TIme Line 1

01.The Garden of Forking Paths,
Jorge Luis Borges, 1941
--Helped develop concept of hypertext
novel (def. Novel can be read in many
different ways)
--greatly influenced the first hypertext
novel Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar,
1963
02.As We May Think,
Vannevar Bush, 1945
--published in Atlantic Monthly, 1945
--Bush main creator behind the US
Military Industrial Complex during
WWII, 1940
--Bush developed first analog computing
projects at MIT
--Bush developed new ideas in
information storage, "MEMEX"
--MEMEX is a mechanized personal library
in the shape of a desk

Borges and the Internet

Although I have read “The Garden of Forking Paths” several times, but I wasn’t sure how it would work as a hypertext fiction. After reading it in this light, I felt that the story worked as an introduction to digital media on two levels. First, the internal story of Ts’ui Pen’s novel, the fictional labyrinth which branches infinitely over time, is a model for the circularity and infinite variety available through computing and the internet. Secondly, the frame story also happens to describe the context of the birth of computing, which Vannevar Bush is writing out of. It describes a situation of World War II intelligence and codes, of increased communication and global contact. It also shows an increasingly complicated world enshrouded in many layers of intellectual ambiguity. All of these themes are the same ones that contributed to the development of the first computers.
In the New York Times article, the author points to several Borges stories as containing prescient metaphors of Internet technologies. But these stories were originally intended as metaphors for ideas much more metaphysical, spiritual, and epistemological. Conversely, its interesting to think of these Internet technologies, like wikipedia or Google, and how they can be theorized as metaphors for these same ideas, as microcosms and models for human existence and thought.

Borges Documentary

Borges has been one of my favorite authors since I was a teenager. In this documentary, I was excited to see how they would adapt some of his more “new media”-y, more theoretical stories to the screen. I was a little disappointed that they stuck to fairly straightforward narratives. I would love to see images of the Library of Babel, for instance. That being said, I was interested to learn more about Borges the man, a subject I had never investigated before. It’s hard to imagine the world view of a man who is capable of coming up with narratives and metaphors that are so all encompassing and microcosmic, so maze-like but so contained. I thought the documentary did a good job of representing his background and influences. I loved seeing what he looked like and hearing him speak about himself. I was also surprised that he was so spiritual, although in retrospective this makes sense, because as disconcerting as they may be, all his stories seem to point to some higher organization and purpose. This insight gave me a new reading of the texts.

Microcosmos DVD

This movie was the perfect example of the synthesis between technology and art. Although to a certain extent this movie was a showcase of the technology, and the images are traditionally scientific in nature, they were presented and choreographed in a way that was aesthetically beautiful, constructed anthropomorphic narrative and evoked emotions. I loved the unexpected visual metaphors and the brilliant colors that were discovered by the microcosmic camera. Who would have guessed the visual similarity between a caterpillar and a Chinese lion? Who knew that a scene of a bee feeding on nectar could be so explicitly pornographic? Even more amazing than the images, which may be familiar to some from other microscopic imagery, were the sounds of the insects, which I would have not even thought of trying to imagine before. The technology seemed especially remarkable after reading Bush’s post WWII hypothesis of what a microcamera might entail, from its use of tiny film, to it’s application in miniaturizing libraries. We realize how many doors digital technology opened that would hardly have been reached from any other route.

The Engine Room

This article demonstrated how the paradigm shift inherent in the internet has been brought into the world of advertising. It reminded me of in the sixties when advertisers began to realize that the new generation didn't want to buy products to fit in but to stand out. Today's generation does not only want to be an individual, they want to interact with the media. It seems that hewlett-packard and MTV were among the first to recognize this. David Roman VP of HP, says: "We don't want it to be advertising, we want it to be real." And in digital media, he found exactly the blurry line needed between fact and fantasy to make this transformation possible.

New Media Reader introduction 2

This essay raised a lot of philosophical questions about what art, and artists are. When the author made statements like the internet is more complex, unpredictable and dynamic than any novel, or hypothesizes about a future when films will be made to tailor to the viewers preference, he ignores the agency of the artist. Although I agree that the lone artist creator may be an ideal of the past, nevertheless I think that an art work is something whose form and content is dictated by who ever created it, in order to convey a certain message or feeling. It is not just a fluid collection of anything and everything. While I also appreciated the insight that new mediums like HCI, finalcut or photoshop will become the lenses through which we view all culture, I was disturbed by his suggestion that the engineers of these technologies are the most famous artists of our times. To use an old media analogy, if you invented a new kind of printing press, you might not necessarily be the person who will use it to make the most beautiful or interesting prints. The skill set needed to develop a technology may not be the same one needed to communicate through it most effectively. But I don't even feel confident making these assertions about new media. They highlight are some of the distinctions that are broken down in Manovich's article, and as we go on, I'm sure these questions about the nature of art and the artist will be brought up again and again.

