Author: lwilliap

When did New Media emerge? And what is its precise definition? In attempts to answer these questions, as well as others, Lev Manovich investigates the terms and the placing and origins of such terms of their definitions, in regards to the world of new and old media. Images and textual images, such as photographs, illustrations, layouts and ads, find their way in the pool of possible new media. According to Manovich, “The popular understanding of new media identifies it with the use of a computer for distribution and exhibition rather than production. … Similarly, photographs that are put on a CD-ROM are considered new media….” However, also told by Manovich, “If we want to understand the effects of computerization on [the] culture as a whole, I think it is too limiting.”

 

The definition, in essence, of new media is not as one or two dimensional as some scholars would deem it to be. There exists a three dimensional element to it- a realm that cannot trap its capabilities and characteristics in the lines of a flat definition. Computers are no longer viewed as the stale use of calculations and formulas; it is, however, merely the mark of a new device, a new form of communication, just as linear texts as always been.

 

Unique characteristics of new media, do separate it from old methods of communication. A mode of hyper-linking, and the ability to do so places the ‘wiring’ of particular objects to others within the text or lexia. “Hyper-linking creates a connection between two elements, for example, between two words in two different pages or a sentence on one page and an image in another, or tow different places within the same page.” This element of interactivity distinguishes new media form the old, holding it characteristics in a level that is neither one nor two dimensional- but rather, in a level of three.

 

“New media is interactive. In contrast to old media where the order of presentation is fixed, the user can now interact with a media object. In the process of interaction the user can choose which elements to display or which paths to follow, thus genereating a unique work. In this way the user becomes the co-author of the work.”

Lexia to Perplexia

You might examine this site- this interactive experience- just as other forms of textual media evaluated in the past. But no- DO NOT analyze this media in that way! Having journeyed through Talan Memmott’s Lexia Perplexia, I recognize that the kind of investigative discovery necessary for understanding this form of cyber space is a step above the kind utilized in the past. It is challenging- challenging to navigate and challenging to wrap your mind, or even cast a thought that would remotely consist of all of the aspects the visionary had intended.

In terms of the meaning- I have not a clue. But- I will say that there lies an interesting complex between Memmott’s use of mathematical and scientific images, simulating a connection between cyber space and the principles of mathematics- specifically the idea of inverse, inverted figures and there counterpart. “When everything is crystal clear and [has] susynchronized the passage of meaning through the bi.narrative- conduit is smooth, without catches or serration and the doubled trans|missive agent(s) never meet, combat or challenge,” (Memmott’s).

I immediately see a correlation between separate images, perhaps being a link between the inverted image of the original- is this a continuation? Is this, the inverted image, the cloning or imitation of the original, purely an imitation, or just the continuation? It is hard to say, and it is difficult to even attempt a formal analysis.

 

The Bomar Gene

“Each photograph was connected to another, lines of yarn or thin nylon cord connecting the pair,” (Jason Nelson). Connection.

 My journey this time was far more extensive than the Lexia journey. I read the provided stories on personified, fictitious characters- or were they fake? These stories captured my attention, and I wanted to know who these characters were, as well as furthering the examination on their lives. It was so fascinating, how the creator incorporated script, words, sounds, and images all for the purpose of conveying and telling the desired story.

 

“Rosario could read photographs as texts, she recognized that each snapshot is half an equation, that the moment and place, that the moment and place captured has another match somewhere in an attic or basement. And within these matched photographs were unexplainably connected lives,” (Jason Nelson).

Again, the connection between connection, continuation, and creation. The creation of or repetition of a particular image. Is this real? Is this product fake? I am not at all sure.

Both of these virtual narratives are interactive journeys. They are journeys through the mind of its creator- as bizarre and complex as both productions appear to the reader. Lexia Perplexia and The Bomar Gene use layer upon layer of aesthetic and scientific images and links, all of which are relevant to the complex meaning the creators are trying to send. Movement throughout each lexia, incorporated linear objects and shapes, further stresses the scientific elements of each new media. Again, the use of its graphical design and placement of words tell and communicate to the reader as another significant element of the cyber text.

