2008 Fall: Theoretical Constructions in Contemporary Art

I enjoyed Manovich's essay -- this part of his essay -- a great deal, largely because it was rife with examples and very clearly written, despite what can be difficult and abstruse subject matter. Manovich is speaking of the merging of computer and media, the shift to "new media," which has caused the identity of both computer and media to change: "the identity of media has changed even more dramatically than that of the computer." Instead of summarizing Manovich's principles of new media, I will comment on something Manovich says about the third principle, automation: "Numerical coding of media...and modular structure of a media object...allow to automate many operations involved in media creation, manipulation and access. Thus human intentionality can be removed from the creative process, at least in part." This is the aspect of new media I find most interesting -- the removal of the human. Manovich's statement is reminiscent of Bourriaud's remark that: "With computer graphics, it is actually now possible to produce images which are the outcome of calculation, and no longer of human gestures." I don't think that before the computer the idea of creation could be linked with automation; the idea of automated, non-human creation, especially that of a "high level" (such as internet bots, virtual theater characters, and computer games), strikes me as something quite profound and potentially incredibly helpful. In a way, computers can display "intelligence," can "understand" us and respond in a creative way.

With old media, "numerous copies could be run off from the master, and...they were all identical. New media, in contrast, is characterized by variability. Instead of identical copies a new media object typically gives rise to many different versions." Manovich's statement reminds me of Benjamin's idea of the "aura" of an object. While it may be incorrect to say this, perhaps the "aura" of old media may "wither" in the "age of mechanical reproduction," since old media is reproduceable, but the "aura" of new media cannot, since it is variable or "liquid."

Both Manovich and Bourriaud seem to argue that the logic of various technologies (the computer, the camera, etc.) affect cultural logic, thus changing the ways in which we perceive and think about the world: "we may expect the computer layer to affect the cultural layer" (Manovich). The "language of computers" is blending with our cultural thinking, and is becoming a meaningful second language to us.

My own art work is heavily dependent on the computer: for my "multiple photo photorealistic" work, I take hundreds of digital photos and must be able to sift through them efficiently to find those of a higher quality. With various computer programs, I can enhance my photos, create helpful scene, color, texture, and environment effects, and in general thoroughly organize all of my photos. I also make heavy use of the internet to browse for images that may assist my drawings.

As a culture undergoing computerization we might want to consider coining a new term for media studies and Manovich suggests we look to the computer sciences and into the next phase of progression which would be software studies. As in the Bourriaud article we look at tools of industrialization which not only artists use but the media use as well. Manovich shows that with the computer as tool, the standardization of parts and the separation of the process brought about by the industrial revolution can lead to individual customization as opposed to mass conformity.
Standardization, modularity, automation and variability are natural systems for the computer, all chosen by the user, who is creating a customized program. In a post industrial society the new media is about the individual, tailored lifestyle, to support that we are indeed unique in our tastes, thoughts and choices. Of interest to me was the statement that choice involves a moral responsibility. In the land of interactive users the labor is passed from the author to the user and this may shift of constrints to variables as the user has to make a choice can cause moral anxiety. This echoes the thoughts in Baudrillard's " After the Orgy " in my mind about how freedom to do anything freaks people out.
Following the progression of computerized media Manovich gets to the heart of his topic which is the computer's organization of data and how it is stored leaves the human culture and moves into the " computer's own cosmogony ". The transcoding of our culture into media as computer data begs the question of what theoretical framework do we use to understand the new form of data.

This article displayed the workings of new media in a clear way that gave a voice to ideas I had half-formed in my head, particularly about websites, Photoshop, and graphic design programs. I have been so steeped in this world that it is refreshing to step out and view it from a historical perspective, thinking about what has changed and what it means. Even at the base level of the language we use when talking about computers (as Rowan pointed out), there are all these words that I throw around but I haven’t really thought about their root meaning, such as “digitize� actually meaning to make into digits, numbers.

