Key Concepts in Manovich

Defining New Media

New media refers to the use of computers (digital tech) to “record, store, create, and distribute media” (43)

Note: A printed book or poster could still be seen as “new media” (at least in part) if computers were involved in its creation or distribution.

Numerical Representation

• All forms of media are ultimately stored as binary (numerical) code on a computer and thus are easier to combine and transform.• This principle is axiomitic (the basis of all the

others)

Modularity

“Media elements, be it images, sounds, shapes or behaviors are represented as collections of discrete [numeric] samples…These elements are assembled into larger-scale objects but they continue to maintain their separate identity” (51)

Examples of Modularity

• Google image search (takes images from websites and puts in new context—enabled by modular structure of the web)

• Bb 2.0 (each video retains its own identity as distinct part of youtube, but they are also re-combined to make a new media object in another location)

• The concept of “layers” (in image, video, or sound editors)

Automation

• Decreases “human intentionality” in the creative process.

• Common examples: photoshop filters, wordpress templates, videogame characters, random image selectors (flickeur)

• Blurs lines between professional and amateur.

Automation and Database Logic

“The Internet, which can be thought of as one huge distributed media database, also crystallized the basic condition of the new information society: overabundance of information of all kinds…By the end of the 20th century, the problem became no longer how to create a new media object such as an image; the new problem became how to find the object which already exists somewhere…The emergence of new media coincides with the second stage of a media society, now concerned as much with accessing and re-using existingmedia as with creating new one” (55)

Variability

• Old media involves human creator(s) composing a fixed/stable text that is then copied and distributed through mechanical means.

• New media (like flickeur and wilderness) “give rise to many different versions. And rather than being created completely by a human author, these versions are often in part automatically assembled by a computer” (56)

Interface and Database“It becomes possible to separate the levels of content (data) and interface. A number of different interfaces can be created to the same data. A new media object can be defined as one or more interfaces to a multimedia database” (57)(Examples: Flickeur and Islands are both interfaces to flickr.com; wordpress templates are interfaces to your blog content)

Customization / Personalization

• You enter information about yourself and then the automated software creates a personalized interface to the database just for you.

• Reveals a post-industrial logic.

(Examples: the wilderness downtown; amazon recommendations; pandora)

Hypermedia

• A structure of links for accessing multimedia content (each user makes their own path)

• Bb 2.0 and the dumpster are hypermedia texts (flickeur and islands are mostly not hypermedia since the variability is controlled solely by the program not the user).

• In a basic sense, the entire world wide web (internet) is one big hypermedia database.

Transcoding

• Key computer concepts (interface, database, search, modularity) begin to influence how understand ourselves and our culture (McLuhanesque: the computer is the message).

• The computer database starts to rival the print or oral narrative as the primary, valued cultural form.

• “Computer” can refer to any digital technology not just a desktop or laptop.