Comics...

I perused the webcomics links on the webcomics wikipedia site and finally found one that did not give me a headache from its homepage: pvcomics.com. The rest that I looked at were all full of advertisements--flashing, dancing, shaking, etc. From reading a bit about other webcomics that wikipedia linked to, but had recently shut down, I guess I can understand why. It seems that most of these sites need tons of ads to stay afloat, as several have not survived. pvcomics is much calmer, more blog-like, more community based, it feels.

I have to admit I'm not a big fan of comics, web or otherwise. I don't know why I can't find it within myself to have the same distant appreciation for them as I do other things we've looked at, such as spinning. Aren't video games a big evolution away from comics anyway? I feel ignorant and judgemental for saying it, but, what's the point?

Of course, I'm not against the ideas of superheroes. Heroes sounds like a fun show, very X-men-esque. I like the "multi-episode story arcs that build upon a larger, more encompassing arc" idea. Similar to the multiple realities and simultaneaous universes that we've been talking about all along in class. Maybe that's the point of comics: the plots work in such a way as well? Okay, well I can appreciate the multiple story line concept. Maybe I would like comics...

Scratch

Scratch gives an extensive, in depth, and intimate look at the evolution of spinning and DJ'ing over the last couple of decades. The documentary opened my eyes to a culture that I thought had died as a fad several years ago, but in reality maintains a significant presence in underground society.

Toward the end of the documentary, someone commented that you have to know where hip hop's been in order to know where it is going. I think that is very true for any area of our culture, especially the digital medium and the internet, which is why these timelines are valuable to this class.

A radio DJ in the documentary described the scratchers' ingenuity: "These guys said, 'these are studio creations, and they should be able to happen live.' No one had ever done that before." Similar evolutions occur today as digital artists are taking the existing mediums of television and radio and using the content in unique ways.

Guest Speaker: Jon Lippencott

Whereas our previous guest speakers this semester were people already established in their career visiting to share their knowledge, our guest speaker last week, Jon Lippencott, is just now embarking on his career in video game graphic programming. Though just now getting his first real job in the industry, Jon has been respected for his skills by Ken Perlin for several years. It is refreshing to realize that even the most talented minds in digital new media industries start somewhere. I enjoyed Jon's demonstration of his virtual universe; it definitely seems like a project that could easily link onto Second Life. It is exciting that even though he is leaving to work for acompany in LA, he will have this personal project at his side to continually expand and improve.

Into the hands of the people

An increasing presence in the public realm, computing literally fell into the laps of laypeople when Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg imagined the future of notebook computing in Personal Dynamic Media. The Dynabook vision rightly envisioned personal computers being used by everyone from businessmen to children, both creatively and educationally. The pair did not foresee, however, today’s networked media use of DVD’s and MP3’s on personal laptops.

Seymour Papert had an even greater vision for children in his book Mindstorms, published in 1980. At a time when game consoles were becoming widely available for children’s use, Papert saw great educational potential in software that actually engages children in programming, something he called “constructionism.” Papert rightly predicted that future toys for children would be as technologically adept as million dollar IBM’s selling at the time.`

In Literary Machines, Ted Nelson culminated his ideas of hypertext and Vannear Bush’s conception of the memex in something called Xanadu. Xanadu is the “ultimate archive” that has characteristics of anarchy and navigation. While some aspects of Nelson’s Xanadu vision have come to fruition in reality, others have not; Nelson remains active today in continuing to push forward his ideas such as “ZigZag” and “transcopyrighting.”

The new media technologies realized by visionaries of the 1960’s and ‘70s spread into the public sphere in the ‘80s. In 1983, Ben Bagdikian took on the role of understanding and predicting what the hold of business would be on the emerging new media sphere in The Endless Chain. Bagdikian was precient in his prediction of increasing horizontal and vertical integration of companies and emerging monopolies over new media technology and distribution.

Today, direct manipulation interfaces are omnipresent, found in applications such as Photoshop as well as within internet browsers and sites. Ben Schneiderman in his 1983 essay “Direct Manipulation: A Step Beyond Programming Languages,” describes how trends will move away from computer users employing a command language and toward direct manipulation interfaces, where computer activity will imitate activity in the user’s world via a metaphor system.

