I Apologize in Advance for the Abundant Quoting...

Manovich argues that “new media objects are rarely created from scratch,” yet he notes that other theorists argue this logic is actually at work within old media as well:

“According to Gombrich, the realist artist can only represent nature by relying on already established ‘representational schemes’; the history of illusion in art involves slow and subtle modifications of these schemes over many generations of artists” (125).

Manovich admits to some elements of new media logic being present in established media, yet asserts that “the actual material process of art making, nevertheless, supports the romantic ideal” (125). He further notes that it is only with the art of the 1910s, when artists began making collage and montage from pre-existing cultural parts that automation entered the art world.

There is a metaphor at work here: let me see if I can reason it out. He opens with the assertion that “The metaphor of a series of filters assumes that at each stage, from barebones digital data to particular media objects, creative possibilities are being increasingly restricted” (117). Okay, so I see the paradox here: the more we get, the more is taken away before we can use it. But, the removal of the filters restricts what we get and requires much more from us in terms of technical expertise.

He goes on to say,

“While operations are embedded in software, they are not tied to it. They are employed not only within the computer but also in the social world outside it. They are not only ways of working with computer data but also general ways of working, ways of thinking, and ways of existing in a computer age…. As we work with software and use the operations embedded in it, these operations become part of how we understand ourselves, others, and the world. Strategies of working with computer data become our general cognitive strategies. At the same time, the design of software and the human-computer interface reflects a larger social logic, ideology, and imaginary of the contemporary society. So if we find particular operations dominating software programs, we may also expect to find them at work in the culture at large” (118).

This is a strong assertion. He goes on to say in the section “Postmodernism” and Photoshop, that “’The logic of selection’ is a good example of this. What was a set of social and economic practices and conventions is now encoded in the software itself…. Although software does not prevent its users from creating from scratch, its design on every level makes it ‘natural’ to follow a different logic—that of selection.” This ties into what Manovich writes about in “’Real’ Wars: Esthetics and Professionalism in Computer Animation.” He quotes Pierre Bourdieu on this topic,

“The denial of low, coarse, vulgar... in a word, natural enjoyment, which constitutes the sacred sphere of culture, implies an affirmation of the superiority of those who can be satisfied with the sublimated, refined, disinterested… pleasures forever closed to the profane. This is why art and cultural consumption are predisposed, consciously and deliberately or not, to fulfill a social function of legitimating social differences” (19).

So if “the sacred sphere of culture” denies what is “natural,” then the professional design of software that makes it natural to choose from a predetermined palette is asserting itself in that more subtle way. As amateur digital artists, we might think that the chasm between media for the masses and what constitutes high culture is closing, but it seems that is just a ploy. As we create what has been praised as “new media art,” the cultured have already moved on to a new definition of art. It’s like a man on foot trying to keep up with a man on bicycle; the best he can do is be where the cyclist once was.

Compositing
So how does compositing play into this theory? Manovich says on page 141, “The connection between the aesthetics of postmodernism and the operation of selection also applies to compositing. Together, these two operations simultaneously reflect and enable the postmodern practice of pastiche and quotation.” So a pastiche is defined as a hodge-podge or jumble of previous works pasted together. A pastiche can also be the deliberate imitation of another artist as homage. Fan fiction is a great example of pastiche as we know it in postmodernism. It seems that quotation falls along those lines as well. Pastiche done well would be an example of compositing, where the individual layers of an art object are “flattened” so they are no longer distinct and separate entities. Manovich also says that “compositing is the key operation of postmodern, or computer-based, authorship…. In the postmodern aesthetics of the eighties, historical references and media quotes are maintained as distinct elements… compositing in the 1990s supports a different aesthetic characterized by smoothness and continuity.” So when the technology evolved, so did our ideas about montage. Prior to this, montage was valued because that is as far as the technology could take it. The once the computer became capable of “smoothness and continuity,” the valuation changed as well.

But how does this align with his social theory? He does extrapolate compositing to architecture, which does fall outside of new media, but does that support the social theory? He does mention “techniques used to create fake realities and thus, ultimately, to deceive the viewer—fashion and makeup, realist paintings, dioramas, military decoys, and VR” (145). But VR doesn’t seek to deceive; you would be hard pressed to find someone using it who doesn’t know it isn’t real. And realist paintings… okay, there’s that one building in Paris that does this well.

So I suppose that military decoys do use this technique. Sometimes quite elaborately. He says, “Montage also becomes a key technology for ideological manipulation, through its employment in propaganda films, documentaries, news, commercials, and so on” (149). And there is that one film he mentions, Wag the Dog that at its time seemed to be thinly veiled truth about the bombing of Iraq ordered by President Clinton on the eve of his impeachment hearing.

Ah, I see. On 158, he writes about filmmakers’ use of compositing as ideology: “Tango… uses layering as a metaphor for the particular overcrowdedness characteristic of socialist countries in the second half of the twentieth century, and for human cohabitation in general.” Then on 159, he follows with, “Compositing can be used to hide this diversity—or it can be used to foreground it, creating it artificially if necessary.”

Wow. I have never felt more manipulated.

Post-Modern Artists' views:
The postmodern as a historical/cultural "condition" based on a dissolution of master narratives or metanarratives (totalizing narrative paradigms like progress and national histories), a crisis in ideology when ideology no longer seems transparent (Jean-François Lyotard , “The Post-Modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge”)
Po-Mo as a phase of knowing and practice, abandoning the assumptions, prejudices, and constraints of modernism to embrace the contradictions, irony, and profusion of pop and mass culture. "High" and "low" culture/art categories made useless and irrelevant, art from outsider and non-Western cultures embraced, consumer society turned inside out. Source