Digital mutation

The week nine reading was “The Language of New Media” by Lev Manovich. Throughout the reading, Manovich explains ‘new media within the histories of visual and media cultures’ over the past few centuries (Manovich, 2001); and explores how new media relies on the conventions of old media, highlighting how new media’s can create the illusion of reality. Manovich explores the rigorous and methodical theory of new media; and uses existing ideas and concepts from art history, literature,  film theory and computer science. He develops new theoretical concepts, and elaborates on cultural interface and cinematography. Throughout the reading it is clear that Manovich has a major focus on  cinema history and theory, where he discusses the connection between the histories of both cinema and new media, digital cinema, as well as screen and montage in cinema.

Tutorial questions based on the reading:

1. What would you define as a cultural interface and how does it relate to design?

A cultural interface is a term used to describe a human-computer-culture interface, and is seen as the ways in which computers present and allow people to interact with cultural data. These cultural interfaces relate to design as they include the ‘interfaces used by designers of websites, DVD titles, multimedia encyclopedias, magazines, computer games, and other new media cultural objects’ (Manovich, 2001).

     2. What does Manovich mean when he suggests that Cinema, the printed word and HCI could sit within the same conceptual plane?

Cinema, the printed word and HCI have all developed their own unique way of organising information, presenting it, and ‘structuring human experience in the process of accessing information’, where these three elements are all main sources of strategy for organising information that feed cultural interfaces.

Throughout the reading, Manovich highlights cinema, the printed word and HCI as ‘belonging to two different kinds of cultural species’. HCI is a general purpose tool which is used to manipulate data, and both the printed word and cinema are less general and offer their own ways to organise certain types of data.

    3. How does Manovich claim that media is being liberated from traditional storage media?

“Today, media is being ‘liberated’ from traditional physical storage media – paper, film, stones, glass, magnetic tape – elements of the printed word interface and the cinema interface that previously were hardwired to content become ‘liberated’ as well.”(Manovich, 2001). Manovich explains how a digital designer is able to ‘freely mix pages and virtual camera, tables of content and screens, bookmarks and points of view’, where media is no longer rooted to certain texts and films, and are now free floating in our culture.

 

 

References:

Manovich, L 2001, The Language of New Media, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Massachusetts

Image: The Editorial Board of Public Seminar, 2016, On Manovich, he Editorial Board of Public Seminar, Accessed: 13 October 2018, http://www.publicseminar.org/2015/09/on-manovich/