New Media Reader: Ch. 26-30

Chronology:

• 1977: Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg publish "Personal Dynamic Media"
• 1980: Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari publish "A Thousand Plateus", Seymour Papert publish "From Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas" and Richard Bolt publishes "Put That There"
• 1981: Theodor Nelson publishes "Proposal for a Universal Electronic Publishing System and Archive"

Summary:

• Kay championed the idea that computers should be accessible and used by everyone and not just the business and engineering elite.
  
• Kay and his partner Goldberg helped create the first generation of notebook through their jobs at Xerox PARC.
• Deleuze and Guattari's text is "rhizomatic" in that it challenges the ideas of dichotomy and paradoxes and asks the reader to reconsider the idea of multiplicities.
  
• Papert views computers as tools for educational purposes. Instead of seeing the machines of purveyors of information, he sees them as something that the student manipulates to learn from. Instead of the computer directly instructing the student, the student learns through active manipulation.
• Bolt believed in the idea of multi modal computing wherein the interface for the usee would require not just simply 2d, touch based interaction but 3d visuals combined with speech recognition.
• Nelson's revolutionary Xanadu platform contains his vision of having everyone connected in the same sphere where photos, text, movies and everything else can be seemlessly connected and colloborated upon. While the platform is meant to be as open as possible, it is still far more structured than the web. It is supposed to be guided towards media sharing.
  

Postmasters/bitforms/Eyebeam

Even though I was born and raised in NYC, I rarely go to art museums (I went to the MoMA for the first time a year ago) so going to these three cutting-edge Chelsea galleries was a new experience for me. While I've experienced modern art before (Tate Modern and MoMA) I've never been a huge fan. It seems to rely more on concept than on actual intrinsic artistic value. While it's not to say a Picasso piece doesn't require context, at least it can impress without it. Most modern art requires some background information and context to even be appreciated. Now without further ado:

Postmasters
I wholeheartedly disliked the entire gallery except the shadow train (Paper Moon) and the can from the ceiling (The Shield of Achilles). The candles on the floor were actually devoid of intrinsic meaning. They were there to represent Dickinson's impressive feat of writing 366 poems in 365 days. While the colors of the candles were appealing, I didn't see anything past that. However, the can hanging from the ceiling were intrinsically appealing. Lying on the floor look upwards, the cans with pinholes of light emanating from them actually gave me the sense of looking at a night sky. Pure awesome:



Bitforms:
The layout of bitforms was very conducive to the art on display. It all seamlessly fitted together with a beautifully present introduction at the beginning. It seemed to take us on a tour of Yael's artwork. Besides the gigantic vagina made out of various languages, the most striking piece there was the art display that reconfigured itself based upon the sound around.



Eyebeam:

I've been to one of their parties before where I was encased in a huge trashbag with holes in it and all you could see where random pinholes of light. Cool, but mostly disconcerting. The project we saw that involved a YouTube video battle was pretty cool. The imaging software behind the project was even cooler. When I held up a physical card with some sort of pattern on it, in place of the pattern, a YouTube video would appear on screen. The software would be able to track the video regardless if I moved the card around in all directions.

Highline

I think the highline is beautiful. The layout is well-done, the numerous types of flora are pretty and actually mesh with NYC's aesthetic and the cute coffee stands and benches make the highline a joy to walk on. However, the fact that NYC plunged 50 million dollars into it is kind of disconcerting. I'm not sure how much business it generates, especially being around the highly gentrified meat packing district.

Being a sourpuss aside, I really enjoyed the highline. I think it's a great way of transforming old NYC to new NYC. Instead of tearing something down, they remade the old into something available to the present. The before and after is also stunning:

Gehry Building

I've seen a few of his buildings and I usually enjoy them a lot. While I was studying abroad in Prague, I would pass by the Dancing House all the time. It looked completely anachronistic surrounded by the perfectly preserved, thousand year old buildings that Prague is famous for. And in New York, I found it funny that Gehry's talents were used to spruce up AIC's headquarters. A lot of the tallest, weirdest buildings in the world are financed by monolithic corporations. There is something funny that the blandest of vocations can sponsor the most creative.

DATA VISUALIZATION

After reading this article I began to appreciate human limitations. We have massive amounts of data swirling around us at all times, yet it's impossible to internalize. The only way we can appreciate this data, and the connections it has to itself, is by taking snippets, reworking them and turning them into elegantly created visualizations. These visual snippets allow us to appreciate the interconnected nature of the universe around us without having to sift through massive amounts of seemingly uncorrelated data. One of the most interesting links was this that talked about how the government is using cloud-computing to store their data. It also talked about how they are relying upon private companies to store their data. What does that mean? What's the implications of Google storing the government's data? Will they eventually store sensitive, private data because it's cheaper?