The aspect of new media that Manovich touches upon that most directly affects my art work is Photoshop. It’s both a blessing and a curse, like much new media. Photoshop makes it is so easy to move pixels around, they are so malleable, like paint. In the darkroom, if you have a hair or smudge on your negative when you print it, you have to waste time and resources reprinting it or touching it up with ink, usually with mixed success. I don’t miss it. But this ease of manipulation has brought up new issues about what level of it is acceptable in photoshop before a photo becomes something more than just a photo. One has to set new rules for one’s self regarding this. We have terms like “photo illustration� or “digital manipulation� to refer to photographs that are overworked. Whether a photo has been manipulated can drastically change how one views that photo. Has anyone seen Loretta Lux’s photos? I like some of her work, but my ideas about them shifted once I realized that she manipulated them extensively, such as making the children’s heads larger so they would look strange, otherworldly. ( http://www.artnet.com/artwork/424705231/424639131/spring.html )

I was also particularly interested in Manovich’s discussion of the logic of new media; “If the logic of old media corresponded to the logic of industrial mass society, the logic of new media fits the logic of the postindustrial society, which values individuality over conformity.� It suspect this logic helped to create new media, and is now being reinforced by it. I’m reminded of how uncustomizable television used to be (the epitome of mass culture). There were a few channels, and you watched whatever was on them, at the time they were broadcast. You had to conform yourself to the TV if you wanted to participate in mass culture-- you had to learn to like whatever was shown, and move your schedule around to watch it. As Manovich says, “In industrial mass society everyone was supposed to enjoy the same goods – and to share the same beliefs.� This is still the case for some, but the paradigm has shifted. I like to be entertained, but the old way is so clunky I don’t use it. If there is a show I like, a pretty rare occurrence, I either watch it online or on dvd whenever I like. (I got addicted to watching the Daily Show online during the past month). It’s much more satisfying to follow one’s own tastes in this way as it’s become so much easier to find media that fit’s ones tastes. This customization is becoming expected, and if you don’t provide it you are soon to be obsolete. This applies to us as artists as well. You expect to be able to see an artist’s work online, to read about them. Now I’m feeling nervous about needing to work on a good artist website.

One more point-- I remember we were once discussing the internet’s responsibility for the loss of unique local cultures, but when after reading this, I’m starting to think that maybe it is at the same time opening up a possibility for new unique cultures in the landscape of American mass culture, because of the increased availability of media/music/art/movies that aren’t in the mainstream.

By running through a brief history of new media, beginning with modularity and moving through to automation, variability and transcoding, Manovich describes how it follows the logic of “individual customization� as opposed to the “mass standardization� that was so typical of post-industrial society. In today’s world of the consumer and businesses catering to the masses, digital technology is almost a refreshing moment for the unique needs of the individual. I love the level of customization and the instant gratification that a computer can provide for its user, and I think that Manovich does an excellent job of explaining how new media got to this place.

Manovich’s section on modularity and the idea of smaller elements, such as pixels, combined into larger objects brings me back to Kandinsky’s Point, Line and Plane. Manovich writes,“…A new media object consists of independent parts, each of which consists of smaller independent parts, and so on, down to the level of the smallest ‘atoms’.� Kandinsky, treated art as a science and sought to break down art into points, or “sharply defined units.� Yet the points that Kandinsky refers to don’t necessarily take the form of a unit, as we know he also placed emphasis on sound and language.

Getting back to the idea of customization, I immediately thought of the website for the retail store H&M. On this site, a user can enter a virtual fitting room where they create a custom model that. in effect, represents them. One can upload a picture of their face, fill in all their measurements, height, weight, etc. and can even choose a background environment. Once the model is complete, the user is then ready to dress them from a store full of virtual H&M clothing. I suppose this activity could be the next best thing for actually going to the store and physically trying clothing on, yet in my mind it is no substitute.

I am also interested in Manovich’s consideration of human simulation. When speaking of a game he played at SIGGRAPH, Manovich writes, “All of my opponents appeared as simple blobs covering a few pixels of my VR display; at this resolution, it made absolutely no difference who was human and who was not.� In simulating people, the computer also seems to create a level of human substitutability, which goes back to what Rowan mentions on removal of the human and a computer’s display of intelligence. I am soon reminded of my constant frustrations in playing chess against my computer. Somehow it always knows what my next move would be and how to defeat me relentlessly…or maybe I just need to improve my chess game.

In the 1980’s and 90’s, French artist Hubert Duprat was working with caddis fly larvae. Beginning by removing their own natural casing in his studio environment, Duprat then placed the exposed larvae in an aquarium with different materials with which the bugs could go about creating new casings. He provided them with tiny pieces of gold, as well as with precious and semi-precious stones. The result was a series of amazingly beautiful, ornate little objects, eventually discarded by the larvae as they moved into the fly state. Discussion of this work naturally leads to the role of the artist, and to the distinction between the work of the Artist and that of Nature. The insect was the craftsman in these pieces, while the artist the generated the idea and set up the circumstances necessary for the bug to do what he does naturally. It is interesting that now, in our discussion of new media, we are again examining the role of an artist. He or she uses technology to set up a situation in which culture plays the part of nature (the larvae). With new media, the artist often sets the stage for interaction between the general public and a computer of some kind, with the resulting product being the piece of collective art.

