Class Notes #4
The Language of New Media, Lev Manovich, MIT Press, 2001
Principals of New Media (pg 27)
I. Numerical Representation
There are many ways to think of discrete objects - ice cubes vs water, bits vs. radio signals, film frames vs. camera signals. What matters here is that the representation of media products (things) in digital (discrete) form permits 1 and 2 above to be true. Note however that there are certainly "operations" that one may apply to analog signals or information (think of a Moog synthesizer for example or a guitar stomp box - though most of these are digital now). The big difference is that objects represented in digital form are "computable" - that is, can be constructed or manipulated directly through computer programming.
II. Modularity Principal
Can be called "fractal structure of new media", meaning "a new media object has the same modular structure throughout. Media elements, be they images, sounds, shapes, or behaviours are represented as collections of discrete samples (pixels, polygons, voxels, characters, scripts). These elements are assembled into larger-scale objects but continue to maintain their separate identities". (pg 30) See "mojo world gallery" for great images.
III. Automation
"The numerical coding of media (Principal I) and the modular structure of a media object (Principal II) allow for the automation of many operations involved in media creation, manipulation and access. The human intentionality can be removed from the creative process, at least in part" (pg 32)
Automation can be as simple as the recording of a gesture (turning a knob) then replaying this gesture under computer control (no human). When you look at a very large recording studio setup it should be evident that no single person could operate all of these devices at once. The role of the computer automation system is absolutely essential to the operation of the studio.
More complex automation examples include the notion of "agents", "bots", "smart devices" that have the capacity to modify their own behaviour in response to stimuli around them. For example, a creature in a video game that can detect that you have arrived within its "kill space" will determine the best way to zap you and not get itself zapped. These kinds of behaviours require various types of artifical intelligence automation far beyond "record and play". (try intellibuddy - these are software agents that appear to converse with the user)
IV. Variability
"A new media object is not something fixed once and for all, but something that can exist in different, potentially infinite versions. This is another consequence of numerical coding of a media (principal 1) and the modular structure of a media object (principal 2)" (p.36)
- media elements are stored in a "media database"
- it is possible to separate the "data" from the "interface" - in fact, a number of different interfaces may exist for the same data
- information about the user can be used by a computer program to customize automatically the media composition as well as to create elements themselves (such as a web page auto-detecting your hardware and software environment)
- branching or menu-based interactivity permits end-user selection and/or creation
- hypermedia - elements and structure of the object are independent and may be related only through the links - meaning can be imparted by the joining of hypermedia elemenents
- periodic updates - many new media objects are not static in time but are updated as new information is added or circumstances change
- scalability - a property of modularity. an object can be scaled (re-sized in various ways)
- functionally different views of the same data are possible
V. Transcoding
This last principal is more complex and not based solely on the obvious operational and structural qualities of media in digital form. Manovich states
In new media lingo, to "transcode" something is to translate it into another format. The computerization of culture gradually accomplishes similar transcoding in relation to all cultural categories and concepts. That is, cultural categories and concepts are substituted, on the level of meaning and/or language, by new ones that derive from the computer's ontology, epistomology and pragmatics. (pg. 47)
The author suggests that we should consider new media in general as consisting of two distinct layers - the "cultural layer" (movie, short story, plot, character development, audio track, melody, harmony...) and the "computer layer" (bits, packets, files, database systems, processes ....) and that these two layers influence each other to such an extent that both are changed and that the conventions of media - print, cinema, musical score - collide with the concepts and operations of the world of computers and software.
Here is a link to an audio exhibit at rhizome.org that demonstrates some of these principals.
rhizome - audio exhibit. We will look at this in class.
Project #1 - Due Thursday, Spt 28 before END OF CLASS (2:00pm)