John Cage

People like Arnold Shoenberg, who rose to prominence with his atonal works, always impress me. These classically trained musicians (Schoenberg and Cage) use their talents to create something completely against the grain. Instead of creating typical music within the Western music canon, they break convention and create something that requires real awareness and thinking. Just like the classically trained Picasso, Cage uses his talents to test his listeners. While I would never have Cage blasting on my iPod, I do enjoy to watch and listen to his stuff from time to time.

William Burroughs cut ups

I was totally surprised with myself. I usually hate random, avantgarde, self-righteous art, but this cut up method of art was really engaging. The words and phrases that emerged from creating unintended combination of words was actually meaningful. But I thought it was more interesting that I thought the random words were meaningful than the actual meaning itself. The fact that I could find power from these random words shows how much sway words have over me. They souned ominious and profound yet they had no intention of doing so. Weird.

Microcosmos

Since Planet Earth is my favorite documentary series, I'm a huge sucker for Microcosmos. I love the humor and drama depicted. Claude Nuridsany and Marie Perennou painstakingly use proper music and editing to create a real narrative for a world of bugs that don't know they're being watched. We feel their pain as a huge water droplet crashes down upon them or happiness when they found a tasty morsel in the dirt. The close-up and personal nature of the documentary allows the viewer a portal into a world that usually goes under our feet. Very illuminating.

New Media Reader: Ch. 21-25

Chronology:

• 1974: Theodor Nelson publishes "Computer Lib" and Augusto Boal publishes "Teatro do Oprimido"
  
• 1975: Nicholas Negroponte publishes "From Soft Architecture Machines"
• 1976: Joseph Weizenbaum publishes "From Computer Power and Human Reason From Judgment to Calculation"
• 1977: Myron Krueger publishes "Responsive Environments"

Summary:

• Nelson envisioned the creative future of computing. Instead of being in awe of their computational power, he saw computers as new media hotspots.
• He also, controversially, believed that these new interfaces and designs for computers should be accessible to the public and should even be placed in a publicly open publishing domain.
• Boal used new media techniques to create a new artform. He wanted to dissolve the line between viewer and participant by having the two interact and become one inter meshed performance piece.
• Negroponte was instrumental in moving physical space into virtual space. By using computers to simulate the physical world, he was able to generate structures in virtual environments to see how they would hold up.
• Weizenbaum created the program ELIZA that would respond to human queries. The program could take on different personalities and would respond accordingly.
• He also created a program called DOCTOR that could act as a surrogate psychotherapist.
• Krueger lived by the maxim "response is the medium" which meant that that user interaction and the interplay between machine and user should be the focus of software development.
  

Marshall McCluhan DVD

Oh boy do I love cheesy special effects! The McCluhan DVD had its fair share of hilarious cross fades and ridiculous reenactments but the content of the movie was great. It told a comprehensive and understandable portrait of McCluhan's media vision. It portrayed his likes, dislikes and opponents. It also displayed him as a god among men (which maybe he was). I thoroughly enjoyed the movie because I knew far too little about McCluhan. His unconventional teaching style and grandiose predictions ostracised him from the rest of the academic community. However, his accuracy eventually showed his critics his potency.

Scott McCloud

While I have never delved too deeply into the wildly intricate world of animated superheroes, I have always appreciated their ascetic. The idea that words and images are usually represented lineally has always baffled me. Isn't it amazing that a single picture can immediately and dynamically capture an entire story while a story has to tell you word by word? While the examples he gave of "non linear" story telling looked a bit wonky, I still see human creativity trumping linear time.

Life-logging

No more! I can't take anymore glances into peoples' personal lives. First we got pictures of intermittent moments, then we got tweets of intimate moments now we have a streaming pipeline directly into peoples' lives! While the social aspect of this confounds me, even irks me, I think recording your day to day activities, for research purposes, is a great idea. You could see where and how you waste time, what you do inefficiently and even discover quirks and other things you never knew about yourself. Who knew I spent 8 hours a day on the interwebs?

Scots Take Laser Aim

I think the idea of completely cataloging our most important sites is a great idea. Being able to remake, edit or simply envision any of the world's constructed or naturally formed wonders is a great step forwards in the accurate preservation of history. Instead of relying on anecdotes, incomplete photo sets and 2d, impersonal diagrams, this company allows us to accurately and completely store our important sites. I wonder if these representations can be our downfall. If we totally scan the entire planet, down to the most minute detail, I think we have the beginnings of the Matrix.