Direct manipulation interfaces were especially influential in the development of video games, where operators could move control devices and directly affect movement in the game interface. In her 1984 book, The Second Self, Sherry Turkle uses video games as a social laboratory to study human-computer interaction and concludes that humans and the perception of self are influenced by encounters with computers in distinct psychological ways.

Donna Haraway has been a huge presence in the last thirty years with her socialist-feminist inspired theories of social construction in this age of science and technology. Possibly her greatest work, Cyborg Manifesto, was published in 1985. The “mythology” describes the human’s place and position as a cyborg, part organism and part machine. While some people at the time were concerned about societies movement into the unknown of technology, Haraway argued that by imagining ourselves as part machine and products of technology allows for blurred boundaries and a greater approach to locating positional objectivity.

In 1984, Richard Stallman and other computer programmers saw their free software begin to slip away as AT&T announced that UNIX would no longer be free. Programmers found themselves in a position where they could no longer manipulate programs and, due to proprietary liscensing restrictions, they were unable to share programs with others. These changes inspired Stallman to create GNU (GNU’s Not Unix) In 1985, a project that spearheaded “copyleft” and the Free Software Foundation. Stallman and his projects still fight for shared sources and software freedom today.

While so much attention had been focused on Artificial Intelligence and the ability of humans to communicate with computers, Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores wrote Understanding Computers and Cognition in 1986 to emphasize computers as tools for design.

The 70's

Up through the 1960’s, computers were still relegated to the realm of central processors for military and university use. Ushering in the next decade, Ted Nelson looked to the future of personal computers in his 1974 book Computer Lib/Dream Machines.

Nelson’s book communicated revolutionary ideas about what the computer could be used for, going beyond their capacity for calculation and into their potential for media and design. In addition, these potentials would be available for everyone to explore in an open publishing network. The network would be flexible and interconnected, reaching back to his 1965 conceptions of hypertext.

Augusto Boal further blurred the divide between producer and consumer/actor and spectator through theater in the late seventies. In his 1979 work, Theatre of the Oppressed, Boal described techniques for embodying interaction in performance. The concepts of encoder and decoder were consequently melting away in both technology and art.

The ultimate realization of immersing the “decoder” audience in the product began to be realized in the late seventies with the inception of virtual reality. Initially, virtual reality was a great application for architecture, allowing architects to visually experience and graphically design structures before bringing them into reality. Ted Nelson’s vision for computers catering to design came to life with the founding of MIT’s Architecture Machine Group by Nicholas Negroponte in 1967 and the opening of the MIT Media lab in 1985.

Virtual reality, and the relationship of art and technology, took a great leap forward in 1977 with the introduction of “responsive environments” by Myron Krueger, who would become known as the “father of virtual reality.” Krueger insisted “that the art world was ready to embrace work that focused on response rather than the creation of appealing physical items” as he brought the realms of computer science and art together to deconstruct the “form/content divide.”

Krueger also was adament that people explore all aspects of their inventions and know them because only then will we understand and be able to “choose what we become as a result of what we have made.” Krueger’s concerns echo those of his contemporary Joseph Weizenbaum, who demanded in 1976 that scientists and technologists take responsibility for computer and machine influences on human society.

G.H. Hovagimyan Lecture

G.H. Hovagimyan is a man with a compelling history and many fascinating points to make.

G.H. talked to our class about living as an artist in NYC in the '70's and '80's. He mentioned how rare and expensive new video cameras were and told a story of buying a hot one off the street. I was reading the NMR before class and G.H.'s story reminded me of a quote from Hans Enzensberger in the '70's:

"Tape recorders, ordinary cameras, and movie cameras are already extensively owned by wage earners. The question is why these means of production do not turn up at factories, in schools, in the offices of the bureaucracy, in short, everywhere there is a social conflict..."

Like Enzensberger, G.H. is very anti-capitalist and very anti-commodity when it comes to art. G.H. made the comment that "tagging" on the web is very interesting, because it subverts the traditional broadcast model; however, G.H. still warned against the fact that everything is still based on popularity.

