Week 3: Digital M. 1/18/11

A. ADMIN

Internet finds of the week:
Gorgeous and Quirky IamamIwhoamI
Immaculate Stacking: me.ow

-Attendance Sheet

-Class Make-up Day

B. Reading/Reminders/Contact (20min)

What is digital media? What is particular to art making with dm?

Lev Manovich "Eight Propositions":

1. New Media versus Cyberculture
2. New Media as Computer Technology Used as a Distribution Platform
3. New Media as Digital Data Controlled by Software
4. New Media as the Mix Between Existing Cultural Conventions and the Convention of Software.
5. New Media as the Aesthetics that Accompanies the Early Stage of Every New Modern Media and Communication Technology.
6. New Media as Faster Execution of Algorithms Previously Executed Manually or through Other Technologies.
7. New Media as the Encoding of Modernist Avant-Garde; New Media as Metamedia
8. New Media as Parallel Articulation of Similar Ideas in Post-WWII Art and Modern Computing.

C. Other concepts/artifacts to consider as fodder for art making:

1. Loop/Iteration: one cycle of a series of instructions repeatedly cycled over by a computer program until some specified condition is satisfied.
2. Modularity: covers the principle that new media is composed of modules or self-sufficient parts of the overall media object.
3. Algorithm: a set of simple instructions that combine to accomplish a task. Computer processes are algorithms. Algorithms could also be accomplished by hand (often at a much, much slower rate).
4. Transcoding: is the process of converting data from one format to another so the output will be displayed in an appropriate manner for the device. An example would be converting DV video shot from a camcorder into MPEG-2 for burning a DVD.
5. Variability: something that can exist in different potentially infinite versions like remixes. Different ways/approaches to navigate and encounter an object.
6. Interface: The point of interconnection between two entities; The point of interconnection between two systems or subsystems; The input devices (mouse keyboard) and graphics that allow for interaction between a user and a computer HCI (human computer interface); A thin layer or boundary between two different substances or two phases of a single substance.
7. Surveillance:monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people and often in a surreptitious manner.
8. Capture: get: succeed in catching or seizing. Often tied to surveillance also tied to “capturing” footage into a software program from a video camera.
9. Feedback loop: a circuit that feeds back some of the output to the input of a system
10. Non-linearity:EX: Nonlinear narrative or disrupted narrative is a narrative technique, sometimes used in literature, film, hypertext websites and other narratives, wherein events are portrayed out of chronological order and are usually dictated by user choices and set parameters within the media.
11. Signal: an electric quantity (voltage or current or field strength) whose modulation represents coded information about the source from which it comes;any incitement to action; any nonverbal action or gesture that encodes a message.
12. Interrupt: a signal that temporarily stops the execution of a program so that another procedure can be carried out.
13. Digital vs. Analog: a digital system is a data technology that uses discrete (discontinuous) values. By contrast, non-digital (or analog) systems use a continuous range of values to represent information.
14. Archive: collection of records; A file archiver is a computer program that combines a number of files together into one archive file, or a series of archive files, for easier transportation or storage.
15. Memory: data storage device is a device for recording (storing) information (data). Recording can be done using virtually any form of energy, spanning from manual muscle power in handwriting, to acoustic vibrations in phonographic recording, to electromagnetic energy modulating magnetic tape.
16. Compositing: layering; Compositing is a broad term for creating complex visual effects made up of several different types of sources like 2D, 3D and stills; Live-action shooting for compositing is variously called “blue screen,” “green screen,” “chroma key,” and other names.
17. Real-time: within the media is a method of narratology within a motion picture, television series, radio program, computer game, comic book, or comic strip wherein events being represented or portrayed exactly as it occurs.
18. Remediation: the representation of one medium in another (Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin 1999).
19. Materiality: the particular physical attributes and presence specific to a medium.
20. Metamedia: as coined in the writings of Marshall McLuhan, metamedia referred to new relationships between form and content in the development of new technologies and new media

D. Critique