Aca-article: What is New Media? - Ten Years after the Language of New Media
A frank assessment to begin: There are very few books on new media worth reading. Just when the naysayers decry the end of the written word, bookstore shelves still overflow with fluff on digital this and digital that. And even as a countervailing chorus emerged that was more skeptical of the widespread adoption of new media - in France, Jacques Chirac once spoke disparagingly about “that Anglo-Saxon network” (for, as anyone knows, in the beginning there was Minitel) - it was evident that the Internet revolution had already taken place in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. Like it or not, the new culture is networked and open source, and one is in need of intelligent interventions to evaluate it.
Author: Alexander R Galloway, published in Criticism 2011.
In the years since its original publication in 2001, Lev Manovich’s The Language of New Media has become one of the most read and cited texts on the topic. It is a key entry in the disciplines of poetics and cultural aesthetics, and has helped define the new field of software studies. The book is not without its limitations, however, and perhaps today one may begin to re-evaluate the text with the fresh eyes of historical distance, and through it reassess the rampant open sourcing of all aspects of cultural and aesthetic life, from our tools to our texts, from our bodies to our social milieus.
A copy of this article can be found on http://readperiodicals.com/201107/2546674281.html and the original is here (but you need to pay for it): http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/criticism/v053/53.3.galloway.html
“What to make of this modern desire to externalize the mind? It can be related to the demand of modern mass society for standardization. The subjects have to be standardized, and the means by which they are standardized need to be standardized as well. Hence the objectification of internal, private mental processes, and their equation with external visual forms which can be easily manipulated, mass produced, and standardized on its own. The private and individual is translated into the public and becomes regulated. What before was a mental process, a uniquely individual state, now became part of a public sphere. Unobservable and interior processes and representations were taken out of individual heads and put outside—as drawings, photographs and other visual forms. Now they could be discussed in public, employed in teaching and propaganda, standardized, and mass-distributed. What was private became public. What was unique became mass-produced. What was hidden in an individual’s mind became shared.”
—Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media
REACTION :: Lev Manovich & "New Media"
(I DO NOT OWN THIS IMAGE)
http://www.eos.ncsu.edu/e115/images/zoolander.jpg
Since the beginning of time man has attempted to one up himself: the next newest technology is never enough, and we must push further in order to advance our society, and therefore our species as a whole. Although I feel opposed to this blind push towards the singularity of our species, or the fusing of man and machine, I am both academically and personally involved with technology and this New Media that we are creating, sharing, tweaking, and inspired by.
“In the future more people will recognize that the true cultural innovators of the last decades of the twentieth century were interface designers, computer game designers, music video directors and DJs -- rather than painters, filmmakers or fiction writers whose fields remained relatively stable during this historical period. ”
—Lev ManovichHypothetical You Say?
‘Can the Subaltern Tweet?’ may be a wonderful title for an essay, but…it is now someone else’s…
The Birth of Surveillance Cinema
thecreatorsproject.com
What if there were cameras everywhere? Like, literally everywhere? Think bigger than security cameras or everyone owning a video and photo enabled phone. Think twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Recording every single moment of your life.
This scary speculation already has some people talking about the potential dangers of Google Glass as an “always on”, ever-present camera. Because as much as the focus has been about what it means for the wearer, it’s also about who else is wearing them. “The key experiential question,” asks Mark Hurst, “isn’t what it’s like to wear them, it’s what it’s like to be around someone else who is wearing them.”
It’s an important question and unless some kind of laws are enacted about public space and Glass, if this kind of technology ever becomes ubiquitous, being recorded all the time would become a very real possibility. Cameras everywhere.
“What to make of this modern desire to externalize the mind? It can be related to the demand of modern mass society for standardization. The subjects have to be standardized, and the means by which they are standardized need to be standardized as well. Hence the objectification of internal, private mental processes, and their equation with external visual forms which can be easily manipulated, mass produced, and standardized on its own. The private and individual is translated into the public and becomes regulated. What before was a mental process, a uniquely individual state, now became part of a public sphere. Unobservable and interior processes and representations were taken out of individual heads and put outside—as drawings, photographs and other visual forms. Now they could be discussed in public, employed in teaching and propaganda, standardized, and mass-distributed. What was private became public. What was unique became mass-produced. What was hidden in an individual's mind became shared.”
