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What is New Media?

posted Oct 23, 2009, 12:21 AM by sitestemplatedata@gmail.com   [ updated Jan 26, 2010, 4:46 PM by Aalap Tripathy ]
Class discussion on Lev Manovich

New Media - anything which is digitized

1. Content has Numerical Representation
2. Content is modular - why does it break - more due to the way we compress it.
     Problem with HTML Spec - Link Tags stuck together with the content.
     New Media Authoring tools enforce writing in a modular fashion.
3. Automate the creation /construction of new media.
    Automate writing of poems, short stories.
    Using Neural Network to produce kinds of music (Example - Bach)
    Agent based systems - recommendation systems, video games, first person shooters
    Archiving Systems - How do you select content that needs to be archived?
  1. Everything
  2. Chronological
  3. Authoritative - trusted
  4. More Popular
4. Variability - When you access content, what you see might be different from someone else sees. What you see now, may not be what you see tomorrow.
Relates to oral cultures, literate cultures discussion.
           Oral - Story wasn't the same with multipe retelling
           Literate Culture - Go to Page x, Para y on Book "ABC"

The same block of text might mean different things based on how you get to it.
New Media may be retribalizing - Marshall McLuhan
Print Media culture was homozenizing. 

How is new Media retribalizing - FoxNews v/s MSNBC v/s CNN
If everyone has the news tailored to htem, is there any remaining room for discussion.

Consumer has more responsibility and control in the "new media" age.

Debate over whether you can tell the same story in different media
Mark Bernstein (published hyertext) - You can never have Hamlet in hypertext.
Dr Shipman think that Mark Bernstein's interpretation is wrong.

5. Transcoding - convert form one form to another.
He says this later because:
  1. They are more complicated.
  2. They are still evolving.
  3. They follow from the earlier ones.

New Media consists of the cultural layer and the computer layer.


Why does digitization not mean loss of information? - you can increase sampling rate or improve the type of quantization

New Media is interactive. This isn't necessariliy true? - Dr Shipman agrees. They do not necessarily create new forms of interaction. Hypertext did not create a new form of interactioon. We can create links on paper.

Interactivity was much easier in "new media" than in the older one.


Preparation for project

Types of new media
----- Short Texts (IM/Chat)
----- Longer Texts (Blogs/hypertexts/narratives)
----- Audio, speech and Podcast
------ Music, Video
------ VR/Game Engines
------ Photos

------- Authoring
------- Viewing/Annotating
------- Sharing/Archiving

Contexts of use
------- Personal Activity - Walking/bike/mobile/car
------- Personal Activity - Desktop
------- Group Activity - Living Room

A project that will fit into these rols.
Viewing music in a shared setting in a company gym.
When each person swiped your badge, it tried to play the music, which majority of the people in the room would have liked.

Natural Clustering Algorithm :)
Mobile Environment - Dr Shipman has a couple of Nokia Phones (T560), large touch screen displays