Time Line 1

01.The Garden of Forking Paths,
Jorge Luis Borges, 1941
--Helped develop concept of hypertext
novel (def. Novel can be read in many
different ways)
--greatly influenced the first hypertext
novel Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar,
1963
02.As We May Think,
Vannevar Bush, 1945
--published in Atlantic Monthly, 1945
--Bush main creator behind the US
Military Industrial Complex during
WWII, 1940
--Bush developed first analog computing
projects at MIT
--Bush developed new ideas in
information storage, "MEMEX"
--MEMEX is a mechanized personal library

in the shape of a desk

The Birth of the Internet

The documentary "Birth of the Internet" underlined a dichotomy of the internet that I often wonder about. Sometimes, for example when watching web series, I get really excited about the internet as a tool which allows every creative voice to be heard. It's the internet as the great leveler. Other times, for example when hearing about censorship of the internet in China and other countries, I get paranoid about the internet as a tool of control and as a propagator of power structures. The documentary offered evidence for both cases. It showed how the internet was developed and given to the public through government intiatives. But it also showed how it was mostly made by innovative individuals working outside the system, and stressed how it was a community of free sharing. The way that the internet can manifest both these roles is shown in the documentary when it discusses how the internet is so new and crazy, that there are relatively few laws governing it. This may allow governments and corporations to engage in activities online that may be unconstitutional or invasive, but it also allows a greater freedom of expression to individual users. Future internet legislation or lack thereof will shape which of these roles the internet will ultimately take on.

Chris Landreth, Ryan, and Bingo

Obviously, I'm a new media affeciando, otherwise I wouldn't be in this class at all, but one thing I just can't get down with is digital animation. I've really tried to love it, and I DO love its application as CGI and special effects in live action films, but as a medium in its own right, I just find its aesthetics to be unsubtle, soulless, and cloying. This especially troubles me as someone from the bay area, where Pixar is a huge and extremely innovative creative industry, as well as one I could definitely see myself being a part of. The methods of animation that Chris Landreth used in "Ryan" were extremely creative and effective in conveying his themes of psychic scars and disentigration. The plays on perspective and 3d effects he used would be difficult if not impossible to do with traditional animation techniques. But when he shows his style side by side with Ryan Larkin's gorgeous, psychadelic, hand painted animations, it just drives home what I perceive to be digital animation's shortcomings. One ray of hope was in the huge refinements in style and technology that separated "Bingo" from more recent "Ryan." Today's digital animation is light years beyond both of these in terms of technologies of representation. Like all new media, this is a medium still in its infancy, and I'm sure future developments will be mind blowingly exciting. Nevertheless, I have a feeling I'll still be the old fogey at the latest critically acclaimed Pixar extravaganza muttering about Felix the Cat while everyone else goes "what the hell is she talking about?"

New Media Reader Introduction and The Guild

1. Technophobia, library versus social space
Both the web series "The Guild" and "The New Media Reader" challenge a common misconception of computers or the internet as isolating devices. The stereotype of the gamer is of a troll-like, Asperger's ridden, thirty year old teenager afraid to leave his parent's basement, and immersing himself instead in a delusional, solitary virtual reality. Apocalyptic visions of a computer dominated future abound, as in the recent film Wall-E, where human beings live in self contained internet pods, unable to see the reality, or the fellow humans, beyond their computer screens. Why so much fear of the internet?
As Janet H. Murray points out in her introduction, "Inventing the Medium," computer programs were initially invented around two themes, archiving information, and promoting social interaction and networking. Even today, the most popular sites, google, and facebook or myspace continue these two first goals. Doesn't the internet promote connections between people rather than isolate. In "The Guild," the protagonists certainly have created fantasy personas to hide from their real lives, but the central conceit and humor of the show derives from the surprising ways in which their online relationships cross over into the real world.
I think the fear of the internet derives from its twin roles. Because of its identity as a carrier of information, people have trouble seeing computers and the internet as a medium for creativity and artistic expression. They feel somehow gypped or cheapened when "virtual reality" does not coincide with "reality reality." This is illustrated by Murray's example of the therapist computer program, which upset people who thought it was supposed to provide real advice, when it was intended as a humorous creative project. It seems as though the interactivity of the medium is what takes it to the next level. Maybe when people have such an intimate relationship and put so much of themselves into the medium, they have have trouble either in accepting that in might be fantasy or untrue, or don't want to take it too seriously.
2. Image versus Text
I was surprised that Murray was focused on the computer as an outgrowth of text or literary traditions, and barely mentioned the role of the image. The development of New Media seems to parallel the development of photography and film a century before. These mediums were initially conceived for documentary and informational purposes, and had trouble gaining recognition as artistic tools. People who are worried about video games making kids violent, or are in an uproar about people's assumed online identities, reminds me of the myth of people running out of the theater when seeing the first moving picture of a train.
Also, the "potato root," non linear thinking that Murray describes as characteristic of new media, seems to stem from the culture of images, which is also intimately connected to the twentieth century war traumas, and Borges' labyrinthine prose. Computer and internet technology seems to me a natural outpouring of the vast, disjointed archive of individual images that form the modern consciousness.
3. Personal Inspiration
Of course, "The Guild" was inspiring in its low budget production and subsequent success. I have always had a secret dream of being a controversial youtube celebrity. All I need is a gimmick and a thick skin. Maybe internet stardom should be my semester goal.
Also as someone who has worked on internet archives, I have been thinking about the artistic possibility of the archive. The thin membrane between information and fantasy on the internet makes this idea more appealing. An archive could be used to tell a fictional narrative, and it's circular, non narrative format could make it more convincing and all encompassing, like a Borges Labyrinth.