Everything Old is New

AgainPRINCIPLES OF

NEW MEDIA

We lack a quality record of the wide-spreading changes to culture brought on by the early days of cinema.

We’re in an even more drastic cultural shift with new media/computers and we’re also failing to document those changes.

To use my metaphor: we’ve switched to a crayon culture in the past 30 years and we’re not stopping to notice how this changes everything.

BOOK’S CENTRAL PREMISE

THE PRINTING PRESS

Affected:

• The distribution of media

• Preservation of knowledge

• Literacy rates

THE CAMERA

Affected:

• The still image• The integration of

image with text

DIGITALITY

Affected:

• Acquisition• Manipulation• Storage• Distribution

• Text• Still Images• Moving Images• Sound• Spatial

Construction

#1 NUMERICAL REPRESENTATION

Any New Media object is composed of code that is numerical and algorithmic in nature.

Media becomes programmable and subject to evolution/change

You can’t change a printed book.You can’t change a painting.You can’t change analog photography.You can’t change a sculpture.

. . . OK, you could write in the margins, vandalize the painting, or break the sculpture, but you get the point.

MEDIA FORMS REFLECT CULTURAL VALUES OF THE TIME THEY

DEVELOPED• Standardization of Parts• Production Process as

Simple, Repetitive, Sequential Steps

Modern Media follows this same factory logic:

• Division of labor to produce (Hollywood films)

• Typesetting machines• Cinema: size, ratio,

contrast• Television: genre and

formatting

“[New] media elements . . . Are represented as collections of discrete samples (pixels, polygons, characters, scripts). These elements are assembled into larger-scale objects but continue to remain their separate identities.”

“Because all elements are stored independently, they can be modified at any time.”

#2: MODULARITY

WEBSITES

MUSIC

IMAGES & FILM

CULTURAL EFFECTS OF MODULARITY

Photos are no longer unique objects, rather they are merely modular extensions of your phone.

Thus, we erase them often without thought according to passing whims.

CULTURAL EFFECTS OF MODULARITY

iTunes (and its ilk) turn full albums into modular units of songs and singles.

Who cares?

MONTAGE VERSUS COMPOSITING

Montage brings different items together through selection but makes no attempt to blend them. The mix is clearly visible.

Manovich argues that this is not the way of new media.

COMPOSITING

Compositing attempts to make the incorporation of different elements as seamless as possible.

What is behind this cultural logic of seamless blending? In other words, why does our current culture have a preference for the seamless composite over the montage?

“The numerical coding of media (principle 1) and the modular structure of media object (principle 2) allow for the automation of many operations involved in media creation, manipulation, and access. This human intentionality can be removed from the creative process, at least in part.”

#3 AUTOMATION

I may have typed this here and changed the font size, but the aesthetics and layout of the slide were a pre-programmed selection.

TEMPLATES

FILTERS

Original Photo and Same Photo with Photoshop “Plastic Wrap” Filter.Time to Accomplish: 2 seconds

AFTER & BEFORE PHOTOSHOP

VIDEO GAMES

34 Gigapixel image of Tokoyo

ART & ARTISTS

34 Gigapixel image of Tokoyo

Can we consider what these people are doing to be “art?”

Are they “artists?”

ART & ARTISTS

PHOTO MANIPULATION

PHOTO MANIPULATION

Right: Original Image

Left: Photoshopped image to make Isreal’s attacks on Lebanon and Hezbollah look more potentially more destructive than they really were.

PHOTO MANIPULATION

WEB TEMPLATES

Why Are You Here? There’s a million templates out there.

“A new media object is not something fixed once and for all, but something that can exist in different, potentially infinite versions.”

“With old media . . . Numerous copies could be run from a master, and, in perfect correspondence with the logic of an industrial society, they were all identical.”

“Changes in media technologies are correlated with social change. If the logic of old media corresponded to the logic of industrial mass society, the logic of new media fits the logic of postindustrial society, which values individuality over conformity”

#4 VARIABILITY

WEBSITES

“Light” Version

“Heavy” Version

SOFTWARE

Microsoft Word with all menus visible.

HYPERLINKING

When hyperlinks are offered, the decision of whether or not to follow them creates a different version of the document/experience for every reader.

THEORY OF PROTOTYPES

Star Wars is prototype for infinite versions and references.

“Cultural categories and concepts are substituted, on the level of meaning and/or language, by new ones that derive from the computer’s ontology, epistemology, and pragmatics. New media thus acts as a forerunner of this more general process of cultural reconceptualization.”

In English: old media and new media affect each other back and forth. Computers make us look at old cultural forms and habits differently, while old cultural forms and habits find their way into computer culture.

#5 TRANSCODING

OLD TO NEW: INTERFACE

OLD TO NEW: CONTROL

“Just Google it.”“I can’t process this.”Text speak (LOL, BRB, TMI)“I need some down time.”“I’m an excellent multitasker.”“Going camping. I need to unplug.”“That girl is nothing but eye candy.”“That’s not for me; I’m gonna opt-out.”“That pic is obviously Photoshopped.”

NEW TO OLD: DAILY LINGO

NEW TO OLD: CATEGORIZATION OF ENTERTAINMENT

Identify and note the significance of a few more examples of modularity than I discussed here. More interestingly, note some examples of the value of modularity playing out in the non-digital. Think, the rise of IKEA and modular living design versus an old

skool focus on sets and matching pieces

Identify and note the significance of a few more examples of variability than I discussed here. More interestingly, note some examples of the value of variability playing out in the non-digital. Think, (from what the kids tell me) less emphasis on a set sub-

group or style (goth, punk, grunge, jock, etc.) and increased acceptance of playing with varying identity roles

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