An example of this idea is Jonathan Harris’ work. During his talk on art and technology, Ali displayed images from Harris’ We Feel Fine project. In this work, emotions are “harvested� from various blogs, and used to create a visual, dynamic piece that is constantly evolving. The end result can be beautiful or interesting to watch. Harris is setting up the situation for this to occur by writing the appropriate code, while the general public is unconsciously doing the work to create the piece. Participants do not choose to involve themselves, and many will remain perpetually unaware that a work of art is being conceived. The piece of art itself is created by these intersubjective experiences, and the artist can stand by and watch.

Manovich touches upon this idea in his section on automation. I found the most interesting area to be his description of the high-level automation of media creation, “which requires a computer to understand, to a certain degree, the meanings embedded in the objects being generated, that is, their semantics.� The result of this concept is the ability of a computer based technology to react in real time to human actions. Of course this is not a new idea, as computer games have been around for quite awhile now. However, I enjoyed the breakdown the author gave of our fascination with the human-computer interface (the screen, of course). “In short, computer characters can display intelligence and skills only because programs place severe limits on our possible interactions with them. Put differently, computers can pretend to be intelligent only by tricking us into using a very small part of who we are when we are communicating with them.� Maybe this is because we know that computers are not natural inventions, and therefore we don’t expect them to be innately “intelligent.� We expect our interactions to be basic, and for the relationship to be predictable. What would be interesting to me would be to see this relationship grow in subtleties. Perhaps this is why I am most drawn to Harris’ work, which is beginning to draw a picture for us of our culture’s emotional state.

Principals of new media

One thought that crosses my mind in Principals of New Media is the question; Are computers The new media? Why don’t we just call this computer art or software art? Words are discrete information and I apparently can only take one at a time and any change from my known meaning takes awhile to digest into the New meaning. Reading this essay I feel asleep more than once, and due to reading only in the evening it may be my fault, but I kept going back and I will try to figure out what it is I am getting from this essay on New Media a.k.a. computer language and programming.

Now the numeration as representation has always been a little fascinating to me, this is usually where I disassociate with programming and realize I will never use new media. The abstract language, based on the human language and our mechanized systems of industrial production does make sense as to how computerization was invented and works, how else do we grow but from existing roots in culture. It was nice to see Lichtenstein’s name to describe media units that create a whole meaning. I understand there is huge potential in this new media but in art it seems to be doing what painting does, visually communicate, expect new media can be interactive. It is this Human interaction that is changing the culture industry, and maybe changing the art industry. The art industry though, is growing into more braches due to New Media, such as graphic design, web design, advertising, video and performance as well as computerized compositions and global interactions. I like the part about old ways of Mass production and a socialized society verses the individually created new media bring about individualization to the masses. This could be a downfall, due to never having to leave your home, but also a way for everyone to find self-expression in their choices all through the World Wide Web.

The end of this essay, brought me to ideas about HAL 9000 from 2001: Space Odyssey, where computers have a mind of their own and indeed they have “a layer� of their own. This is one of the best things about computers and their information exchange is this layer where they communicate with each other to bring us our results, I think I’m getting this transcoding idea right? I see how this New Media is changing culture, I feel like I am in the middle of it and resisting it because of it’s abstraction and numbers, but my niece, who is twelve, has grown up with computers and knows no life without this system.

I think Areca makes a good point about Photoshop (and other such new media) as a mixed blessing. There's a certain physical cleanliness and ease and efficiency to new media like Photoshop that may appeal to some people, but there also seems to be a hidden aesthetic danger to it -- the danger of overworking an image, making it so "perfect" so as to be unnatural, of compromising the "integrity" and the "naturalness" of the image. There is a power in new media that is not present with "old media," a power to manipulate and transform images in ways that are new, but also perhaps excessive, unnatural.

Regarding Areca's and Robin's points about "individual customization" in a world filled with new media -- I was thinking that while such a system may indeed serve to improve and promote the individual, it may also serve to spoil the individual. In all our efforts to please ourselves, entertain ourselves, suit ourselves, save ourselves, perhaps we are being pulled away from ideas that lift other people up and make their lives better. While the logic of new media may value "individuality over conformity," I wonder if it may also value selfishness over selflessness. When we sit in front of the computer, it's still all about "me." Just an argument...