When going through his blogs and websites, G.H. showed us a non-linear narrative video, in which he closed his eyes and shuffled all the clips around. In the end, the completed video still made decent sense. This technique is like The Oulipo and combinatorial literature featured in the NMR.

I think what I found most interesting about G.H. Hovigimyan's lecture is his question of how does one dictate what is art while resisting making it into a commodity. I believe it is the same with all information: Who decides what is worth consuming? And can we resist reducing everything to a consumer product?

Field Trip!

In an earlier post about my trip to Cory Arcangel's opening at Team Gallery, I begged for a closer look at everything. Admittingly, I probably wouldn't have made a second special trip down to the gallery on my own, but today my wish was granted in class. We took a field trip to Team to have Cory himself explain his works and inspirations.

And, boy did it make all the difference. At the opening, when I had such a superficial experience with everything, I left thinking that it seemed like he just took some old films and screwed around with them. Which is absolutely true, BUT, there is purpose involved. The piece that I was especially frustrated with the first time around was the one featuring the Beatles' performance. Now it's the piece I find most interesting. Initially, it seemed like Cory just distorted the footage. Now I understand that it is an ongoing work of art that actually deteriorates in quality every time it plays. Cory wrote a computer code that instructs the footage to compress a little more every time it repeats. So, the digital footage is deteriorating over time. Sound familiar? I wish I knew more about the whole compression aspect in order understand this project more. I was reading some of Cory's press releases at the front desk. In one interview, he accurately stated that most people don't understand the computer technology end of digital art, so even if one accomplishes something very nifty on the technology end of things, most of the general audience won't be able to appreciate it.

Additionally, I like how Cory described the Bruce Springsteen Born to Run Glockenspiel Addendum as being different from his other projects. Instead of screwing up existing material, he added something to existing material. It reminded me of the NYT article Cyberface: New Technology That Captures the Soul, which discusses the possibility of adding addendums to films or co-opting past material for new use using the recently developed Image Metrics technology:

"If we want John Wayne to act alongside Angelina Jolie, we can do that. We can directly mimic the performance of a human being on a model. We can create new scenes for old films, or old scenes for new films. We can have one human being drive another human character."

There's a saying that goes something like everything's been said before. Well, if everything's been done before in traditional art forms, digital technologies provide the ability to go back and re-express it in a novel form.

Worlds Coalescing

The boundary between the "real world" and the "virtual world" is become ever more blurry. However, I can't decide which world is moving more into the other. "Planet Google Wants You" in The New York Times discusses the many ways in which Planet Google is establishing its dictatorship over us earthly inhabitants. Google's more than a dozen applications include Google Calendar, Google Talk, and Google Mail. A researcher at the University of California says, "(Google) literally augments your brain. I don't have to remember quite a few things now because Google can remember them for me. Google is an additional memory chip.''

Google is an example, I think, of the internet taking reign over the daily reality of our lives, but Will Shortz' Second Life presents on opportunity for the reverse to occur and reality to jump into the internet. "The Reporter is Real, but the World He Covers Isn't" describes Adam Pasick, a Reuters reporter whose beat has gone virtual, as he is now dispatched as a virtual character inside the world of Second Life. Pasick insists that it is just like being sent to a bureau in a remote area of the (real) world.

I guess that's true. Second Life is comparable to a new territory--the frontier of reality. I wonder if virtual Adam Pasick uses Google Calendar to keep track of his schedule? Maybe if I had a virtual version of myself, and my/her schedule was dictated by an online appointment book, then I'd/it'd automatically go somewhere when it was time, without even having to be reminded...

Timeline Continued

In the early 1960's, Ivan Sutherland developed the Sketchpad system. Sketchpad was a launching pad for modern conversational interface systems. Allowing users to manipulate objects, magnify their workspace, and perform recursive operations, the interface ushered in the future of user-empowered programs. Sketchpad opened up a new digital world for graphic art.

Roy Ascott observed the impending shift in new media art from linear production to audience participation to full two way interaction. Ascott wrote The Construction of Change in 1961 to distinguish the interactive potential of new media art from participatory art such as Allen Kaprow's Happenings. Ascott also references cybernetics, as he encourages the artist to fully understand the science of behavioral experience.

