Informatics

Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) represent the most popular division of games played by Korean gamers. In these games a player has the ability to fully recreate a digitized version of themselves in the form of a 3D avatar. Beth Coleman describes that the new-aged modern world that we exist in is a merging of many disparate and separate social systems, where we have combined the " real " physical world with that of the virtual, non-corporeal social network, into what she refers to as " X-Reality ". It is in " X-Reality " that individuals are creating identities that span across physical and virtual realms. Much research has been conducted on why players play games, but there has been no research on how players combine the separate virtual and real identities, especially with regards to fashion. The research of this paper conducted through ethnographic interviews with Korean MMOG players (KOGs), attempts to determine that the virtual fields of play are sequestered and held separate from the " real " word due to the overriding communal culture that exists in everyday Korea. KOGs believe that in-game fashion is very important to the player as a means of representing individuality and self, but that these values are not transferred back into " real " space. Even though there is a desire to merge the virtual and real identities among players, at this time the social construction of modern day Korea do not allow for such identity experimentation in terms of fashion.

Walt Disney is attributed to have said " Animation offers a medium of story-telling and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world ". The synthesis of story-telling and visual art as a vehicle for knowledge in the form of animation is a tradition that is practiced worldwide. Modern animation is often the product of transnational labor and media scholar Lee Artz argues that this practice of transnational production often strips or minimizes the effect of any single culture and focuses on developing a hegemony of capitalism. In analyzing animation it becomes important to focus on the visual element, therefore this paper focuses on the visuals of Legend of Korra (LOK), a transnational animation series created by Americans, Brian Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino, produced by the American production studio Nickelodeon with animation being subcontracted out to Studio Mir, a Korean animation studio. I argue that the aesthetics of LOK is fundamentally Korean, and retain their cultural focus based on the artistic style used by Studio Mir. Studio Mir's hand-drawn animation techniques evoke imagery from " True View " (jingyeong sansuhwa) landscape paintings of the Joseon dynasty, imagery unique to Korean Joseon gardens, as well as scenes demonstrative of Colonial Period Korea to create an animation that is visually Korean. While LOK is a modern animation that draws upon motifs and themes found across many different cultures, particularly Pan-Asian cultures, as part of its globalized culture palette, the " Koreanness " of the work remains palpable. This illustrates that distinctive cultural signifiers can remain a part of transnational animation.

Despite the vast research on how Koreanness is determined by Koreans, little is known about how it has been defined by those not from Korea. With the ubiquitous nature of the internet in being everywhere and from nowhere has led to modern mediatized and online communities which promote fabricated and disjointed connections. These communities challenge traditional identity formation or Koreanness and thus create new spaces where non-traditional authorities can claim authenticity. For the purpose of this paper I explore how Eat Your Kimchi (EYK), a popular internet video blog detailing the exploits of two expatriate Canadians and their lives in Korea, creates a new form of authority and appropriates Koreanness by using a combination of Orientalism, feigned intellectualism, cultural proximity and what I refer to as " mutated authority, " to create their own authentic form of Koreanness. An analysis of EYK yields that Koreanness can be defined and co-opted by " non-Korean " forces through a process of redistributing authority. It is through the breaking down of traditional post-colonial understandings of authenticity and authority that creates a space for a new authentic, new real. It is here that EYK resides, drawing upon the lack of understanding or value of what was previously considered authentic to a new understanding that authenticity is what we socially construct it to be.

The Post-colonial period of Korea was a time where much of Korean history and culture was eschewed alternatively embracing Western traditions as a means to rapidly advance its society and economy. However the late 2010s of Korea have been marred by economic and social stagnation, a mark of the failure of the modern Korean state to provide meaningful lives for its citizens. This period, locally referred to as Hell Joseon, compares the modern condition of Korea (Joseon) to a literal hell, where harsh conditions have manifested as crisis for men who struggle to understand their social position in a rapidly shifting landscape. It is within this setting that a new subgenre of Korean romance webtoons, online comic strips, focused on the revival of pre-colonial mysticism as a means of recapturing masculinity began to emerge. Within this subgenre male protagonists, depicted as morally, physically or socially deficient, are only able to overcome their social failures by encountering various forms of shamanism and mysticism. This paper encompasses new research that explores this crisis of Korean masculinity where men, unable to navigate their new position in society and incapable of achieving success, is haunted by the ghost of pre-colonial mysticism. Looking at three current romance webtoons of this subgenre, Brawling Go! (Eojjeora GO!), Refrain Love (Ripeurein Reobeu), and Hahri's Lumpy Board house (Monggeul Monggeul Hari Hasuk), I argue that the use of mysticism and shamanic ritual in these webtoons demonstrate a desire of men to revive aspects of the pre-colonial existence as a means to heal the schism caused by modern reality.

While much research has pursued the development of computational models of metaphorical and analogical reasoning in controlled contexts, less work has been conducted on model capturing less structured, everyday relational reasoning. This paper describes computational metaphor identification (CMI), which uses computational linguistic techniques to identify patterns in written text indicative of potential conceptual metaphors. The paper presents an overview of CMI, followed by sample results from two different ...

... People are accustomed to seeing animated entities on single screens, but the movement of an EMA from one screen to another helps to reduce the inherent separation that usually occurs between the physical world and a virtual environment. ...