After watching these videos, someone in class brought up the fact that they follow the standards of relatively conventional media. This was approached as a problem: If they follow the conventions of old media, how can they be considered new media works? I find this a pretty interesting line of thought. In terms of visual representation, the animation is absolutely beautiful, especially in RYAN, but when it comes to the ideas behind the media, how can one go beyond linear format and create something that more closely resembles the online mentality?

I found a video artist that does almost exactly what I mean:



It's everything. All at once. Banking. Product symbology. Cinema. Flash art. Pornography. It like we're looking into a library of human expression and interaction and information and tracing the artist's trajectory, which is anything but linear.

On "New Media from Borges to HTML" by Lev Manovich

The thing that strikes me most about this article is the struggle to define the term "New Media." The author presents eight different lenses through which to perceive the term:

1) New Media vs. Cyberculture
2) New Media as Computer Technology Used as a Distribution Platform
3) as Digital Data Controlled by Software
4) as the Mix between Existing Cultural Conventions and the Conventions of Software
5) as the Aesthetics that Accompanies the Early Stage of Every New Modern Media and Communication Technology
6) as Faster Execution of Algorithms Previously Executed Manually or through Other Technologies
7) as the Encoding of Modernist Avant-Garde; New Media as Metamedia
8) as Parallel Articulation of Similar Ideas in Post-WWII Art and Modern Computing.

The lens I found most interesting is the fifth. As new modes of communication have been made available to the masses (the internet, television, radio, literacy etc.) There have been countless attempts by those who utilize these modes to consider the implications of their use, to establish conventions, and to push against and through those conventions.
I thought almost immediately of one reading of Plato's "The Cave." Many consider "The Cave" to be Plato's reaction to the idea of widespread literacy, and for reasons similar to people's refusal to immerse themselves in digital information exchange (alienation from the "real" world, etc), Plato seems to be against it. And yet, as with reading, internet users have the ability to opt out. The internet still does not have the power to fully emulate the human experience. Virtual reality is still largely text based, even if there are spacial and interactive qualities to the internet.
But digital technology does afford me, as an artist, a whole new dimension of expressive ability. Looking through Manovich's sixth lense, I understand that I cannot do the work I do without the use of a computer and that everything I make is the result of piling on algorithm after algorithm to achieve an image that I feel is successful.
But beyond understanding what the computer can do for me, I want to revisit Wardrip-Fruin's desire for people to question how the computer limits them in terms of expressive capabilities.
What would I like to see personally? I want my process to be more tactile. If I could create abstraction out of representation by touching the screen as opposed to using the mouse, the process would be much more satisfying.

Something a little like this:



But with my own video work...

Noah Wardrip-Fruin

I asked Noah what he wanted to see in terms of using the computer as a tool of expression, and I found that what he said was pretty interesting. His response had very little to do with how he envisions the future of digital technology and human expression; he seemed more concerned with how the computer is treated now as a creative enabler. He wants to see more people thinking not of how the computer can help them express whatever is is they wish to express but of the ways in which the computer limits expressive capability. He used video games as an example. Visually, video games have become incredibly cinematic aesthetically, and now that we know our technology is capable of achieving such heights, more focus could be placed on the development of games with the narrative capabilities of such media.
When you think about it, video games are so limited in terms of narrative possibilities. Typically, either you win, or you don't. Very little attention is paid to how a character's actions affect other characters' emotions, and what few emotional possibilities are available are based on a point-based system. But if we were to create a game that utilizes certain algorithms to emulate human emotion, then what does that say about the complexity of human emotion, and if we are to create digital avatars that we can affect emotionally, then at what point are we to assume that we are dealing with digital, self-aware entities?
I think the implications are dangerous, and while the narrative possibilities are astounding, truly astounding, theorists are going to go apeshit over the idea.

After all, if we are creating such emotionally capable, digital characters, how can we know the validity of our own existence?

“Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.”

~Andy Warhol




5,904,941 views



2,489,398 views



Prophet?

On “Inventing the Medium” by Janet H. Murray

The birth of the computer, according to Murray, is a signifier of a completely new mode of thought, a shift in human consciousness. She cites Borges and his Garden of Forking Paths. Also, Vannevar Bush and his infinite and omnipresent library. Both men note the inadequacies of language and linear thought.
Murray makes a point to set up a dichotomy here: one between the humanist (Borges) and the engineer (Bush). The former sees the advances in technology and the exchange of information, and he reacts with uncertainty, discomfort, even fear. He sees contradiction and limitation. The latter, on the other hand, sees potential. He isolates a problem and offers/invents a solution. He does not necessarily consider the consequences of his solution.
Throwing these archetypes – humanist and engineer – into the context of post WWII society, Murray discusses the trajectory of postmodernist thought: obsession with and phobia of technology and its incredible and terrifying potential, awareness of social construction and subsequent deconstruction, self-doubt and loss of faith in meaning, irony, creative ecstasy and chaos.
When Deleuze and Guattari suggested a horizontal model for the organization of information, something snapped. According to Murray, humanists found meaning in interconnectivity, and when the engineers released the first personal computers, middle ground was discovered, and eventually, the internet was born.

Yup. There it is. It occurs to me that I am all over it. You can Google my name, and you will find me. You can find hundreds of pictures of me on Facebook along with my date of birth, gender, sexuality, religious and political views, my favorite movies and TV shows, books, and the list goes on and on. If I had a twitter account, I could share my status with you anytime. I am always accessible. Information flows more readily than water, and for some reason or another, that doesn’t really bother many people my age. It doesn’t bother me. Though, I have to wonder how anyone in my generation will be voted president.

I am confronted daily with the awareness that all human knowledge is available to me all the time. I am also incredibly aware of the fact that I am constantly being advertised to, being told subliminally what to wear, what my body should look like, what food I should eat, how I should perform my gender, my sexuality. I not really sure that any of the sources of postmodernist anxiety ever went away. Social construction is still pretty real. But maybe that’s the beauty of the internet. Just having all information available to me all the time really does seem to undercut any idealized reality that would be socially constructed for me. It’s like, “Here. Here’s everything. Now carve yourself out of it.”