The parallel development of film and computing machines as Manovich describes early in the book is something fascinating I hadn't really considered. Zuse's computer in particular describes a relationship between the two media that doesn't really come into play until much later. It is strange to think that the artistic side of media feeds the behemoth that will become mass media through computer technology, but as Jacquard's loom demonstrates, there has been this back-and-forth between technology and art for quite some time. In many cases ideas or tools of artists inspire others to build on those concepts to develop new technology, which can in many cases can be used to move art into areas that before were impossible to conceive before that technology, as we discussed last week.
When describing what doesn't distinguish new media from it's predecessors, the mention of lossy formating raises and important point about how data size and format has changed in the last decade and reminded me of why I don't use JPEGs. In many cases online and offline original lossy formats are being replaced online by lossless Portable Network Graphics and Tagged Image File Format files. Image files now contain additional information, from alpha channels in certain files to layers that before could only be viewed by programs like Photoshop. My education in computers has followed this development somewhat, with my origins in programming in QBasic and C++ to Java, Photoshop, Maya, and others, each bringing media that at one point was too massive to encompass in one device into an icon on our desktop that allows us to edit film, photographs, and 3D models with the click of a mouse.
The thought of what this means for the future is baffling. We can move from lossy to lossless and perhaps on to something else. When computers are capable of reproducing anything flawlessly, what is the next step? Maybe it's possibilities such as Ventner's "Critter Creator" that seem absolutely fantastical, but may not be so far fetched. The thought of being able to create life in a lossless format is a concept worth mulling over, especially if this means using a computer to create a human with no biological link to any other human; an Adam of sorts. Brings new meaning to playing God (or not playing, as Ventner said).
Externalizing thoughts and ideas struck me as a particularly fascinating remark by Manovich that ties into more than just "drawings, photographs, and other visual forms"; even our textual thoughts and ideas are distributed through means such as Facebook and Twitter, on Blogs and forums. These, too, represent standardization of thoughts. It becomes numerical and modular, from number of posts and the time the post was made to the 140 characters in that Tweet. It is strange to think that giving individuals the capacity to express their thoughts through images and words also standardizes them, giving them free reign to be unique along with their billion closest friends.
Thinking that the GUI is similar for work and play is particularly true from what I've witnessed, but I've also taken a few classes that are specifically about video games. Not only do we keep cut and paste functionality, there's saving, menus, and other details. Second Life blends the recreational functionality with business in an environment that is very much a virtual space with avatars similar to those found in games, but many of the locations in the MMO represent serious businesses and organizations, providing information and advertising.
All throughout the book Manovich seems to remark on the tie-ins between work and play, media designed for calculations and media designed for entertainment and the convergence between the two. While I certainly wish work now felt more like play, there are many instances where the line is blurred, from "Chinese gold-farmers" to occupations that incorporate more goal-based activities and use them as tools to keep workers happy and motivated. If the next level is turning work into play, then I definitely like where this is going.
Thanks for your observations as a computer techie, James. I’m glad that this week’s readings appealed to you. I had never heard of “lossy compression,” which Manovich defines as “the technique of making image files smaller by deleting some information” (p. 54). It seems unbelievable when I watch fictional crime TV shows such as the “CSI} triology, in which the crime scene investigators enlarge a digital photograph of the tiny reflection in someone’s eye so clearly that they can easily identify the killer. I think, “that tiny image did not have that much information in it so that they could enlarge that much at clearly see such detail.”
ReplyDeleteI remembered that few years ago the lossy JPEG was the most popular photo format for website use. And now the trend has changed to use lossless PNG more than JPEG due to the PNG file size is a lot smaller than JPEG while the image quality stays the same. I wonder what is the new language of the web image format will be few years from now. Still lossless or something else?
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