Media is Palimpsestic…
Defining “New Media” is such a complex notion that it’s giving me a headache. Even after reading Manovich, I’m unsure of what to think. I did read the article on Gregg Gillis, and all I can think of is a palimpsest (See image.) Media is constantly evolving and becoming something new, so to define new media is perhaps to say what is the newest incarnation of something. Babbage’s analytical machine is the precursor to the computer as VHS is the pre-cursor to Blu-Ray technology. Books become e-books and Journals become e-journals. It is the new manifestation of these forms that seems to make them new.
I posit, therefore, that New Media is that which is the most current form of a piece of media. Though in a way, this definition can be tricky. Just because a movie can now be filmed and projected in 3-D, does that make film New Media? Or just the process by which it is made? Is the e-book new media? Or just the platform on which you read it? In this way, I argue that “Girl Talk” itself is not New Media so much as the platform through which he entertains. Music is not New Media, but the way that he mixes it through different programs and projects it for an audience is new. New Media changes by how we interact with it, more than the ways in which is develops in and of itself. Perhaps I am incredibly off-track, but this is how I have come to see things after reading Manovich and after listening the “Spark,” a podcast (New Media?) from the CBC.
I realize I have not come to much of a definitive conclusion, but I hope something I have said either makes sense or sparks some discussion. Thanks for listening!
I agree, Rob – trying to define “new media” is a complex and intricate process, and I’m not entirely sure it’s possible to come to a definitive conclusion. Your mention of e-books lead me to think about Manovich’s discussion of automation, which I think is simultaneously the most fascinating and problematic element of new media.
Automation is fascinating, to me, because Manovich writes that it allows that “human intentionality can be removed from the creative process, at least in part” (32). This is amazing to me, as a non-programmer, because I am consistently blown away by what computers can do, how they can be given a code and create universes that parallel our own, and this can now be generated automatically. (It also sort of terrifies me in the sense that I have a slightly irrational fear that computers are eventually going to take over the entire planet and eliminate all humans in an Armageddon-fashion.)
I think it’s problematic in the sense that we have mass access to an unlimited amount of media. Because automation allows for media to be swiftly and easily stored, anyone with a computer and internet access can find hoards of information on any subject. This is great, but also dangerous. I’m not a traditionalist in the sense that I think we should all go back to using quills and parchment, but the mass access to information requires that we don’t need to retain information anymore. There’s no need to learn and memorize the dates of the Great Purge in Russia because a Wikipedia search will tell you the answer in 0.3 seconds.
Which leads me back to e-books. I do think they are a form of new media, because they take old media and reinvent it. They also allow for access to a mass amount of information (your entire library) in one lightweight device. E-readers even come with all the “classic” literary works preinstalled when you buy them. Incredibly convenient, I must say.
To close by return, I don’t think it’s possible to define new media in such a way that will satisfy everybody. But I definitely think Manovich’s five principles are still relevant in helping establish a working definition of “new media.”
jillian
14 Jan 11 at 10:23 pm
I think Rob is right in the difficulty of defining new media, but I disagree about Girl Talk not falling into that category. Gillis’ work has all the elements of Manovich’s principles, with the added bonus of interactivity. I think that in today’s world, the interplay between media and individual is as important to defining new media as the programming elements Manovich speaks to. If music is the platform Girl Talk uses, then he is manipulating its individual parts. In Rob’s definition of new media (which I think is a good one), this would be the most current version of music. Granted, Girl Talk is the most “cutting edge” in this, but mash-ups are definitely du jour.
However, what is so fascinating to me, and the reason I think Girl Talk should be considered new media over other mash-ups and music sampling, is the concerts. I went to a Girl Talk show in Montreal last year, and never before had I seen a live show that was totally interactive between user (the crowd in this case) and programmer (Girl Talk), and media object (computer and song). Girl Talk plays with his audience; he reads the crowd, and varies his sampling based on the feedback. Variability is his weapon of choice, and the crowd responds. Not only that, but then add in video, balloons, toilet paper, and confetti. It’s impossible not to interact with the music and the elements surrounding it.
Perhaps interactivity is inherent in Manovich’s other principles, but I think it deserves to be its own. Does this then exclude some other types of new media? Likely, but in 2011, it’s safe to assume that the user expects to be able to generate their own content when working with any media object.
skmatson
15 Jan 11 at 11:55 am
I think good points have been made on both sides of the “Is Girl Talk new media” question. As a big fan of sample-based music, I’m admittedly a bit biased, but in many ways, what Girl Talk is doing isn’t terribly new in many ways. DJ Shadow’s “Endtroducing…” album will be 15 years old this year, and it was built entirely out of samples, as well. The art of DJing of course goes much further back, and was a purely analogue art-form before it “went digital”. This, I think, is a good reason why Manovich argues that interactivity is not a sufficient requirement to call something New Media. A good DJ performance has always been interactive (and I would put Girl Talk’s performances in the “good DJ” category), but then any live performance, musical or otherwise, has the potential to be interactive.
