journal of visual culture：视觉文化杂志.Image.Marked.pdfVIP

journal of visual culture Theoretical Consoles: Concepts for Gadget Analysis Nanna Verhoeff Abstract Theoretical objects are things that compel us to propose, interrogate, and theorize. They counter the influence of approaches that try to define, position, and fix. The mobile, handheld game console offers us a specific kind of theoretical object. A hybrid screen device that encompasses multiple interfaces, it raises questions about the specificity of the screen gadget as object, and about the entanglement of technologies, applications, and practices. Through an analysis of the Nintendo DS game console I argue that such gadgets are best understood as theoretical consoles: objects that raises theoretical questions, precisely, about their hybrid status. Keywords • gadgets • game console • mobile device • mobility • theoretical object • touch screen The Status of the Gadget: The Case of Nintendo DS In 2004 a new handheld computer game console, the Nintendo DS was released. This mobile device is a pocket-size, portable electronic machine for playing games from interchangeable game cartridges; it is a single unit with controls, screen and speakers, all in one. With the DS, Nintendo updated and expanded their successful earlier mobile consoles, the Game Boy and the latest generation, the Game Boy Advance with which since 1989 Nintendo has dominated the market of mobile consoles. Like any new console, Nintendo’s latest version is faster than its predecessors, allows for more detailed game graphics, and has an updated design. The DS, however, is marketed as a revolutionary console because it allegedly offers radically new possibilities for game play. The new ‘specs’ or technological features of the journal of visual culture [] SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC) Copyright © The Author(s), 2009. Repr