I felt that neither of the two theorists engaged with the theme. Lev <manovitch delivered a halfhearted book pitch, Sean cubitt appearedf still drunk, and neither of them seemed to care that they several times crossed the line from subjects they were allegedly experts in to subjects they blatantly knew nothing about.
To an extent i agree with you, Manovich seemed only to touch on aspect of visualisation which is obviously his thing, And Cubitt was prone to a bit of eco-political psychobabble, but inbetween these two positions i think some interesting themes emerged. 1. The concept of infinity - appeared in both presentations. It was put forward by Cubitt as something to do with the nature of newmedia communication as an element of some kind of semiosis. Manovich brought it into his visualisation stuff from the point of view of continual transcoding from one form to another. This too can be considered as a form of semiosis, where one form is understood from the point of view of another - what was intersting about this was the nature of transcoding as a particularly meaningless activity inherent in the material of new media. This links to my point in my previous email about the notion of the concept of remote, how does using an inherently meaningless medium effect our ability to communicate? 2. The return of the subject - perhaps this is what emerges from the meaningless medium. in a world of simulation and unlimited semiosis in the form of transcoding, anything can effectively become anything else, so what value does the medium have, not very much! the medium is no longer the message, to paraphrase McLuhan. Focus returns to the message and not how it is delivered. These two points i think need to be drawn out of the presentation, and i think although they came about indirectly they would not have arrisen without Remote as a touchstone. Shaleph O'Neill The HCI Group School of Computing Napier University Edinburgh, EH10 5DT +44 0131 455 2699 s.o'[EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------- a m b i t : networking media arts in scotland post: [EMAIL PROTECTED] archive: http://www.mediascot.org/ambit info: send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and write "info ambit" in the message body -------------------------------------------------
