Manovich-+New+Media

This summary only includes points brought up based on lecture!!! = = =**What is new media? – 8 possible concepts of what new media is**=


 * __(1) New Media vs. Cyberculture__**
 * Cyber Culture**
 * Study of social trends associated with the Internet and other new forms of network communication
 * Emphasis is on social phenomena, not new objects
 * Examples: studies of
 * Online communities
 * Online mutli player gaming
 * Online identity
 * the sociology and the ethnography of email usage
 * cell phone usage in various communities
 * the issues of gender and ethnicity in Internet usage
 * New Media**
 * Emphasis is on:
 * the cultural objects
 * paradigms enabled by all forms of computing and not just by networking.
 * To summarize: cyberculture is focused on the **social** and on **networking**; new media is focused on the **cultural** and **computing**.

__**(2) New Media as Computer Technology used as a Distribution Platform**__ > new media.
 * New Media**
 * cultural objects which use digital computer technology for distribution and exhibition
 * Examples
 * Internet
 * Web sites
 * computer multimedia
 * computer games
 * CD-ROMs and DVD
 * Virtual Reality
 * computer-generated special effects
 * There are other cultural objects which use computing for production and storage but not for final distributionà these are //not New Media//
 * Examples: television programs, feature films, magazines, books and other paper-based publications, etc.
 * 3 Problems with this definition of New media:
 * (1) Has to be revised every few years (because other parts of the culture will start to rely on computer technology for distribution). Examples: analog to digital TV, e-books
 * (2) eventually most forms of culture will (might) use computer distribution, therefore the term “new media” defined in this way will lose any specificity
 * (3) does not tell us anything about the possible effects of computer-based distribution on the aesthetics of what is being distributed
 * __(3) New Media as Digital Data Controlled by Software.__**
 * o Assumed that all cultural objects that rely on digital representation and computer-based delivery share a number of common qualities.
 * o principles of new media: numerical representation, modularity, automation, variability and transcoding.
 * o It is not necessary that new media be structured according to these principles today àRather, these are tendencies of a culture undergoing computerization
 * o given that new media is digital data controlled by particular “cultural” software, it make sense to think of any new media object in terms of particular data structures and/or particular algorithms it embodies


 * (4) __New Media as the Mix Between Existing Cultural Conventions and the Conventions of Software__**
 * o New media today can be understood as the mix between older cultural conventions for data representation, access and manipulation and newer conventions of data representation, access and manipulation.
 * o The “old” data are representations of visual reality and human experience, i.e., images, text-based and audio-visual narratives – what we normally understand by “culture.”
 * o The “new” data is numerical data.
 * o As a result of this mix, we get such strange hybrids
 * o Example:
 * In modern visual culture a representational image was something one gazed at, rather than interacted with
 * defined an image as a non-interactive, passive ground (typically a desktop pattern) with active icons and hyperlinks (such as the icons of documents and applications appearing on the desktop).
 * representational images in new media: mix between these two very different conventions. à image is still representational but also is treated as a set of hot spots (“image-map”)


 * __(5) Aesthetics of New Media__**
 * o aesthetic strategies seem to often accompany the appearance of a new media and telecommunication technology

(from lecture slides)
 * __(6) New Media as Efficient__**
 * • Computing technology executes various tasks considerably faster - e.g., 3D animation, composite photography
 * • Efficiency opens up new possibilities and phenomena (e.g., DIY photo/video editing)


 * __(7) New Media as Metamedia__**
 * o new media is about new ways of accessing and manipulating information.
 * o Its techniques are hypermedia, databases, search engines, data mining, image processing, visualization, and simulation.
 * o concerned with accessing and using in new ways previously accumulated media à In this respect new media is post-media or meta-media, as it uses old media as its primary material.

o (from lecture slides)
 * __(8) New Media as Nexus of Art and Computing__**
 * • Computing becomes a more right-brain, creative process - a tool to represent and create new realities vs. simply crunch numbers (although there’s lots of that still required…)