—Lev Manovich, “The Language of New Media” p.74“Benjamin’s and Virilio’s analyses make it possible for us to understand the historical effect of these technologies in terms of progressive diminishing and, finally, the complete elimination of something that both writers see as a fundamental condition of human perception-spatial distance, the distance between the subject who is seeing and the object being seen.”
—
Manovich, Lev. “Teleaction.” The Language of New Media. United States of America: MIT Press, 2002. 56. Print.
Due 4/16: Hyperlinks Research Paper
The innovation of new media art has rapidly evolved and tremendously developed within only a short period of time; however, its huge change and transformation generates a brand new era of digital media, benefiting people’s needs by using various types of new media art technologies.
Both of the articles, “New Media From Borges to HTML” by Lev Manovich and “New Media Art and the Gallery in the Digital Age” by Charlie Gere, clearly propose the idea of how digital media art works would potentially replace and become the new media form instead of previous galleries or museums. After reading those articles, I have learned that the usage of hyperlinks is such a great invention for the new media art. It helps audience save a lot of research time; and the link can simply direct the person to the unfamiliar term or name that he/she does not know. In the meanwhile, the hyperlinks or hypertext markup language (HTML) are able to combine and mix different types of media at the same time for users so that individual users can experience the “real time” posts, response, videos, or animations as the events happen. For instance, we use Wikipedia to explore new terms and do researches. Especially most people use it as the initiate step from looking for resource. This is due to its numerous hyperlinks throughout the information, which it contains not only the text format of definitions and databases; but also provides users graphics and interactive techniques. Thus, when I have to read long academic papers with so many unfamiliar words, I do rely on the digital hyperlinks because it is really convenient, efficient, and quite entertaining!
“New Media as Computer Technology used as a Distribution Platform,” the second definition of Lev Manovich’s eight propositions of New Media reflects the point Charlie Gere mentions on page 5 of his article. New Media is a platform of distribution, especially for “real-time data processing”. Gere also uses the Experiments in Art Technology (E.A.T) to show and prove the advantages of combinations of art and technology. As the anchor in accessing the online multi-media resources, hyperlinks do bring and link the art works with computer technologies together through the web browsers, so that people can immediately respond and share the most current news or events they have been tracking for.
Although the new media art generates a lot of advantages to online users, reminding them how wonderful technology has developed, I still agree with Charlie Gere’s assertion that “The gallery has an important role to play in making this art visible, not just now but also in the future, when such work will be part of art history.” The gallery still cannot disappear from the history and be replaced by the new created technologies in the world since it is just worth so much of keeping physical copies of these art works. They are the original work pieces from artists. The museum is just like a curator who collects and keeps everything that only belongs to one particular artist who needs his/her audiences’ appreciations. Unless artists originally create something in digital format, the online copies will never have the same value as those physical ones kept in the galleries. Therefore, making art visible in galleries is a way of respecting the original works to the contributed artists and it also plays an important role not just now but in the future as well!
Clase 12. Actos del lenguaje y los medios digitales
En los actos, el rol del receptor y el rol del emisor son igualmente importantes, porque el emisor utiliza estos actos del lenguaje y genera realidades, hace que el receptor responda. Por su parte, si el receptor otorga autoridad o cree en el emisor, puede formarse realidades y hacer cosas basándose en la información recibida por el emisor. Esta interacción, es importante, porque a través del lenguaje creamos el mundo y nos acercamos a él.