A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing, and the Indeterminate returns to textual possibilities in new media. In the essay, published in 1965, Ted Nelson coins the term hypertext. "Hyper...connotes extension and generality." Nelson goes on to define hypertext as "a body of written or pictorial material interconnected in such a complex way that it could not conveniently be presented or represented on paper." Though today's world wide web is woven together with a hyperlinking system, we still have not acheived the whole vision of what Nelson meant by the word, embodied in his described filing and listing systems, ELF and PRIDE.

Feeling threatened by the mathematical realism of computer science, the literary field responded in 1961 with A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems by Raymond Queneau. The work invited the reader to cut apart the lines and reconstruct the poem, a style predating refridgerator magnetic poetry. The method attempted to reconfigure "the relationship between reader, author, and text." Later, computers were utilized to break apart and restructure poetic creations, a move that ultimately married literary art with mathematics as artists began looking at the algorithms of possibilities.

Today Eric Rosenthal spoke in class and forwarned us that this will be the century without a history. As each progressive step of technology renders its predecessor obsolete, data will continually be lost. This will occur, Rosenthal claims, because data transfer may be impossible or near to it (hardly anyone has a floppy disk drive anymore), or else the storage medium will be destroyed before transfer occurs. Rosenthal said that the Library of Congress is working at a goal pace of 9 petabytes a day to transfer all of their data to a digital medium. Even at this rate, it would take the Library of Congress 1500 years to reach their goal. Digital mediums simply degrade, too. CD's can be destroyed by bacteria and other contamination, while hard drives typically survive anywhere from three to nine years.

I just read this article on Wired.com about the new breed of massive information storage centers built by Google, Microsoft, and others. I wonder what Rosenthal would have to say about what the article calls an architectural shift from PC hard drives back to massive data centers. The projection for the future of data storage is that everything will move from the PC hard drive and silicon chip to a centralized remote data center. Eric Schmidt from Google says of the plans for the new Google center in California, "When it's finished, the project will spread tens of thousands of servers across a few giant structures"--a "Googleplex" which will ultimately comprise 200 petabytes of hard disk storage.

The article is very interesting, but amidst concerns about the efficiency, size, and cost of the medium of data storage, concerns about the actual reliability of the medium are not to be found. Rosenthal claimed that no one is thinking about the problem of loss of digital information through disentigration, etc. I find it very hard to believe that the companies investing hundreds of millions of dollars in these facilities are not considering this possibility, but I could be wrong...

Chapters 7 & 8 Summary

"The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin" by William Burroughs is a call to arms for everyone to begin experimenting with randomness and recombination in writing. An author or artist can acheive the cut-up method explicitly by using scissors to cut up an original work and paste it back together to create a collage. Burroughs says that this method will introduce "a new dimension into writing." The article was published in 1961, paving the way for Ted Nelson's coining of "hypertext" and the further deconstruction of hierarchical text.

One year later, Douglas Englebert, the genius involved in the development of the internet, word processor, mouse, and window, takes the deconstruction of traditional text much futher in his bookAugmenting Human Intellect, a Conceptual Framework. The framework focuses on the goal of "increasing the capability of a man to approach a complex problem situation," or increasing human intellectual effectiveness. Englebert encourages a systems approach to the problem.

He first references Vannevar Bush's conception of the Memex, and expounds upon it to illuminate possibilities stemming from a mechanical card system of organization. Here, Englebert introduces associative linking to connect card A to card B and develop genereal grouping classifications.

The next section discusses an electronic computer based augmentation system. An extensive dialogue is played out in which the subject comes to realize that human intellect does not work linearly like our traditional symbol structures (books, etc.), but rather criss-crosses, feedbacks, and operates with substructures and antecedent links. We should ultimately be able to operate computers in a similar way, by manipulating documents to create links among topics and streams of thought. We will acheive better comprehension if human symbol structures (text) mirror human conceptual structures of nodes, branches, and links.
My favorite comment of Englebert's articulates how valuable such a leap in processing would be:

"I found, when I learned to work with the stuctures and manipulation processes such as we have outlined, that I got rather impatient if I had to go back to dealing with the serial-statement structuring in books and journals, or other ordinary means of communicating with other workers. It is rather like having to project three-dimensional images onto two-dimensional frames and to work with them there instead of in their natural form. Actually, it is much closer to the truth to day that it is like trying to project n-dimensional forms (the concept structures, which we have seen can be related with many many nonintersecting links) onto a one-dimensional form (the serial string of symbols), where the human memory and visualization has to hold and pucture the links and relationships."

