Hyperrhiz 22
The RHIZ-cade: Ten Multimedia Projects on the Rhetoric of Pinball
Edited by Geoffrey V. Carter
Saginaw Valley State University
And by Robert Lestón
New York City College of Technology (CUNY)
Citation: Carter, Geoffrey V. and Robert Lestón. “The RHIZ-cade: Ten Multimedia Projects on the Rhetoric of Pinball.” Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures, no. 22, 2020. doi:10.20415/hyp/022.s010
Abstract: This collection of webtexts showcases the historical, theoretical, and inventive possibilities of pinball culture. Originally published as the MLArcade in the now shuttered online journal Itineration in 2016, this updated collection curates work an unusual panel at the Modern Language Association in 2013. The present collection updates language and insights from these earlier iterations for Hyperrhiz’s archive.
Keywords: pinball culture, rhetoric, chora, allegory, play.
The MLArcade, as this collection was once called, brought together eight scholars to generate multimedia works on the rhetoric of pinball for the Modern Language Association in 2013. The panel was an unusual topic for a conference usually given over to the study of literature and poetry. There were a number of reasons why the collection was accepted in the first place, not the least of which was a celebrated collection of other multimedia projects at the same conference the previous year. What made the MLArcade distinctive was that it was centered on a specific cultural theme, and the open-ended nature of the pinball theme offered participants great latitude in their inventive processes. The collection was curated for a time on the now non-existent online journal, Itineration: Cross-Cultural Disciplinary Studies in Rhetoric, Media and Culture. For Hyperrhiz readers, all the videos, images, and discussions have been updated to suggest ways pinball culture might be remixed to suggest new historical, theoretical, and artistic understandings of this once ubiquitous game that is currently enjoying a popular resurgence.