A nivel masivo, el proceso ocurre, en diferentes formas, en cada uno de los diferentes medios, incluídos los medios que se utilizan a través de Internet. No obstante, existen diferencias entre los medios que se utilizaron en el siglo XX y los que se comenzaron a utilizar en Internet, sobre todo a partir de la Internet 2.0, en los cuales el usuario mismo es un medio de comunicación debido a su participación activida en blogs, sitios web, foros, podcast, vlogs y rede sociales. El esquema explica tales diferencias, sobre todo en el emisor. Para su realización me he basado en en el libro “El lenguaje de los nuevos medios” de Lev Manovich, maestro de la Universidad de California.Reseña de Lev manovich y los nuevos medios
Si deseas leer el libro completo “El lenguaje de los nuevos medios de Lev Manovich” puedes descargar una versiòn en pdf aquí.
Blog2 - Lev Manovich: What is New Media?
Before: I think New Media is basically another term for ‘Intermedia’. With new technologies comes new ways to create art. Not only are there new outlets of media in terms mass media like television and internet, but there are new media in terms of individual expression. I think the term concerns for the most part the last fifty years or so.
After: I would say that my understanding and personal take on the term ‘New Media’ has changed after reading this article. I think the meaning of this term can change, depending on the time period. For example, I had no idea that an analytical machine was so close to becoming reality in the 1830’s. Although it wasn’t used for bringing information to the masses or for art, this piece of history is thrown in the concept of ‘new media’. The article definitely takes a more historical account into the concept than tackling the question, “What does New Media mean today?” which I think Higgins touched more on. Unfortunately I wasn’t prepared for a history lesson, and don’t find the article as interesting as say, a media theorist such as Lev Manovich would. Stereotypes exist for a reason sometimes.
What New Media is Not - Lev Manovich
We read this article by Lev Manovich for our class and have been prompted to respond to it on our blogs. I should start out by indicating that throughout reading this article, I did struggle a little. It is mostly due to the fact that in Manovich’s writing, he takes a stance that assumes his audience is informed on all of his source material, and instead of elaborating or explaining his points fully he simply addresses them, leaving the readers to fill in the blanks. Having not read a lot of his source material and being rather new to theories of New Media (my exposure to digital art/new media has been more heavily influenced by personal interest and pop culture in the past as opposed to academic curiosity), this made the article a little bit difficult to process, and is certainly something I will have to return to throughout my education to get a clear understanding of.
That said, I did not struggle with the entirety of the article, but merely certain parts. The six points that he raises I digested rather smoothly, and for the most part agree with, until I reached point 5.
Before moving ahead, though, allow me to post his six points (keep in mind that these are the points he is saying New Media is not):
1. New media is analog media converted to digital representation. In contrast to analogue media, which is continuous, digitally encoded media is discrete.
2. All digital media (texts, still images, visual or audio time data, shapes, 3-D spaces) share the same digital code. This allows different media types to bedisplayed usingonemachine-acomputer-whichactsasamultimedia display device.
3. New media allows for random access. In contrast to film or videotape, which stOre data sequentially, computer stOrage devices make it possible to access any data element equally fast.
4. Digitization inevitably involves loss of information. In contrast to an analog representation, a digitally encoded representation contains a fixed amount of information.
5. In contrast to analog media where each successive copy loses quality, digitally encocled media can be copied endlessly without degradation.
6. New media is interactive. In contrast to old media where rhe order of presentation is fixed , the user can now inreract with a media object. In the process of interaction the user can choose which elements to display or which paths to follow, thus generating a unique work. In this way the user becomes the co-author of the work.
Okay, the first point I feel the need to mention is point five, but very briefly. In his fifth point, when he discusses the endless duplication of digital media without “lossy” quality or any degradation, he brought up the point that we are far away from the point where it is possible to keep copies of raw data due to limited storage space and bandwidth. Considering the article is from 2001, it’s understandable that he has raised this point, but with modern technology we are no longer limited by hardware in regards to storing and duplicating raw files. The article just feels a bit dated when he raises this point. (A little aside, though: the lossy quality he talks about is something I find endearing. Being a certified creature of the web, “lossy” images always evoke a sense of nostalgia for the good ol’ days where high-speed internet was some sort of science fiction myth and people still cared about ebaumsworld)
Aside from that point, I didn’t find myself disagreeing with his ideas. He is well-versed in theories on new media I hadn’t put much emphasis on previously and has definitely planted seeds to consider and nurture as I continue on in this course. I did, however, feel the need to quirk an eyebrow at the mention of Freud.
