In the first section of his book, Manovich writes: “What are the ways in which the use of computers to record, store, create, and distribute media makes it ‘new’?” (20). Yeah! I want to know that too! The chapter title is “What Is New Media” and, quite frankly, I want to know what the hell new media is! According to what I read, it’s not all that new, and the term media is vague to say the least.
What I want: New Media is … (insert dictionary definition here)
What I get: New Media is … blah blah blah blah blah (and so on)
Is New Media really such a profound idea that it cannot be simply stated? Computers, once used for computing, now can also be used for artistic purposes, including, but not limited to, music, video, photography, social networking, propaganda distribution, etc. Ok, Manovich says that qualities already found in other “cultural forms” are not principles of new media because they cannot “distinguish new media from old” (20). Crap. Now we have old media too.
I feel that the concept being totally neglected here is that media, as a social construct, is fluid and continually changing, growing. By Manovich trying to pinpoint a start and end point for “new media” he negates the aspects of media which makes it so powerful to me; it’s influence on and by society as well as its ability to remain in a non-static state. Yes, computers and art have once again collided, but wasn’t that an inevitable part of the progression and evolution of media all along?
In our classroom discussion on the prologue, it seemed that what Manovich was writing about would become clearer as I continued to read. It hasn’t. I’m still left feeling like he used ten times more words than he needed to and never even answered his own questions. Perhaps the problem is that new media is too hard of a subject to pin down, or maybe I need to rid myself of notions I already had about new media before coming to the text, but I feel that Manovich is just making this harder than it needs to be.
This is really more a reaction to the reading than a response to it, but, well, this is a blog, and I have yet to be informed of the rhetorical rules regarding writing through blogs.
I think that the Digital Rhetoric article actually mentions that new media is only old media with electricity. Manovich also states that new media is old media that is computed. It took 80 pages to say that, but its there. ish. I agree about the vagueness of the text. IDK (there's that code switching) It seems like the bulleted sections could at least convey points instead of abstractions of points.
ReplyDeleteI think Manovich does deal with (or at least he starts to deal with) the idea that media is continually changing. On page 46 he says, "'the computer layer' is not itself fixed but rather changes over time. As hardware and software keep evolving and as the computer is used for new tasks and in new ways, this layer undergoes continuous transformation." In the next paragraph he says, "the computer layer and the culture layer influence each other...they are being composited together." I think he implies that if the computer layer is continually changing and both layers are intertwined, both layers change continually. Wow, that sounded an awful lot like a logic problem on a test. I'm done now.
ReplyDeleteRichard Samuelson
Yeah, I'm certainly not trying to say that Manovich doesn't have some interesting things to say, but when he takes so long getting to the point, sometimes that point can be lost. I also have a tendancy to ramble, so I sympathize. Unfortunately, in this particular text, I feel that the amount of information he includes is a hindrance to what he is trying to accomplish. Of course, this could just be my own view of it :)
ReplyDeleteAmanda,
ReplyDeleteI definitely feel your frustration. My problem with Manovich is that he seems to look at old media as useful only as a means of seeing where new media came from. I realize his book is about new media, so I shouldn't be expecting much information about old media, but I think it is important to recognize that old media is not completely obsolete. I will say, though, that I think the way he uses old media is helpful for me in putting the new media concepts into context