Computation as a Medium LCC 2700: Intro to Computational Media.
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Transcript of Computation as a Medium LCC 2700: Intro to Computational Media.
Computation as a Medium
LCC 2700: Intro to Computational Media
NEW MEDIA?
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NMR Intro: New Media from Borges to HTML• “Computer based artistic activity”• Technology remains hidden, esp. in the US
– “assumed part of everyday practice”
• What is “NEW MEDIA”
New Media vs. Cyberculture
• Cyberculture: the study of social phenomena• Internet & network communication• Online gaming, email, identity online, etc.
• Problems– Does not directly deal with new cultural
objects– New Media as computing & culture– Cyberculture as social and computer
networks
Computers as Distribution Platforms• New Media as a channel• Internet, Web sites, CD-ROMs, DVDs• We could add digital set-top boxes, digital downloads, etc.
• Problems– Increasing computer-based distribution is inevitable– Non-specific: doesn’t tell us anything about computers
and culture
Digital Data
• Stuff gets digitized• Or, digital stuffs are created anew• Now they live on computers
• Problems:– Undue focus on digitization and binary digital
storage as the foundational properties of new media
Cultural and Software Conventions
• Computers as tools that reconfigure the ways we do previously non-computational cultural work– Photography, filmmaking, etc.
• New Media as “old” data digitized and manipulated
• Reliance on older cultural conventions
• Problems:– While “remediation” inevitably takes place,
the properties of computation exceed them– We’re not just manipulating old media forms
An Aesthetics of Early Stage Communication• Every new technology passes through a “new media stage”
– Cave paintings were once new– Film, Photography, etc.
• How do people respond to and create on these “new media”
• What is afforded by a new medium– Better democracy– More transparency– Etc.
• Problems– A cultural-historical, even anthropoligical focus– How humans treat media, perhaps even as utopic– But, tells us less about particular media
Efficiency• Computers do boring stuff for us
– The same thing thousands of times per second• Computers let us do the same things faster
– Crunch numbers• Computers let us do the same things more
efficiently or effectively– Word processors
• Problems– Cultural value of “efficiency”– These processes are changed through
computation
New Media as a realization of Modernism• Modernism - artistic
and cultural movements of the 19th and early 20th centuries
• Avant-Garde - 1915 - 1928– Challenges to
traditional norms– Responses to
political and cultural events
• Assemblage, collage, found art, etc.
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New Media as a realization of Modernism• Problems
– Focus on a particular notion of “multimedia”
– Owes too great a debt to the pastiche of 1980s postmodernism
– Residue of a particular moment in “new media” of the early 1990s
NMR: Inventing the Medium (Murray)
• The Computer as an Expressive Medium
• Properties: Procedural, participatory, encyclopedic, spatial
• (more on these throughout the course!)
A new medium
Happens rarely in human history
Writing ~3500 BC Printing Press 1455 Photography ~1850
Computation as a Medium like Print
Medium Format GenresPrint book novel, history
periodical newspaper, magazine
Computer html page website, blogvideogame shooter, rpg…database payroll, archive
Computation as a Medium like Print
Medium Power of representation
Print Don Quixote Effect
Computer Eliza Effect
Other models of computation
• Technology (like an engine in a car)• Tool (like a pencil or slide rule)• Appliance (information toaster)• Transmitter of other media (network of moving
bits)
These are valid but more limited Medium is a more inclusive framework
Advantages of the Media Model
For both design and understanding
• Historical perspective, analogies to other periods of media transition
• Rich design palette from legacy practices• Connects computation with other forms of
cultural expression• Focuses us on coherent form
What is a medium?
Something in the physical world that contains an idea of a person, place, thing, event, or concept.
Media vs. Technologies
A medium contains (communicates) ideas through conventions of representation.
A technology is a set of methods and materials for doing something, such as creating a media artifact.
The computer can be thought of as an evolving medium that rests on a set of changing technologies.
