New Media for Children & Young Adults, 2010-11

In case anyone is interested (and if you’re a geek for the CBC, like I am) here’s a link to a very relevant and enlightening podcast that just might spark some good discussion in this class or even in your other non-school life.  You can use the information to become the most educated (sounding) person at any party!

The podcast in question (which I mentioned in my last post) is “Spark,” and you can find it here.

Enjoy!

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!

In exploring the new media landscape over the coming weeks, we will try to identify that which falls into the scope of this course…and that which does not. As with anything labeled “new”, we run the risk of excluding categories of media based strictly on their age, or failing to recognize the relationships among old and new media forms. One of the challenges we confront is that newness is a temporary condition for all media, and so our discussion is immediately dated before we begin. Lev Manovich, in the chapter we read this week, provides some guidance to get this conversation started. He identifies five characteristics of new media, specifically 1) numerical representation, 2) modularity, 3) automation, 4) variability, and 5) transcoding. To begin our discussion, let’s think about this list and see how it applies to the media we would assume naturally fit into our discussion, such as Facebook, SMS novels, MMORPGs (massive multiplayer online role-playing games), or virtual worlds like Second Life (nearly all of which post-date Manovich’s text). Do Manovich’s criteria, ten years since he developed this list, still apply to our current “new media”?

Let’s take an example that blurs the line between old and new media, at least in the sense that it puts traditional media – music crossing several decades, some of it composed and recorded before the personal computer – together in a provocative way. You may have read about or heard the work of “Girl Talk”, which is the stage name of Greg Gillis. His “music” is a mash-up of samples from old and new recording artists that he triggers systematically using a laptop computer. While his collected samples are digital, he triggers them manually, and thus each concert performance is unique. This embarrassingly fawning New York Times profile gives some background: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/magazine/09GirlTalk-t.html?ref=music

Is the work of “Girl Talk” new media? Does it fit with Manovich’s five principles? Can you think of other examples like this one that incorporate old media using contemporary technology?

Welcome to the blog for LIBR 559b, 2010-11, Winter II.  This space will be used to reflect on readings and disseminate other items of interest to the class.  All students are welcome to post on any topic relevant to the course.