New Media Reader: Ch. 16-20

Chronology:

• 1968: Douglas Engelbart and William English publish "A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect"
• 1970: Les Levine displays his experimental technical art piece at the Jewish Museum and Hans Enzensberger publish "Constituents of a Theory of the Media"
• 1972: Jean Baudrillard publishes "Requiem for the Media" and Raymond Williams publishes "The Technology and the Society"

Summary:

• 1968 Fall Joint Computer Conference occurs in San Francisco with a risky public presentation of new media technologies
  
• The Augmentation Research Center attempts to create technologies that facilitate ease-of-use between user and machine
• ARC developed basic concepts of simple interaction with a digital universe for the layman
• The 1970 exhibition "Software" enabled patrons to freely operate computers in an experimental setting that was completely unique for the time
• Enzensberger envisions a world where everyone is a mobile media mogul and that communities can form around subjects instead of having them dictated by media conglomerates
• Baudrillard expands this idea by saying that refusal of mass accepted forms of dissemination paves the way for technology users to create an equilibrium for society, devoid of producers and consumers
• Winner beleives in the importance of the technology themselves. Within each new piece of important technology, lie the cultural and societal desires that created it. The technology makes itself important simply by existing. It is incorporated into our lives even if it turned off.
• Constant user input and manipulation of new technology makes a better, more usable product. Socialising technology is the future.
  

Erin McKean and WORDNIK

I'll admit, she's super cute (in a funny, platonic way). However, I don't think her 20 minute TED talk really said much besides that fact that she hated linear dictionaries, and that she has a penchant for big words. The idea of a user submitted dictionary (urbandictionary and wikipedia) isn't new, I think her passion and her vast knowledge of the English language could give her creation the advantage. I did think it was interesting how words are not static. They are dynamic, constantly created entities that anyone can make up. This post was samiplastoic!

Piano Stairs

Street interactivity is the bomb! Anything that can make my daily commute more interesting, I highly encourage. Even better, the piano stairs encouraged people to avoid the lethargy inducing escalator and made people enjoy exerting themselves. In a society that favors ordering pizza from their phone, I think this is a great innovation.

ERIC ROSENTHAL

I love media storage as much as the next guy, but damn! Eric brought a new fervor to the conception of capturing images and storing data. He has held numerous respectable positions in a variety of imaging companies (like Kodak). His main passion, using HVS (no it's not a disease, but the Human Vision System) to make correct digital images is impressive. I never truly appreciated the compression and synthesis that current cameras use to capture their images. Computers then meddle with the process more so. There are many consequences to having images so life like that they are life.

New Media Reader: Ch. 14

Chronology:

• 1966: E.A.T. was founded by Billy Kluver, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Whitman, and Fred Waldhauer as a medium for experimental art
• 1967: E.A.T. press release
• 1972: Billy Kluver publishes "The Pavilion"

Summary:

• Art experiments cannot fail
• Kluver helps engineer art that can destroy itself
• John Cage's project involved only capturing naturally occurring sounds at the time of the recording
• Lucinda Childs uses "Vehicle" to show her love of dynamic objects
• Rauschenberg uses tennis and the motions associated with tennis to create a visual piece
• Kluver uses the Pavilion as a new art space for artists interested in dabbling in experimental and unusual mediums and pieces

New Media Reader: Ch. 13

Chronology:

• 1962: Marshall McLuhan publishes "The Galaxy Reconfigured or the Plight of Mass Man in an Individualist Society."
• 1964: Marshall McLuhan publishes "The Medium is the Message"

Summary: "Galaxy Reconfigured"

• The pervasiveness of new media is altering the way we perceive
• Joyce, Ruskin and others believe that media can be all-inclusive and not simply linear
• Instead of focusing on a single instance by a single person, people must become aware of the collective conscious; the intertwined nature of the world
  
• Adam Smith even believes that all work is somehow intertwined with everyone
• There exists a schism within literature: vision is community orientated while the actual writing is individualistic and segmented
• Market society transforms art from vision to product
• McLuhan's famous "the medium is the message" directly relates to Whitehead stating that the method of delivery is of utmost importance.

Summary: "Medium is the Message"

• The simply existence of a new medium has significant societal importance.
• Mediums are potentiality. Seeing what they can do is more important than what they actually are used for (like spelling our a brand in lights)
• Technological media are natural resources on par with wood and gold
• (McLuhan lists many people [Arnold Toynbee, General David Sarnoff] and their ideas to simply disagree with them)

KP Where the Wild Things Are

People like Ken are amazing. They have to create their own tools to create. It's not immediately available like pen and paper where the only impediment is your imagination and skill. Using computer means that not only do you have skill and imagination as stumbling blocks, but also algorithms, processors, memory and proprietary software. It seems so much more difficult to start from scratch from a computer perspective.

Anyways, the techniques Ken describes in his posts are illuminating. I never really appreciate the animations that I see done by the film industry. Since the characters are so cute and ridiculous, I assumed all they had to do was throw marshmallows and good intentions together to make them. It's amazing the techniques they had to specially design to get physical representation (sketches etc.) into a usable, manipulative 3d realm. Sweet