Human's naturally think in multiple-dimensions incorporating reversion and association, yet until the 20th century our language and text symbol structures remained as a flat, linear represenation. Douglas Englebert imagined a future where humans developed better mechical and electrical tools in efforts to acheive the great potential of the human intellect.

Chelsea Gallery Hopping

On the subway ride to Chelsea Monday I had a chance to read one of the five or so articles that were handed out in class prior to departure. The article was "iHappenings: Slicing Art Out of Life," the New York Times review of Lucas Samaras' show at Pace-Wildenstein Gallery (pictured: Lucas Samaras self portrait). His became the show I was looking forward to the most and ultimately was my favorite by far.

From the article I learned that his exhibition would include many short films, each about five minutes long, composed in iMovie. As you may know and may or may not remember, I'm intent on sharpening my prowess on all things Mac lately, so the article immediately spoke to me. I love the idea that with enough skills I can create something just between me and my computer and whatever content necessary.

Samaras took exactly this realization and went all over the place with it. Topics range from slicing turkey to ariel time-lapse to the artist himself juicing breakfast. Samaras takes his footage and usually uses iMovie to add some little touch. For example, he runs footage of partiers raining toilet paper rolls down on a parade backward, making the toilet paper rolls look like white snakes slithering back up to the balcony. The highlight of the show features Samaras stripping down naked and assuming different poses in a chair. The added "bump filter" creates a 3-D bulge in the middle of the image, distoring it just enough to allow the 72 year old man's ballet to be a joy to watch. From the New York Times:

"His forearms bulge like Popeye's; his chest swells as he lounges like an odalisque; his belly balloons, as if in pregnancy. Toward the end he regarbs himself and hunches over, head in hands as if aping Rodin's 'Thinker' pose."

At times, recent generations fall under the spell that media art needs to be ever more complex and flashy to be valuable. Maybe it takes a man who is 72 to contribute something so sublimely simple. Although, I must say that I'm not sure anyone younger would get an exhibition out of it!

A Movie of Forking Paths

"Choose Your Own Adventure" style books from my generation's childhood have been reinvented for the silver screen. Well, not quite; rather, reinvented for the computer screen. A New York Times article discusses The Onyx Project, a film released today on DVD that brings the philosophy of Borges to life in the movies.

The Onyx Project is "meant to be an experiment in nonlinear storytelling for the digital age." Viewers navigate their way through 400 scenes, each no longer than two minutes long. Ultimately, NAV (non-linear arrayed video), the software technology that makes the navigation possible, provides each viewer with millions of different plotline pathways. The filmakers intend that no one will watch the same movie, "yet its basic facts, characters, and message will permeate the experience." You can learn more about NAV through the movie's website, linked above.

What I find most interesting about this project is its implications for the future: "(The creators') hope is that future projects built around the software will include documentaries or educational videos with thousands of links that viewers can click to take them wherever their interests may lie." I don't think this is what they are implying, but I can envision software encoded movies could eventually include, within the actual footage, hyperlinks to anything that you want to explore further. For example, if a scene in a war movie included a Stealth flying across the sky, maybe viewers could click on the object and jump offsite to something that tells about the history of the Stealth. A movie may become something that can diffract in a million different directions, whether it be scene selection or information content.

Art

Cory Arcangel's opening was packed! At one point, I felt like I was bobbing for apples as I dug through the barrel of ice and water in desperate search of a Rolling Rock.

Due to the crowd, It was difficult to get a good look, or hear, of some of the projects. I didn't get to listen to the Dazed and Confused Headphones. My friend told me it was translated to Hindi then backtranslated to English. My favorite piece was the one that had (and I think this is what was going on...) the color bands changing with every cut of a movie. I'm not sure what movie it was. In sum, it may beg for another visit so that I can get a closer look at his work.

This week's Science in The City features a Dorkbot event which has some interesting multimedia projects.

