The multimedia genre(s)

David Nathan2005

The multimedia genre

Historyresearch in hypertext, education etc computer games invaders

Apple’s Hypercardmultimedia products identifieddevelopments in personal computingmultimedia authoring softwaremedia convergences

Multimedia - definitions

Chapmans: “multiple media” - we switch between modalities, or append new modalities to standard genres

“Human-computer interaction involving text, graphics, voice and video. Often also includes concepts from hypertext. This term has come to be almost synonymous with CD-ROM in the personal computer world because the large amounts of data involved are currently best supplied on CD-ROM.”

“the distinction of multimedia is the convergence of previously diverse systems.”

Multimedia - definitions

Computer presentation of a resource that integrates several modalities:

using software controlin contribution of the messagethrough interaction

Multimedia - a typology

video presentation/display eg in business or education computer adventure game an educational CD-ROM web site with graphics, sound, animation etc

Note how these examples differ: control of sequence: author -- user production values: high -- low usage context: public -- private distribution: narrow -- wide usage of repurposed content: less -- more McLuhan media type: cool -- hot

Multimedia - delivery

projects need planning, management, design, software, programming, assets and resources, equipment

authoring platformmarkup or authoring IDEtime-line (Flash, Director), linear/page (www), or

hierarchical (Authorware)type of player and control over playback

networked vs packageddistribution