1, 2013