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• …