Pathfinders Main Menu Introduction to Pathfinders An introduction to Pathfinders with detailed information about the project Judy Malloy's Uncle Roger Judy Malloy's Opening Page John McDaid's Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse John McDaid's opening page for Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl This is the opening page of the Jackson Reading Path for Patchwork Girl Bill Bly's We Descend Bill Bly's opening page Traversals and Interviews Documentation The documentation used for the traversals and Interviews Authors' and Contributors' Bios The bios of those who authored and produced Pathfinders References and For Further Reading Books, essays, and non-print media informing Pathfinders Nouspace Publications | Washington State University Vancouver

The Interview with John McDaid about Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse

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This interview of John McDaid, conducted by Dene Grigar and Stuart Moulthrop, took place on Thursday, August 8, 2013 in the Electronic Literature Lab at Washington State University Vancouver as part of the Pathfinders project. McDaid is the author of Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse, a hypertext, multimedia experience that features a narrative based on a "chocolate-box of death." The conceit upon which Uncle Buddy’s was built (Re: you receive a box of seemingly random items from your Uncle Buddy’s estate) was derived from McDaid’s personal experience: In 1986, the same year McDaid began work on Uncle Buddy’s, his dying Aunt Rita sent him a See’s candy box filled with odds and ends that constituted a portion of her “estate” she wished to give McDaid. The interview is divided into nine parts and provides insights into the development of the work.

McDaid Interview, Part 1
The video file is saved as a high-quality 1280x720, compressed MPEG-4 Movie (.mp4) H.264 codec, with a high-quality audio track (.aac). The duration is 11:36 minutes, streaming from the Vimeo video-sharing site.

Dene Grigar begins by asking McDaid about three inventories: literal contents of the box; media encompassed by those contents; and the genres they all draw from or represent.

There are five 3.5" diskettes (in the original version).  When was the change to CD format?  McDaid doesn't recall.  [Mark Bernstein of Eastgate Systems writes: "at some point no later than 2003, we had replaced the floppies and cassettes with a CD."]

Discussing the booklet: a "colophon" and how-to, intended for readers wholly unfamiliar with the idea of hypertext.

How were the stacks assigned to their respective diskettes?  "Not an artistic decision," but a matter of packaging.  On the other hand, decision to require all component stacks to be in the same folder (directory) was intentional.  Stack scripts communicate with a central stack (Funhouse).  This was a design choice.

What media are in the project?  Letters, cassettes, e-mails, Tarot cards, journals, games and puzzles, a conference program, print fiction, photos, drawings, a screenplay.  Also, McDaid points out, "poetry, embedded audio, including system audio."  Also, HyperTalk scripts in some places are readable as texts.

The third inventory: genres and artforms.  Generative text, hypertext fiction, lyrics, facsimiles of books -- the "novel" as container of all this multiplicity.  McDaid: a "conscious aim" of the work was to have everything within it "modally appropriate" -- "using the tool the way the tool was designed to be used" -- "embedding the narrative diegetically within the actual artifact."

McDaid Interview, Part 2
The video file is saved as a high-quality 1280x720, compressed MPEG-4 Movie (.mp4) H.264 codec, with a high-quality audio track (.aac). The duration is 8:00 minutes, streaming from the Vimeo video-sharing site.

DG: Characters of the work... there are two.  McDaid:  "There are ALLEGEDLY two main characters, Emily Keane and Arthur "Buddy" Newkirk.  There are other, peripheral characters: Buddy's fellow Reptiles, Al Magnusson, "Geraldus Cambrensis," co-author of Buddy's screenplay, among others.  But "two main speaking parts."

The black box, or "chocolate box full of death" (Mark Bernstein).  Cover design was McDaid's conception and original graphic (stretched to fit the boxtop).  McDaid has notebooks and "page masters" for everything in the Funhouse.  Who's the image?  It's John.  How the image was produced -- with ThunderScan, a module that snapped into an ImageWriter printer and allowed digitization of images by feeding them through the roller.  McDaid notes that this technology generally required use of an initial reproduction of the source image, so that the process began with photocopying, and thus immediately gave up image quality.  Once digitized, McDaid's images were further processed with the tools in HyperCard, which are essentially identical to MacPaint.  The graphics are all one-bit, on/off bitmaps.  A highly stylized and distinctive visual aesthetic -- curiously similar to the "retro" effect Shelley Jackson chose for Patchwork Girl.



Why black and silver for the cover?  Who knows, but the effect is edgy, "dangerous."  Oakland Raiders colors(?).

The chocolate box really was sourced from a manufacturer of confectionery boxes -- which is ironic, since an inspiration for the Funhouse was a See's candy box full of mementos sent to McDaid by his dying aunt.

McDaid Interview, Part 3
The video file is saved as a high-quality 1280x720, compressed MPEG-4 Movie (.mp4) H.264 codec, with a high-quality audio track (.aac). The duration is 9:20 minutes, streaming from the Vimeo video-sharing site.


McDaid Interview, Part 4
The video file is saved as a high-quality 1280x720, compressed MPEG-4 Movie (.mp4) H.264 codec, with a high-quality audio track (.aac). The duration is 8:22 minutes, streaming from the Vimeo video-sharing site.

McDaid Interview, Part 5
The video file is saved as a high-quality 1280x720, compressed MPEG-4 Movie (.mp4) H.264 codec, with a high-quality audio track (.aac). The duration is 7:42 minutes, streaming from the Vimeo video-sharing site.

McDaid Interview, Part 6
The video file is saved as a high-quality 1280x720, compressed MPEG-4 Movie (.mp4) H.264 codec, with a high-quality audio track (.aac). The duration is 7:47 minutes, streaming from the Vimeo video-sharing site.

McDaid Interview, Part 7
The video file is saved as a high-quality 1280x720, compressed MPEG-4 Movie (.mp4) H.264 codec, with a high-quality audio track (.aac). The duration is 8:25 minutes, streaming from the Vimeo video-sharing site.

McDaid Interview, Part 8
The video file is saved as a high-quality 1280x720, compressed MPEG-4 Movie (.mp4) H.264 codec, with a high-quality audio track (.aac). The duration is 12:47 minutes, streaming from the Vimeo video-sharing site.

McDaid Interview, Part 9
The video file is saved as a high-quality 1280x720, compressed MPEG-4 Movie (.mp4) H.264 codec, with a high-quality audio track (.aac). The duration is 20:09 minutes, streaming from the Vimeo video-sharing site.

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