Robin, do you play chess? We should play sometime! :)

Manovich described the “new media� mainly from the aspect of the software development and I appreciate his concise explanation. But I think his introduction is mainly focused on the structure and the function of tools, and many of the works he described are more of tools than a work of art. Broodthaers' quote describes the relationship between tools and art in a similar perspective as mine, “the primer for the idea of DECOR that might be typified by the idea of the object reinstated with a real function, in other words, the object here is no longer itself considered as artwork...�

Manovich explained the idea of what web developers would call as “progressive enhancement� which is an idea of receiving user's machine information and allow browsers to display contents in the form that suits best for this particular environment. A typical structure would be to prepare a website that consists of ; simple text, text + font, text + font + images, text + font + images + Flash applications, and let browser display only what the environment allows to display. In order to do this we have to be aware of every possible environment and prepare a content for each. Sometimes I feel that we lose focus of the content by working too hard on making it accessible to every environments.

It is important to know about the structure and functionalities of tools but I think for artists it is more important to think about why we use such tools in respect to what we want to create. If we choose to allow users to customize the content, we have to be aware that our work might only become a tool to allow users to create their art. If you want to express something through your art, you might not want to “spoil� the observer by trying to fit it to their convention.

Rowan, I agree about spoiling the users. I don't think it's always a bad thing but I do think it's important to know the balance. Fully customizable application can be a great tool, but not necessarily a good art.

By way of dialog with the subject matter of one of Areca's comments:
You commented on Manovich's statement that: “If the logic of old media corresponded to the logic of industrial mass society, the logic of new media fits the logic of the postindustrial society, which values individuality over conformity.� To be sure, the post-industrial tools of digital marketing or variable narrative are engineered to navigate diversity, to selectively target certain categories of individual or give an individual the feeling of autonomy over the content that they consume. However, to say that this new model somehow overcomes an ideal of conformity is a gross overstatement. Does individuality mean buying lifestyle-product X instead of lifestyle-product Y? Does individuality mean buying lifestyle-product X because lifestyle-product Y was deemed unsuitable for one's lifestyle type and therefore not included in one's customized advertising sidebar? Does individuality mean having a choice between millions of links when one spends ones daily screen-time? Somehow, the digital world -- which at its microscopic level is made up of finite values -- seems to simulate the infinite gray areas of individuality, rather than facilitating it in actuality. Similiarly, a capitalist economy, driven as it is by the finite mechanics of profit (more units! less cost!) has a vested interest in corralling individuals into subgroups large enough that a niche product can sell in massive quantity.

Getting back to the digital world, the reductive nature of the new-media interface often means that a certain level of conformity is achieved from the start:
~Audience is known to be viewing on a flat screen.
or
~Audience is known to be part of the socioeconomic class with access to and interest in certain technologies.

Another aspect of Manovich's article which interests me is his discussion of new media in structural terms. I have often thought that using "new" (interactive/reactive/variable) digital media is a craft more similar to architecture than to painting or even film. Manovich presents an eloquent breakdown of the elements of this architecture -- the building blocks that can construct a usable environment for a participant. I think that often the structural possibilities of this world become the focus of digital art's content as well as its form. Ali's presentation on mapping is a perfect example of this phenomenon.