Guest Lecturer

As a beginner in the world of digital media creation, I find it intimidating and overwhelming to try to figure out where to begin with my maturation. It seems as though I'm sitting in front of a dartboard littered with HTML, Maya, FinalCutPro, Java, Photoshop...and the list grows exponentially over time. I feel just a tinge of jealousy that Ken Perlin is so comfortable in his knowledge bank of solely computer programming mastery. The industry has sped forward during his career. Artists can now create games and movies that are barely distinguishable from reality, yet Ken retains his genius in simple conceptions such as the google jumping heart or a six-sided shape that, through its gait, seems at times to exhibit anthropomorphic qualities. His ideas still stand strong against even the most advanced stuff out there. Ken continues to inspire delight with his creations dealing with fundamental qualities of humans and the world, while always retaining a level of fun.
I liked how, when talking about the future, he said that it is not so important to figure out how to do things, because we already know how, but rather it is more valuable to have the minds who know what people want and need.

Fusion

Many of the New Digital Media in-class videos have been propelling my ambition ahead to bring art to science and do something revolutionary with digital media. In response I've been keeping my ear closer to the ground in seeking out art projects related to science in ways that I've never seen before.

Microcosmos was real footage of nature as well as cinematic art, though no graphics or animation were involved. In last week's NYT Magazine, I was immediately engaged by a photo spread of futuristic environmentally smart cars and car parts paired with natural elements, such as one car leaving tire treads of grass. Unfortunately, I no longer have the magazine in my posession and can't pull the article up for linking! But here is the website and portfolio of the photographer, Marcus Gaab. The more I browse, the more I love. Many of the featured pictures represent his style of blending nature with modern human culture. As I'm sure you don't have time to take it all in between Broadway shows, here are my select samples:


Note the adorable animal teetering on the edge at the top of the box stack, but there remains something about the NYT photospread that isn't be topped. I need to get ahold of those images.

Today in class we watched digitally animated shorts (with hardly any real footage incorporated) from SIGGRAPH. They were, for the most part, awesome and further inspire me to become better versed in graphics and editing (I came home tonight and set up a schedule for Apple store tutorials). However, the one video that dissapointed me? Definitely the NASA video. As the monotonous narration droned on, I could feel each molecule of air being sucked out of the room. I was embarassed for science! The earth video was gorgeous, don't get me wrong, and the information fascinating -for me. But, the fact is, for people not nearly as interested in the subject matter, it's going to take much more of an active visual stimulus to stand up next to the videos that appeared before and after. I guess the arguement could be made that the science video is science, so it's presented a little differently, then say, a science fiction story about time. But I disagree. I think "science" needs to be jazzed up. The majority of people are not going to be struck by something just from the subject matter. Presentation is most of the battle, and "science" needs to step it up.

In my free-thinking time lately, i've been imagining the junction of real-life footage with graphics and animation. For example, a car speeds past me and I envision a film clips of velocity waves streaming behind it (I just found that Gaab has approached a similar creation, but I envision more energy particles, and a car moving in a real setting). Or taking a film of dancers, maybe one could zoom in and both realistically and animatedly explore their muscular movements. Microcosmos ingeniously captured the world of insects, and the NASA film provided beautiful graphics of our earth--the two dimensions of media representation can be combined. Do you know of good examples of this already done? It reminds me of how Sesame Street made the revolutionary move of bringing together real people and fantasy.

I found a press release of Cory Arcangel's show at Team and am looking forward to going on Friday. See you there!?

Introduction 2 Summary

Lev Manovich provides a short history of the institutionalization of new media, as well as eight reflections on ways in which to define “new media.”
New media can, in one perspective, be very simply be understood as “computer based artistic activities.” These activities, once present in the US periphery, took about ten years to move into the cultural mainstream. Although the technologies may have been introduced first in the US, other countries eventually surged ahead in exploring new media art. Manovich partly attributes this to the phenomenon that new technologies are assimilated quickly in the US—too quickly too allow time for critical refliection of these technologies. Accordingly, while the internet became a fixture in most US homes seemingly overnight, other countries were taking the time to critically think about how to integrate these new technologies with existing art and culture. Progress in new media art was further stymied in the 90’s, Manovich continues, by the low level of public support for the arts in the US.
Ultimately the use new media became omnipresent in the art world, forcing the question, “if all artists now…routinely use digital computers to create, modify, and produce works, do we need o have a special field of new media art?” Manovich answers ‘yes,’ asserting that there are many theororetical questions pertaining to this field that must be addressed, a task the New Media Reader will work toward.

