English 583: Digital Rhetoric

In chapter two Manovich moves from defining what the book is about (which he established in chapter one) to confronting the metaphors of technology in history and in new media. He examines the rectangle as the persistent shape of the interface tool, from the stone tablet to the codex to the screens of technological advances: cinema, radar, television, and computers, including mobile devices most recently. We are now surrounded by screens for work and pleasure at work and at home (and even in the car) which have moved from being representations of the printed page to using cinematic conventions.

The rectangle has become ubiquitous as the frame of technological interface as evidenced in this satirical news story.

We have filled the rectangle with windows of different sizes and proportions. There were different sizes of film that elongated as quality increased: from the practically square Super8 of home movies to 16mm, the professional 35mm stock, and to variations of cinematic advancement which peaked and petered out with Lawrence of Arabia’s Super Pan-O-Vision. The next developments, as Manovich notes, are the manipulable windows of the computer browser which combines the metaphors of the page, the scroll and the kino-eye.

Manovich places relevance on the structure of data storage in new media, especially the metaphor and metonymy of Random Access Memory which he says “implies a lack of hierarchy: Any RAM location can be accessed as quickly as any other” (77). I confess to not knowing how RAM works, and I’m afraid this puts me at a disadvantage for understanding his point. I get that the storage and access of the discrete information is unique to new media, but I need more information about the proprietary method of RAM if I’m going to follow Manovich’s point.

Manovich’s discussion of the integration of cinematic technique and conventions into the experience of video games commonly called “first-person shooters” addresses the users ability to move the camera and perspective for his (the user’s) own purpose. This control puts the user in the position of the man with the movie camera so he can interact with his (virtual) environment differently. Rarely do we get the chance to manipulate real cameras focused on real life, so when we do, it feels more like a perverted reality than the virtual reality of Doom or Myst.

In the last section of chapter two Manovich follows the bleeding edge of virtual reality generators to the horizon and postulates that the shift from a framed media (old and new) to the unframed interface of real VR will change the metaphor for understanding what the interface is because “it establishes a radically new type of relationship between the body of the viewer and the image” (109).

The immersive VR seems as far into the future—perhaps even further—than it did in 2001, but one mode of interface that was unforeseen ten years ago is the leap in technology and creative capability of the new 3-D cinema. Compared to where Manovich leaves us at the end of the chapter, the new 3-D (television included) seems like one step back and two steps forward down a slightly different and parallel path. I’m curious if Manovich would consider 3-D cinema just a revamping of an old convention, or a new bridge between cinema and VR. Granted, the viewer is restricted to the camera’s perspective, but the frame is weakened. To use Manovich’s metaphor: if screens are a window, 3-D is opening the window, and VR is climbing out the window.