Converging Technologies/Converging Media
• Digital television/videogame console hooked to internet
• Telephone/camera/appointment book/music player• Actors merging with animations in movies• NY Times producing 1 minute videos on website• NBC producing text and still image articles on
website• Google creating digital, searchable, networked
library• Replacement of paper, film, audio tape, vinyl
records, video tape with digital formats
A medium relies on
• Accessible Practices of Inscription• Fixed Practices of Transmission• Open Ended Practices of Representation
These practices are always cultural and may or may not be technological
Cultural = all shared behaviors , interpretations, and values beyond our biological endowment
Inscription
• = Intentional perceptible impression• Impression may be temporal or spatial• Impression may be auditory, visual, tactile• Impression requires malleable material to
receive and (perhaps) preserve it• Impression requires a means of marking the
material
What is a medium?: Inscription – Transmission - Representation
Examples of inscription
• Sounds made by vocal tract, impressed in the form of sound waves
• Cuneiform wedges on clay• Hieroglyphics on papyrus• Roman letters carved in marble• Moving images on film or videotape• Electro-magnetic charges configured as
bits
What is a medium?: Inscription – Transmission - Representation
Issues of Inscription
• Temporality (speech, film)• Spatiality: capacity, direction• Ease of marking• Persistence of marking (fired clay)• Faithfulness of marking, copying
Transmission
Impressions conveyed from a sender to a receiver, from a creator to a perceiver
Can be transmitted over time (preserved)
Can be transmitted over distance(relayed)
What is a medium?: Inscription – Transmission - Representation
Transmission Involves Coding
Telegraph model: Message -> Coded -> Relayed –> Decoded
Examples of standardized transmission codes:– Facial expressions– Cries– Phonemes of spoken language– Alphabet– Binary Digits– Ascii and other conventions
What is a medium?: Inscription – Transmission - Representation
Issues of Transmission
• Coding: how well does the code capture the message? – Alphabet with and without vowels– Binary vs analog codes
• Noise: how accurately is the code transmitted?– Static on a radio signal
• Interpretation by receiver– Does the receiver know how to decipher the code?– Does the code mean the same to the sender and
the receiver?
Representation
Assignment of meaning to the transmitted impressions
Based on shared experience, conventions of abstraction, conventions of symbolic coding
Always an act of interpretation from one consciousness to another (or same consciousness over time)
What is a medium?: Inscription – Transmission - Representation
Representation
Based on an expanding set of meaningful conventions
• Set of lines interpreted as house, person, tree• Alphabetic text interpreted as sounds, words,
meanings• Interface icons interpreted as buttons connected to
actions
What is a medium?: Inscription – Transmission - Representation
Mature media have established conventions
30 minute format with commercial breaks
Parents and kids
Foolish behavior
Loving/fighting
Established Media Conventions
Established Media Conventions
• Paragraphs• Lead paragraphs• Headlines• Mastheads• News photo• Byline• Column• Sentence• Inverted pyramid structure• Feature vs News vs
Editorial
Established Media Conventions
• Columns• Capitals and small letters• Spaces between words• Initial letters: chapter
divisions• Page numbers• Tables of contents• Indexes• Title page• Handwriting styles• Typefaces
Established Media Conventions
• Frame• Information encoded by
subject matter• Color/B&W• Rule of Thirds
Translation across media both retains and relinquishes conventions
Birth of a medium
Arrival of the Train at Ciotat Station
Lumière Bros., 1895http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dgLEDdFddk&search=ciotat
“Invention” of a medium
• Start with existing genres and import them to new formats
• Understand unique affordances of new modes of inscription and transmission
• Maximize these affordances for purposes of more powerful representation
NMR Preface
• Understanding new media is almost impossible for those who aren't actively involved in the experience of new media; for deep understanding, actually creating new media projects is essential to grasping their workings and poetics. The ideas described in these selections can open important new creative areas for beginners and professionals alike.
NMR Preface
• Novels• Films• Poetry • Music• …