I think that there is something of a spectrum between New and Old Media, depending on how much of its existence shares the qualities Manovich describes. For example, the Girl Talk CD I have sitting on my shelf is less “New” than the mp3 of it I have on my computer, which contains easily-manipulable metadata and the ability to transcode with a few menu selections. “Newer” still would be Gillis’ own computer setup that he uses to create and perform his music. I think that this is inarguably New Media by any definition we’ve been using, and if I, as an audience member, were to have some small impact on how he uses this software during a performance, then I am participating in New Media.
My favourite New Medium at the moment is podcasting, and I think it fulfills all of Manovich’s requirements, at least to some extent. Podcasts are obviously (1) digital, they are (2) modular in that each episode can have associated metadata, as well as connected web pages containing show-notes and other details. Each individual episode is free to be any type of media that the creator desires, so while they may typically be audio or video, I occasionally get a pdf file or something similar in my podcast feed. (3) Automation is the greatest thing about podcasts, as they are automatically downloaded by the podcast client with little or no human interaction required. Once I have the podcast file, I am able to manipulate it like any other piece of digital information. In fact, many podcasts are released under a Creative Commons license, which may give explicit permission to re-distribute those changes. I think that covers (4) variability quite well.
The only category I struggled with was (5) transcoding, because it seems like a subset of variability to me. From my techy background, transcoding has a very specific definition, such as transcoding the audio data on a CD into the more compact mp3 format. He seems to going after something different with his discussion of “cultural layers” and “computer layers”, but I admit I don’t really see where he’s going with it. All I know is that if I want to transcode a podcast episode from mp3 to Ogg Vorbis or FLAC, or transcribe it using a speech-to-text converter I can, and that’s good enough for me.
kifty
16 Jan 11 at 1:09 am
Jonathan, I’m glad you mentioned DJ Shadow; I was thinking along the exact same lines. Aside from flirting with the limits of fair use, Greg Gillis isn’t doing anything terrifically different from what pioneering electronic and hip hop producers and DJs have been achieving for decades using analogue 4-track mixers and/or turntables.
I would also go further and argue that not only is any “good DJ set” interactive, but within Manovich’s generous definition of the term, any performance or really any piece of artwork at all is inherently interactive as long as one is in some way affected through the experience of seeing/hearing/participating in it.
I think what makes his music “New Media” is simply the fact that is it exists as ones and zeroes in a computer rather than physical grooves or magnetic signals interpreted by a dedicated player. By this definition almost all recently recorded music counts as New Media, as to my knowledge very few (if any) artists still record music in analogue. This makes the resurgence of vinyl in the last decade particularly ironic in that the sound needs to be transcoded back into an analogue signal in order to be compatible with an archaic technology whose apparent selling point is its lossless quality.
That said, I still buy new albums on vinyl from time to time. Are these analogue representations of digitally recorded music New Media artifacts? I think one could argue either way, but I find the fact that consumers (like myself) continue to buy them a fascinating example of how people tend to resist the “cultural reconceptualization” that Manovich describes.
In a similar vein I found Manovich’s distinction between “the cultural layer” and “computer layer” of New Media, and his implication that the separation is not always so cut and dry, to be particularly interesting. It reminded me of some early-era internet artwork by JODI in which they hid ASII drawings in the source code of seemingly meaningless websites (use the “view source code” option on your browser to see it).
One of my favorite current examples of New Media is Chris Milk’s “interactive film” created in support of the new Arcade Fire Album (and Google Chrome), “The Wilderness Downtown”. I feel it’s a particularly good example of the modularity and interactivity that Manovich describes in its poignant use of the Google Earth API. (Note: it requires Google Chrome or another HTML 5 compliant browser to run properly).
schuyler
16 Jan 11 at 8:47 pm
I think I made a typo in my link for the wilderness downtown.. try this one:
http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/
schuyler
16 Jan 11 at 8:51 pm
Every post contains interesting points of view and I agree with everybody that is very difficult to make one unique and consensual definition of new media.
I agree with Rob’s affirmation that the work of Girl Talk -which was completely unknown for me until today- should be named as palimpsestic. The work of a DJ is to select and play recorded music to a specific audience. In this sense, Gillis’ work goes beyond this: transforming, joining and creating new songs to get close to the concept of palimpsestic, a category which implies the lack of authorial figure. In the contemporary context, the idea of an author, as well as the idea of intellectual property, is a blurry territory. This aspect is really important when we are trying to define the new media. Taking this into consideration, Gillis’ work doesn’t seem to embody completely the characteristics of the new media.
On the other hand, interactivity, as defined in Manovich text, is not present in Girl Talk’s songs. During a party or a concert, the DJ or the band don’t read the “real” mood of the public but what the DJ or the band imagine is the desire of the audience. In this sense, this discursive or symbolic practice is closer to Althusser’s interpellation “to mistake the structure of somebody’s else mind for our own” (Manovich, 61). So, is the DJ really reading our desires or imposing his own point of view, building his own audience as a measure or projection of his own will?
magdalena
16 Jan 11 at 9:47 pm