The 5 Principles

Like many of the articles and videos that we have watched, Lev Manovich's "The Language of New Media" starts with the classic question in this Digital Media class: “What is New Media?” Is it solely the Internet, websites, computer games and DVDs? Manovich offers the suggestion that texts that circulate on a computer can also be considered new media. He says, “We are in the middle of a new media revolution.”(p.43)

Manovich's five Principles of New Media are as follows:

1. Numerical Representation
2. Modularity
3. Automation
4. Variability
5. Culture Transcoding

Numerical Representation is the first principle and the way Manovich defines the concept, is anything that is created from scratch or transformed form analog. He sees Numerical Representation in two ways, both mathematically and in media. He speaks of algorithms and digital media that is programmable. This reminds me of when I first seriously started doing ballet. When I reached a certain age, I finally realized that each and every technique class that I take will include plies, tendus, jetes, and so on. And every technique class with out fail will include a barre, center, adagio and allegro. A dancer always knows what is coming next during class; though they wont know the specific combination, which brings us to modularity.

Modularity: noun. employing or involving a module or modules as the basis of design or construction. This is the New Oxford American definition, but Manovich considers modularity to be components that assemble into large-scale objects but proceed to keep their separate shape/identity. His examples are the following: pixels, polygons, vowels, characters, and scripts. As previously described part of taking class, and not just ballet class any form of dance, one must learn and pick up the combinations. When we go to the center the combinations become a little bit more complicated and they are made up of different steps. A grand allegro for example can have as many steps as the teacher pleases; but I would say an average grand allegro is made up of roughly 12 steps. A simple grand allegro is: tombe, pas de bourree, glissade grand jete. These are four separate steps, but when a dancer connects the steps it becomes one long phrase. It is almost like connecting the dots in a coloring book, but instead of finding an image, we find a movement, a dance.

Automation: noun. the use of largely automatic equipment in a system of manufacturing or other production process. Both numerical coding and modular structure allow for automation creation. There are two levels of automation low and high. A couple examples of “low level” automation would be image editing, 3D-Graphics and word processing. “High level” deals with semantics as well as artificial intelligence. “Finally, in what maybe the most familiar experience of automation of media generation to most computer users, many Web sites automatically generate Web pages on the fly when the user reaches the site.”(p.53) This is most similar to the way a teacher works in class. Though there are a small percentage of teachers that come to class with notes and a class already written out, I would say that the majority of dance teachers out there come up with their class on the fly.

Variability: noun. not consistent or having a fixed pattern; liable to change. Manovich believes that a variable can be “mutable” or “liquid”. Variability is close to automation as well as modularity.  Variability is Manovich’s longest and most detailed principle; there are a total of seven sub-sections, ranging from media database to periodic updates and hypermedia. “A new media object is not something fixed once and for all but can exist in different, potentially infinite versions.”(p.56) Due to the fact that the teachers come up with classes on the fly means that they vary. No two classes are the same. Even is the teacher gives a similar class, your input is different from day to day, therefore it is literally impossible to have the same class.

Finally we come to transcoding. Transcoding: verb. convert (language or information) from one form of coded representation to another. Transcoding is what Manovich considers to be the “most substantial consequence of media’s computerization.”(p.63) A computer image is part of both the human world as well as the computer world. This is perhaps the most difficult principle to grasp and the most difficult to relate to my art form.  I think the best association that I can think of it that when I do a dance performance, I am dancing for the audience of course because they are the ones who come and pay, but I am also dancing for myself. Which is the way it should be!

Empathy and “Star Wars”

The Empathic Civilization is a video narrated by Jeremy Rifkin. In the clip he speaks about Empathy, in other words the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. Rifkin states that the human race is soft wired to be empathic, social and affectionate, and yet at times we are aggressive, violent and selfish. Selfhood and emphatic development go hand in hand. Speaking of hands, in the video there are little doodles made on a dry erase board while Rifkin speaks; and at one point he says that “Empathy is like an invisible hand” and then there was a sketch made of a big hand holding onto the world. The visuals were defiantly intriguing and if anything added to the presentation.

The second video is by Michio Kaku: Will Mankind Destroy Itself? Kaku has very interesting ideas on development of civilization within the next 100 years. According to Kaku we are a type zero civilization at the moment, but we will be able to transition and transform into a type 1, 2, or even 3 civilization. A type 1 civilization is planetary and described by Kaku as something out of Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon. A type 2 civilization is immortal and he related it to “Star Wars.” Finally a type 3 civilization is galactic like “The Empire Strikes Back.” Kaku is convicted that he sees the beginnings of a type 1 culture all around us. Kaku sees the Internet for example as a telephone system, and he even sees English as a type 1 langue.  

As previously mentioned, Kaku sees the birth of the Internet as a telephone system. My parents remind me only a weekly basis how lucky and spoiled my generation is because of our access to the Internet. They’ll say something along the lines of “back when I was your age we only had books and the librarian was our best friend.” How quickly they forget that the World Wide Web was not put into place until 1993, just two year before I was born. In fact, I practically grew up with no Internet. I don’t remember the very first time I used a computer or when I first went onto Google or Yahoo, but I think I was around nine or even ten. Therefore, I have only really been using computer and the Internet for about half my life. Now I cannot imagine life with out the Internet, which is sad but true. It is a truly magnificent invention. I can speak to friends across the ocean; I can buy a dress from California and have it delivered to my doorstep with out making a single human transaction. I can share photos with friends and family and watch millions of videos all in one place, the Internet. And who knows where it will bring this type zero civilization next!