 

 

There are distinct parallels between the Sunshine ’69 piece and the most recent assignment. Rearranging words and separting words lends to the overall meaning of the piece. The words and phrases that introduce Sunshine ’69 to its audience have been designed and arranged in a particular fashion, placing the words into a poem like consturction. They are merely words, phrases such as:

"Suitcase, map; 6 month vacation month;take it back;to  hippie nation; go on a trip; with orange sunshine; tune into sunrise; of sixty-nine; your license says; you’ve turned 16…"  

This is virtual tour, a scripted journey back into time… Taking a trip through the author’s memory through the arranged sequence of words. 

All of these words, just as past textual medias that we have examined, link the reader to a certain place and time. The grouping and separation of each word is entirely intentional. Similar to how we have taken the ordinary arrangement of local advertisements, and separated, linked and orgainzed the words into a free floating form of artistic expression, Sunshine’s intorduction stands as an interactive version of poetry.    

So I was seeing someone
when I bought the DARNED things.
Now he’s gone

                        And

I’m stuck
with two seats. I COULD try
and sell the one on eBay
and sit there uncomfortably,

by myself,
all night

next to                        
a random stranger. Or

I could sell the one here and sit there with
a random stranger
I would make him talk to me under this guise.

Don’t worry, I’m cute.

You gotta be cute too and-
you gotta send a picture. You want to go because you love Bright Eyes and fun times.

Not because you’re desperate for a date.
 

http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/w4m/110212498.html

http://mason.gmu.edu/~lwilliap/index.html

The Baby Name Wizard’s Name Yoyager introduces the informationally unique method of communicating to an audience. Unlike other forms of examined textual media, this focuses on providing statistical and analytical information, as opposed to merely telling the story of an estranged love- of a man without his son. This piece of cyber text was purposefully arranged and created to provide its audience, anyone with a name :), to trace the popularity of his or her name during the course of a linearly represented time line of generations.

What interested me most was the graphically artistic approach for this particualr layout and design. The colors, simple and obvious, were used to represent the male and female gender. Through the simplicity and clear nature of the web site, I found my ability to navigate through this media rather easy. Essentially, The Baby Name Wizard’s Name Voyager examines and utilizes a form of communicating perhaps not as accessible through other styles. It’s linearly based information was, like other featured textual mediums, formatted in an interactive and more intriguing way, as opposed to the commonly used book or a more ‘boring’ use of filing information in a computer database.    

Another splash of random color, another set of random lexia;  yet this "Color of Television" is painted with a purpose. The art appears, initially to me, as a mess of colors, confusing to the eye and unforgiving in its change of pace. This version this mode of textual media differs in most ways from the lexia I have examined in previous assignments. More color, I see, more LIFE, more energy it seems. Perhaps the others- Michael Joyce’s Afternoon, a story, or even Italo Calvino’s If on a Winters Night a Traveler- included a form of energy. Perhaps, the type of energy I speak of includes one that excludes a death of some kind, an adulterer or the word sex. Ha, perhaps I have failed to encounter ALL of the lexia this genre of textual media has to offer.

 

One portion of the text did, however, catch my attention.

“And now the agitating chaos on the many screens slows and settles. A pattern begins to emerge, clearer every second. It is a color wheel: red within blue, blue within green, green within white, white within red.

Gracefully and deliberately, the wheel begins to spin.”

The meaning of this kind of interaction between reader/creator and its audience is suspended in the very meaning of the title: The Color of Television. What is the color of television? Is it one solid layer of color, or is it a spectrum of colors, layer upon layer; is it this layer definition, this color of television that includes variable pieces, pigments of color that alone may seem questionable, but some how,forming togther the very picture we view regularly? Yes. This textual piece reflects the mechanics, the science that supports the very workings of a television screen. The entire picture, the make up of the projected image is composed of tiny pieces- just as each story each color or hue to the entire meaning of the story- creates, establishes the very scene that we, as the audience, is to gather from the picture. The pigments, PIXELS of color could be representative of the arrangments of placements of each lexia, lending to the meaning or thematic element of the story.

