New Media Reader: Ch. 31-35

Chronology:

• 1982: Bill Viola publishes "Will There Be Condominiums in Data Space?"
• 1983: Ben Bagdikian publishes "The Endless Chain" and Ben Shneiderman publishes "Direct Manipulation: A Step Beyond Programming Languages"
  
• 1984: Sherry Turkle publishes "Video Games and Computer Holding Power"
• 1985: Donna Haraway publishes "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, technology and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century"

Summary:

• Media artists rely upon the accessibility of the mediums around them. When film was cheap and more freely available in the 1960s, that became the new medium and once new add-ons to the film were used (projectors, editing systems etc.) these artists would incorporate them into their work. Bill Viola was an example of this process.
• The lines between old media and new media are blurring. Since the old media titans are realizing the importance and prevalence of new media, they are beginning to integrate into the new media sphere. The most recent example is Comcast (a gigantic ISP) acquiring NBC (a media empire). Here is the NYTimes articles. Is it dangerous to have the people providing access to the internet also providing the content?
• As with the previous ideas within the technological realm, the idea of making the computing processes more udnerstandable and relatable is continued by Shneiderman and the idea of direct manipulation. Instead of relying on programming languges to instruct the computer, the idea of direct manipulation is to have a graphical input for each step of the process instead of coded computer language.
• Using psychological analysis, Turkle explored the popularity of video games through the question "why do people enjoy them?" She figured that people enjoy utilizing video games because the interface is catered to their usage which allows the layman to enjoy computing. In addition, players are able to act out personas that they usually don't utilize in their daily lives.
• Haraway's essay revolves around the idea of seeing what we have now, and how we can progress from here. Instead of dwelling on the past, and any romaticised ideas of purity the past should contain, Haraway focuses upon how we can constantly manipulate the present to make a brighter future.
  

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.