What Is New Media? Eight Propositions
NM versus Cyberculture
• Cyberculture is the social phenomena resulting from the introduction of New Media into society and the interaction of the culture with the New Media.
NM as Computer Technology Used as a Distribution Platform
• Media is by definition distributed to a large audience on some platform. New Media is by definition the media which uses digital computer technology as a distribution platform
NM as Digital Data Controlled by Software
• Cultural objects can be digitally represented in potentially many different states by the use of software that can be manipulated. Interesting that the logic of images and texts have different rules; images can be comprehended compositally while text must be linear and semiotic.
NM as the Mix Between Existing Cultural Conventions and the Conventions of Software
• New Media is a mix of already mature cultural forms that are undergoing digitization and novel media “native” to computers. It is the difference between being “gazed at, rather than interacted with.” It is also the difference between a continuous field and one broken up with hyperlinks constituting several regions.
NM as the Aesthetics that Accompanies the Early Stage of Every New Modern Media and Comm. Tech.
• Similar aesthetic strategies reappear in media. The moving image as cinema was reinvented on a computer screen 100 years after it was “born.”
NM as Faster Execution of Algorithms Previously Executed Manually or through Other Tech.’s.
• New Media accelerates data processesing, leading to qualitatively new phenonmena
NM as the Encoding of Modernist Avant-Garde
• The new avant garde was concerned with seeing the world in as many ways as possible—existing media became the raw material for artistic innovation. The new media avant guard came up with a new way to package “reality.”
NM as Parallel Articulation of Similar Ideas in Post-WWII Art and Modern Computing

U.S. cultural trends in art and ideas of the past four decades led to the developing paradigms of new media. Non-heirachrchal organization on the interactive web melded well with post cold-war sensibilities.

"Oh yes, and watch where you step..."

Since the conception of MTV’s The Real World, reality television has captured the interest of the public like no other television fad in history has. In 1996, four years after The Real World debuted, Claude Nuridsany and Marie Pérennou released a film called Microcosmos that many reality entertainment fans probably missed. Microcosmos gives the audience a real world experience as well, but the film presents reality in a way that no human has seen it before.

Reality in Microcosmos is measured in terms of centimeters for most of the characters, even millimeters for some. The participants don’t squabble over infidelity or the last can of beer. Battles more often stem from territory crossing or attempted baby snatching. Rather than fists or nails, competitors rely on spiky horns or poisonous pincers.

Microcosmos provides an intimate look at the world of insects, where a raindrop can mean death, but a puddle is a cherished landscape teeming with life.

Watching Microcosmos, I was reminded of Disney’s A Bug’s Life and Pixar’s Antz. Of course, the characters in Microcosmos do not speak, and there is no real plot line per se. However, in experiencing the life of an insect so intimately, one cannot help but anthropomorphize and sympathize with their “emotions.” Two especially dramatic cinema moments are when a dung beetle struggles to transport an Indiana Jones-esque boulder and when two snails come together in a rapturous, slimy sex-scene. The incredible opportunity to look into the faces of the living creatures show that they are as animated as any Pixar creation conceivable as they build, battle, copulate, and bear offspring from one season into the next.

The photographers captured the imagery with a camera mounted on a miniature robot. Computerized control of the robot preserved fluidity of the extremely tight shots.

The camera technology allowed the production team to transcend the naked eye and accomplish documentation far beyond anything produced by National Geographic to date. Microcosmos expands the human perception of the world, conveying the fact that the dirt at our feet is not simply a boundary of the human world but is a habitat in a world unto itself. The technology used in Microcosmos is a gift to science and nature photographers. Filmmakers such as Nuridsany and Pérennou can now provide humans with the visual capability to explore the frontiers of our world, in which resides a reality full of drama and entertainment all its own.