The Forms of New Media

ALL YOUR DATABASE

ARE BELONG TO US

TRANSCODING

The Library: A gigantic database organized in real world, navigable space.

The Museum: A collection of documents and objects conceptualized in a real word, navigable space.

TRANSCODING

“All new media design can be reduced to these two approaches; that is, creating works in new media can be understood as either constructing the right interface to a multimedia database or as defining navigation methods through spatialized representations” (215)

“The first approach is used . . . whenever the main goal is to provide an interface to data. The second approach . . . aims to psychologically ‘immerse’ the user in an imaginary universe (215)

KEY QUOTES

TRANSCODING

“But in the information age, narration and description have changed roles. If traditional cultures provided people with well-defined narratives (myths, religion) and little ‘stand alone’ information, today we have too much information and too few narratives that can tie it all together” (217).

In short- cultural history has had the novel and then cinema, both which privilege narrative and authorial meaning, while the computer age embraces the organized chaos of database logic

KEY QUOTES

Manovich breezes through super-complicated theory on page 219“after the death of God” (Nietzche)“the end of grand narratives” (Lyotard)

Both theorists, in essence, were marking and exploring the death of absolute truth and meaning.

HUH?

As opposed to cultural algorithms of:Reality>Study>Truth (Classicalism)Reality>Senses>Art (Romanticism)Observation>Meta-Narrative>Truth (Modernism)

Observation>Anti-Narrative>”Truth” (Postmodernism)

“As a cultural form, the database represents the world as a list of items, and it refuses to order this list. In contrast, a narrative creates a cause and effect trajectory of seemingly unordered items (225).

REALITY>MEDIA>DATA>DATABASE

It is no longer a widely held cultural belief that reading literature makes you a “better” person or provides training in moral/ethical being

People are obviously stil l religious- but religion does not enjoy the same stronghold on cultural thought that it did in previous centuries

What an individual’s life should look like is not as seemingly predetermined and defined as it has been in previous centuries

Although movies are obviously still a huge force in our culture, on average, video games actually make more money than movies.

NARRATIVE DOESN’T WORK THE SAME ANYMORE

Never completeCan always be edited (add

or subtract)New items can be inserted

anywhereOrganized, yes, but by its

creator, or its users (not by a deity or higher power)

This organization is relational and associational (not logical)

DATABASES

This leads, not to a narrative or story, but to an ever growing, ever changing collection of information that can be interfaced with in whatever way an individual decides to.

The individual:

• Makes selections from the info• Makes their own meaning• Composites meaning from

diverse sources• Applies variability to the info

to make it their own• Imbues it with authority by

virtue of the databases omniprecense

EVERYTHING IS DATABASE LOGIC(ALL YOUR DATABASE ARE BELONG TO

US)

“In contrast to modern literature, theater, and cinema, which are built around psychological tensions between characters and movement in psychological space, these computer games [and other new media interfaces] return us to ancient forms of narrative in which the plot is driven by the spatial movement of the main hero, traveling through distant lands to save the princess, find the treasure, defeat the dragon, and so on” (246).

AND ONE QUOTE ABOUT NAVIGABLE SPACE