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The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and freely available to read online.
Our culture has an uneasy relationship with repetition and sameness. On the one hand, we find familiarity pleasurable and soothing; on the other, we crave novelty and long for a sense of discovery. We blame algorithms, intent on selling us more of the same, and on a media industry too greedy to risk investing in intellectually challenging, radically new, products. Sameness and Repetition in Contemporary Media Culture takes a comprehensive approach that both theorises and historically grounds the idea of repetition in relation to media as something that is deeply embedded in our cultural tradition. This project received funding from the Carlsberg Foundation.
In engaging, lyrical prose the book demonstrates how repetition has been central to art and literature throughout the ages. Sameness and Repetition re-energises an ancient debate and makes it completely contemporary, drawing effortlessly on examples ranging from the classics to Super Mario and AI-generated images. This book brings together critical theory and literary studies with contemporary digital media studies, enriching both fields.
Susana Tosca is Professor of Media Studies at the University of Southern Denmark. Over the last twenty years, Susana’s research has combined aesthetic and media study approaches to investigating the reception of digital media and has published widely on the areas of hypertext, digital literature, computer games, transmediality and popular culture. Previously authored books from Susana include Literatura Digital and Understanding Videogames and Transmedial Worlds in Everyday Life.
Introduction
Chapter 1. Definitions: Repetition, Sameness, cognition and learning
Chapter 2. Learning to Love Your Stone: The aesthetics and experience of computer games
Chapter 3. Sing, Goddess, of the Anger of Achilles: Formal repetition in storytelling
Chapter 4. Many Happy Returns: Sameness in digital literature, narrative games, adaptations and transmedial worlds
Chapter 5. If You Like That, You Will Love This: On sameness based algorithmic recommendation systems
Chapter 6. Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal: Creativity and originality in a new media landscape
Chapter 7. In Praise and Criticism of Repetition: The cultural affordances of repetitive media formats