I feel we have lost something since we evolved past artisan labor. I completely understand the shift into the assembly line/factory system of production as a result of the growth of capitalism, but there is something to be said about an artist having their hand in a work from start to finish. And I feel when the assembly line took over, quality and soul suffered a bit (but the company made more profit, and that is most important, right?) I love seeing the hand of the artist in the work, and I love seeing the 'mistakes' left in. I guess you could argue that in the digital realm, the artist's hand is present in writing the code, importing the images, but I personally like things that exist outside the screen as well. I do believe that the use of modern media systems used in tandem with the analog/physical as a hybrid process is appealing as hell.
One could argue that Brian Wilson's Smile album from 66/67 was the first interactive album. Let me explain. The album fell apart in early 1967 when the other Beachy Boys wanted to continue singin' about surfin' and chasin' birds. The album was almost done. Written in modular form, bits and pieces recorded separately as parts that would later come together in the final mixing process like a mosaicist putting color tiles together to make a design on the shower wall as a whole. (but each piece still held its own as a solid piece of music) Ok, so here we have old 2 inch wide analog reels of these parts/independent bits. Over the recording process of Smile, stuff was leaked, wax one-offs were pressed, this intro version here, that possible middle part there, vocals-only track here, etc. So in the years after the legendary lost album was swept under the rug, those bits started to circulate between the music-loving underground. Especially when cassette tape came into play. Some guy over in San Fran has a bootleg track of the harpsichord part from 'Cabinessence', while some dude with a pony-tail in Florida has the Carl Wilson vocal track for 'Wonderful', etc etc. All these little bits (large discrete samples if you will) moving around and coming together in limitless ways when people started making Smile mix-tapes in their own order. So the actual 'complete' version of Smile only exists in your mind, man, you dig? Its perfect because you never have the 'real' version to compete with the 'perfect' version in your head. The difference with this example versus the example in the reading with the digitized content never losing quality when copied is that all these tapes out there had a little bit of a different speed/color/sound quality. And I take the physical analog user-interactive version over the forever perfect digital example. Things that age and decay and change are beautiful and part of the natural process of my world man, you dig?
A contemporary example of this digital/analog hybrid that I am drawn to is the German book artist Joachim Schmid. I just saw this guy speak at the Contemporary Artist's Book Conference in NYC and he was extremely engaging and definitely pushing the current technology to its limits in the book world. In one series that he does called (I think) 'Other People's Photographs', he runs searches on Flickr under certain tags. For example, he will set something up where every photograph with the tag 'curry dish' will drop onto his desktop. He then makes folders of these pictures. Anyone can then order a book called 'curry dishes' and Joachim then picks at random from his folder and has a one-of-a-kind digital print-on-demand book printed just for you (with the number of pages chosen by you also). What I like about this use of the current new media technology of 'Flickr-fishing' is that its final product is a physical book (which a book is a technology that is thousands of years old).
Questions I ask myself after the reading
-Does the idea that a digital sample will never lose quality when transfered over time scare me? Why?
-Is one the thing I like about old things books, houses, movies is that they age and decay and melt back into the earth? Why?
-If I ever (finally) order a super expensive custom sports car with every detail picked by me alone, and then I find that some guy has the exact same car in some other city somewhere, will I have to kill that person? why?

Counterpoint:

Analog is back, and rightly so. Just as distant planets move along their orbits and the Earth on its axis, so should vinyl spin on our turntable and hand spin on the face of your watch. No longer is the digital world warm enough, or human enough. Four DNA bases, the synapse, 26 letters, zero and one. The brute, lifeless order of things has its constituent parts, but the whole transcends those parts: living organisms, consciousness. We can't be blamed for wanting things to be whole again. We want to see the moving parts. Something we can wind up. We want to look at the orbits and axes on high, not the protons and electrons deep down below.
-from Adbusters #59

Mel, I had never heard of the artist you talked about, Hubert Duprat, but I love that idea. I've seen a lot of caddis fly casings in my day, and they are all really beautiful, even when they're made of bits of sand and twigs. And sure enough, Duprat's caddis fly's craftsmanship is awesome: http://scribalterror.blogs.com/scribal_terror/images/2007/07/19/duprat3.jpg
While I appreciate technology in art, I'm often more blown away by work like this that deals with nature. I liked Amy Youngs's talk here last spring-- one of her pieces was a cricket habitat that the crickets could affect by chirping (with a sound sensor picking up the chirps). Nature and technology together...
Holodeck for House Crickets: http://hypernatural.com/holodeck.html

The emergence of new media has democratized creation and distribution of digital information. More specifically video, music, and publishing. With the introduction of software that has the same functionality, and more, than it's hardware predecessors coupled with the reduction in cost of digital recording and interface devices it has become more feasible for anybody to engage in our media culture. Because of this, there has been a resurgence of the whole DIY attitude that was a part of the Punk movement. The major difference is that now everyone has the potential to create music, videos, interactive art, websites and news media, that in many cases, rival the quality of work that trained professionals make. There has also been a resurgence in the idea of the renaissance man/woman. It is easier for people to learn many different programs and participate in a wide array of creative endeavors. There is a certain logic that all computer programs contain. With each subsequent program you learn, you become more fluent in the language of programs. Also, the time and cost savings that a computer affords people, allows for greater interdisciplinary practice.

Manovich briefly brought up the issue of the need for new ways to store, organize and retrieve all of this content that we are creating. I am still amazed by the notion of virtual space. The thought of how much information we collectively have online and on our computers is unfathomable. I often wonder how much physical space all of this information would take up if it were in it's previous form. According to Manovich "the emergence of new media coincides with this second stage of a media society, now concerned as much with accessing and reusing existing media objects as with creating new ones". The trend as of late seems to be moving towards online storage banks as well as online software such as my trusty companion Google Docs.

Though I like the convenience of storing software and data online I am leery of the possible repercussions. By keeping all of our information online we are opening ourselves up to the possibility of invasion of privacy.