I will tread carefully in my criticism on his use of Freud mostly because I would have to read the source material in order to compare it to his argument and see what of Freud’s ideas Manovich is using and why (not to mention compare it to the other psychological references he mentions). This is something I am definitely compelled to do because I do have an interest in psychology, however I usually don’t like to see Freud be discussed as a credible scientist because it summons a great deal of skepticism. He is certainly historically relevant, and important when it comes to discussing art, literature, and other creative endeavours (as well as scientific studies) that emerged during a time when he was highly influential. That said, in my education throughout university in psychology courses it has been emphasized time and again that Freud is only important as a historical figure in psychology today, and that we should not be holding credibility to his theories or to psychoanalysis in general. I am aware that psychoanalysis still exists and is treated by some as credible science, but I am not one of those individuals and as such I am going to remain a bit skeptical until I can fully understand the views of each psychologist referenced by Manovich and how they apply to his own writings.
It’s becoming evident to me through writing that I have not been exposed to a great deal of academic writing on new media, nor have I made a huge push to expose myself. It’s something that I should explore further as I continue to work with sound, video, and who knows what else in the coming months. Manovich’s discussion of time and space in video and digital media, however, is definitely provocative for me. We have discussed the inclusion of time in this course a great deal, and it is one we have focused on. What intrigues me more, however, is space. Manovich mentions 2-dimensional space a great deal, but what about 3-dimensional? Adding elements of 3-dimensionality to new media is a compelling idea.
I’ve got a lot more research to do.
Digital humanities 1# - Proč studovat velká kulturní data?
Dříve mohli teoretici kultury studovat pouze velmi konkrétní oblast dané problematiky na základě omezeného množství kulturních objektů, které navíc měly své centrum v určitých zemích, městech apod. Dnes se jednotlivý umělci shromažďují na různých sociálních sítích na internetu a spolupracují na několika projektech zároveň.
Způsob šíření informací je jiný, změnila se prezentace děl, jejich povaha a hlavně počet. Obsah generovaný uživateli je jedním z nejrychleji rostoucího typu informací na světě a většinu obsahu přitom vytváří jednotlivci – tím se postupně zvyšuje počet aktivních profesionálů v oblasti umění a kultury, kteří se podílejí na rozvoji digitálního obsahu.
Lev Manovich přichází s tím, že by se tento problém měl řešit změnou způsobu samotné vědecké práce – nahrazením starých nástrojů pro analýzu nástroji novými (tužku nahradit klávesnicí, plátno displejem, staré metody novým softwarem) Digitální obsah již není možné zpracovávat tradičními metodami, ale k jejich ovládnutí je nutné začít používat stejné nástroje, kterými byly vytvořeny zkoumané objekty. Tento model zkoumání produktů současné kultury za pomoci nových technologií a nástrojů výpočetní techniky nazývá Manovich kulturní analytikou, která zkoumá data za pomocí počítačových metod.
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Zdroje:
ŠIK, Viktor. Kulturní analytika: metoda vizualizace velkých kulturních dat [online]. Brno, 2012 [cit. 2012-10-14]. Dostupné z WWW: <http://is.muni.cz/th/153762/ff_m/mgr_dipl_sik_153762.pdf> Magisterská diplomová práce. Filozofická fakulta MU. Vedoucí práce doc. Mgr. Jana Horáková, Ph.D.
ŠLERKA, Josef. 2012. Kurz Digital Humanities na SNM FF UK, První lekce. [online]. 8. 10. 2012. [cit. 2012-10-14]. Dostupné z WWW: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIHlIvlQhJQ>
