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Data: Wed, 19 Apr 2006 01:22:44 -0700 Da: Lev Manovich Greetings to everybody My Pratt Manhattan gallery lecture earlier this month was my first public presentation of some ideas on media remix I have been developing lately; a long text Understanding Metamedia which goes into details will be posted on my web site next month. I am not sure if I was successful in presenting the ideas correctly at this time - but for now, I wanted to add to the discussion two text statements which summarize what I wanted to convey in the lecture and what I am trying to develop in more detail in the forthcoming text. I am giving another talk in NYC this coming Saturday April 22 where I will try to approach these ideas again from a somewhat diffirent POV than in the previous talk: www.mediaconference2006.com The first segment is from my article "Abstraction and Complexity" (2003): -------- One result of the shift from separate representational and inscription media to computer metamedium is proliferation of hybrid images - images that combine traces and effects of a variety of media. Think of an typical magazine spread, a TV advertisement or a home page of a commercial web site: maybe a figure or a face of person against a white background, some computer elements floating behind or in front, some Photoshop blur, funky Illustrator typography, and so on. (Of course looking at the Bauhaus graphic design we can already find some hybridity as well similar treatment of space combining 2D and 3D elements yet because a designer had to deal with a number of physically distinct media, the boundaries between elements in different media were sharply defined.) This leads us to another effect - the liberation of the techniques of a particular media from its material and tool specificity. Simulated in software, these techniques can now be freely applied to visual, spatial or audio data that has nothing to do with the original media. In addition to populating the tool pallets of various software applications, these virtualized techniques came to form a separate type of software filters. You can apply reverb (a property of sound when it propagates in particular spaces) to any sound wave; apply depth of field effect to a 3D virtual space; apply blur to type, and so on. The last example is quite significant in itself: simulation of media properties and interfaces in software has not only made possible the development of numerous separate filters but also whole new areas of media culture such as motion graphics (animated type which exist on its own or combined with abstract elements, video, etc). By allowing the designers to move type in 2D and 3D space, and filter it in arbitrary ways, After Effects has affected the Guttenberg universe of text at least as much if not more than Photoshop affected photography. -------- The second segment comes from this new long text Understanding Metamedia which will be available shortly. In this segment the idea of media remixability is developed in relation to visual langauge of moving images. However just as I tried to do this in the lecture, I am working to apply the idea of medix remixability to other areas of digital media. -------- The use of After Effects is closely identified with a particular type of moving images which became commonplace to a large part because of this software ³motion graphics.² Concisely defined by Matt Frantz in his Master Thesis as ³designed non-narrative, non-figurative based visuals that change over time,² motion graphics today include film and television titles, TV graphics, dynamic menus, the graphics for mobile media content, and other animated sequences. Typically motion graphics appear as parts of longer pieces: commercials, music videos, training videos, narrative and documentary films, interactive projects. While motion graphics definitely exemplify the changes that took place during software revolution of the 1990s, these changes are more broad. Simply put, the result of this revolution is a new hybrid visual language of moving images in general. This language is not confined to particular media forms. And while today it manifests itself most clearly in non-narrative forms, it is also often present in narrative and figurative sequences and films. For example, a music video may use life action while also employing typography and a variety of transitions done with computer graphics (example: video for Go by Common, directed by Convert / MK12 / Kanye West, 2005). Or it may imbed the singer within the animated painterly space (video for Sheryl Crow¹ Good Is Good, directed by Psyop, 2005.) A short film may mix typography, stylized 3D graphics, moving design elements, and video (Itsu for Plaid, directed by Pleix collective, 2002 ). In some cases, the juxtaposition of different media is clearly visible (examples: music video for Don¹t Panic by Coldplay; main title for The Inside by Imaginary Forces, 2005). In other cases, a sequence may move between different media so quickly that the shifts are barely noticeable (GMC Denali ³Holes² commercial by Imaginary Forces, 2005). Yet in other cases, a commercial or a movie title may feature continuous action shot on video or film, with the image being periodically changing from a more natural to a highly stylized look. While the particular aesthetic solutions vary from one piece to the next and from one designer to another, they all share the same logic: the appearance of multiple media simultaneously in the same frame. Whether these media are openly juxtaposed or almost seamlessly blended together is less important than the fact of this co-presence itself. Today such hybrid visual language is also common to a large proportion of short ³experimental² (i.e. non-commercial) films being produced for media festivals, the web, mobile media devices, and other distribution platforms The large percentage of the visuals created by VJs and Live Cinema artists are also hybrid, combining video, layers of 2D imagery, animation, and abstract imagery generated in real time. (For examples, consult The VJ book, VJ: Live Cinema Unraveled, or web sites such as www.vjcentral.com and www.live-cinema.org. ) In the case of feature narrative films and TV programs, while they are still rarely mix different graphical styles within the same frame, many now feature highly stylized aesthetics which would previously be identified with illustration rather than filmmaking for instance, TV series CSI, George Lucas¹s latest Star Wars films, or Robert Rodriguez¹s Sin City. What is the logic of this new hybrid visual language? This logic is one of remixability: not only of the content of different media or simply their aesthetics, but their fundamental techniques, working methods, and assumptions. United within the common software environment, cinematography, animation, computer animation, special effects, graphic design, and typography have come to form a new metamedium. A work produced in this new metamedium can use all techniques which were previously unique to these different media, or any subset of these techniques. If we use the concept of ³remediation² to describe this new situation, we will misrepresent this logic or the logic of media computing in general. The computer does not ³remediate² particular media. Instead, it simulates all media. And what it simulates are not surface appearances of different media but all the techniques used for their production and all the methods of viewing and interaction with the works in these media. Once all types of media met within the same digital environment and this was accomplished by the middle of the 1990s - they started interacting in the ways that could never be predicted nor even imagined previously. For instance, while particular media techniques continue to be used in relation to their original media, they can also be applied to other media. (This is possible because the techniques are turned into algorithms, all media is turned into digital data stored in compatible file formats, and software is designed to read and write files produced by other programs.) Here are a few examples: motion blur is applied to 3D computer graphics, computer generated fields of particles are blended with live action footage to give it enhanced look, a virtual camera is made to move around the virtual space filled with 2D drawings, flat typography is animated as though it is made from a liquid like material (the liquid simulation coming from computer graphics field), and so on. And while this ³cross-over² use by itself constitutes a fundamental shift in media history, today a typical short film or a sequence may combine many such pairings within the same frame. The result is a hybrid, intricate, complex, and rich visual language or rather, numerous languages that share the basic logic of remixabilty. I believe that ³media remixability² which begins around middle of the 1990s constitutes a new fundamental stage in the history of media. It manifests itself in different areas of culture and not only moving images although the later does offer a particularly striking example of this new logic at work. Here software such as After Effects became a Petri dish where computer animation, live cinematography, graphic design, 2D animation and typography started to interact together, creating new hybrids. And as the examples mentioned above demonstrate, the result of this process of remixability are new aesthetics and new media species which cannot be reduced to the sum of media that went into them. Put differently, the interactions of different media in the same software environment are cultural species. _______________________ [n] archivi dei messaggi https://www3.autistici.org/pipermail/newbrainframes/ [n] modifica le tue impostazioni https://www4.autistici.org/mailman/listinfo/newbrainframes