“Art is anything you can get away with…”

Marshall McLuhan’s "The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects" written in 1967, is a graphic novel that explores new-media and technology. McLuhan emphasizes the fact the “electronic technology” as he refers to it, is reshaping our lives. Granted this was in the late 60’s therefore we must keep in mind that there have been a great may changes since the 60’s. McLuhan’s strong ideas and ideals about new-media mirror the author’s of the other articles we have read thus far. For example, on page 6 he said, “It is impossible to understand social and cultural changes without a knowledge of the workings of media.” If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought that this sentence came from “Critical Media Literacy, Democracy, and the Reconstruction of Education”.

The novel is divided into a number of sections beginning with: you, then your family, then your neighborhood, your education, your job and so on. In each section McLuhan analyzes the role of media in each aspect and when/how it originated. An important notion that he brings up through out the novel is the exchange between old and new environments, which in the end results in confusion and difficulty.    

“We have to find the environments in which it will be possible to live with our new inventions.”p.124 The age of information or the Television generation, which ever you prefer, has in reality made the world a harder place to live in, contrary to popular belief. Are we able to live side by side with these new inventions that are brainwashing our students as well as our instructors? The classroom has become an endeavor to survive all thanks to media.

When I was first flipping (well scrolling) through the graphic novel, I thought all of the drawings, cartoons and different fonts where placed there randomly. Yet, after reading and re-reading sections of the novel some of the ‘medium’ that McLuhan chose was truly connected to the ‘message’ he was putting forth. There was most definitely a thread that McLuhan weaved through his book regarding the images he chose. For example there are multiple Alice in Wonderland references, also there are a couple of pages where the writing is upside down of backwards. Earlier on in the novel McLuhan says the following, “The phonetic alphabet forced the magic world of the ear to yield to the neutral world of the eye. Man was given an eye for an ear.”p.44 When I read these words I tried to put an image in my mind, but the image was not entirely clear. Finally pages later toward the end of the book, an image appeared and it looked like this:

 

To a certain degree, McLuhan's picture of contemporary society is still relevant in today’s standards. He said, “Our official culture is striving to force the new media to do work of the old.”p.94.I feel that this statement is still true; society comes up with new gadgets and inventions to make our lives easier so that we wont have to lift a finger.

Are You Media Literate?

Some experts would have society believe that media enhances our lives. Others would say that it has attacked our substructure of profound reading and education for that matter. The definition of media is as follows:

MeŸdiŸa: noun 1. plural form of MEDIUM. 2. the main means of mass communication (esp. television, radio, newspapers, and the Internet) regarded collectively.

The latter is the most pertinent in today’s standards. Len Masterman’s article titled, “The Media Education Revolution” sketches the leading principles of media education. Masterman investigates the following questions through media, “Where are we today? How did we get there? Where might we go from here?”(p.5) Education is not what it used to be; there have been profound changes in teaching objectives. The teachers are no longer the experts in the classroom, they’re primarily on the same level of the students or as Masterman puts it, they are “co-investigators” of media. The “banking concept” and “pill-sugaring” of education is dead. Banking as in the teacher depositing information upon a benighted student and pill coating is dead because the students are now more motivated than ever to learn with the help from media.

The authors of the second article, “Critical Media Literacy, Democracy, and the Reconstruction of Education” would disagree with Masterman. Douglas Kellner and Jeff Share believe that students are in reality savvier in media than their teachers. This article is practically a follow up article in that is dives deeper into four specific techniques of teaching critical media. The techniques are as follows:

1. The Protectionist Approach
2. Media Arts Education
3. Media Literacy Movement
4. Critical Media Literacy

A quote that thoroughly sums up the article goes like this, “The new technologies of communication are powerful tools that can liberate or dominate, manipulate or enlighten, and it is imperative that educators teach their students how to critically analyze and use these media.”(Keller 2004a). (p.9) In other words, the teachers must encourage their students to do research, be informed and question what they see in media and in life for that matter.

           

As I brainstormed and did some research about what to write for this mini-paper, I came across this clip, “Cause and Effect: How the Media You Consume Can Change Your Life”, which in fact was posted on a fellow bloggers page.

The link: ----> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv5Z2Xv8iJU

The video is concise and informative, for example I had no idea that the average teenager spends approximately 10 hours and 45mins everyday “consuming media”, weather it be on the computer, watching TV, or even reading a magazine. It is obviously geared more towards females, because the latter half of the clip goes into female leadership and power, which was also a major topic in the second article, “Critical Media Literacy, Democracy, and the Reconstruction of Education”.

A quote from the article mentioned above went like this, “Critical media literacy should be a common thread that runs through all curricular areas because it deals with communication and society.”(p.19) Consumers of our generation generally need to learn how to pose wise questions, because media is a powerful forced that is not to be reckoned with unless good judgment is used. For as described in the article, media can advance the –isms, which is not necessarily a good thing.

Among my peers I have seen the impact of media through collaborative media production. For example, when my class was learning about Transcendentalism, our teacher created groups and assigned each group with a quote by a different transcendentalist such as Emerson and Thoreau to name a few. With the quote we had to create an interpretation through art. She said, it could be a song, a dance, a drawing; it just had to be some form of an artistic interpretation. As a dancer, I of course made up a little improve while my friend played the piano and I called it my interpretation of the quote. When other groups presented their artistic interpretation I was stunned at the hidden talent of some of my classmates. For example, a boy in my class (that was very shy) made a video that included his own electronic music that he had made with a new fancy application. We all really saw him come out of his shell after that group project!