"You Do Not Know Us, Nor Do You Know Our World. Cyberspace Does Not Lie Within Your Borders. Do Not Think That You Can Build It, As Though It Were A Public Construction Project. You Cannot. It Is An Act Of Nature And It Grows Itself Through Our Collective Actions"

 

 

 

 

 

 

They had taken photographs of each other almost all of the time- immediately reading this line, I paint an image of white sand, tough by the coral and ridges produced by frequent runners….Runners in love, runners that frolicked during happier times. It is them, the divorced couple, that protrudes through my mind. This was my beginning lexia- this was my first time coupling and meddling with the text.

The sea is amazing, not too far off to exclude the dreamer or the wanderer, but distant enough to attract us.

I wander, naturally to this word “sea”. “…and, almost always, there is the sea—or what the sound gives us of the sea—in the distance. It took the place of perspective for us, benign and ever changing.”

A relationship, the writer and his affinity, his struggle and disgruntled relationship with the sea, foretells the relationship he has with his memory- memories of his wife, their love, like the dreamlike escape of happier times on the beach.

A photograph should have captured such a time, but was it real? Was it genuine? The meaning of one PLACE appears relevant to this particular lexia- its meaning to an individual, and the apparent frustration it has as it correlates with the temperament of one memory.

I click on PLACE, and am taken to another location entirely. He is romantic. Romanticizing the faint pictures of his love life, tainted by salty relations, much like the cold water that soaked his very toes against the shores of a distant beach. He wishes to have gone back to that love- that memory of conversing happily with a beach- what should have been, was not. Or so was it? It is sad. I am sorry for him. “No matter how scrutinized these pictures now I cannot find the truth,” (from the previous lexia). The truth of his marriage is faulty, washing back and forth like the crashing waves on a shore- it was here, and now it is gone.

 

The faded memory dances off his heart, playing with his emotions. For that reason, I click on DANCERS.

 

Though not of much significance, I was brought to another location. “There isn’t any story here. It’s as Tolstoy said, the genuine drama occurs on the upward or downward slopes, never at the apex. The controlling myth of her marriage was Snow White.”

So it’s settled- his marriage was a myth- not an ounce of truth, only what his memory or imagination allowed. The term dancer and place all form a network of interpretations of the text- One that can almost be formed into a sentence: His memory of a particular place danced in his head much like the graceful yet made-up dancers of a nutcracker production- it was ALL a production; soon, he finds that the truth of this memory is merely a myth. (the term myth having linked me to “Even so, as manufactured myths go, this one is accurate.”…. All of the terms (place, dancers, myth) and the texts that follow compose a story of faded love, past memories, questioning truth, and remembered images.    

Afternoon opens with the casual, brief exchange between a character and his or her thoughts. I stare at the page, and conclude that I already like this story. Continuing to read the still screen- it is still by the manner of descriptive words such as cold, and winter, and ice- I frame the fragmented scenes as a collage of war- instilled by the lines that read, “By five the sunsets and the afternoon melt freezes again across the blacktop- into crystal octopi and palms of ice—rivers and continents beset by fear, and we walk out to the car, the snow moaning beneath our boots and the oaks exploding in series along the fenceline on the horizon, the shrapnel setting like relics, the echoing of far ice. This was the essence of wood, these fragments say. And this darkness is air.”

 

 I found that instinctively I had placed the setting of this story in the arms of a courageously cold and bitter war. How interesting that this mode, this present scene, is introduced in thought by a series of terms and descriptive terms. Beset by fear, conjured shots of fearful trance, projected by faceless expressions of soldiers sprawling the fields of ice and heavy snow.

 

 A war in winter-

 

Which is carried by the line, “snow moaning beneath our boots”- almost an immediate mental depiction of these soldiers that I have so vividly pictured in my mind, certain that this is the tale the author intends to share. The depiction is of moaning fighters, trucking upon bitter cold snow, trampled on by heavy boots- military, most likely. The terms shrapnel and darkness did aid my erratic assumptions, either. For shrapnel is in war, used for battle. And the darkness speaks of billowing smog of artillery smoke and gun powder, canons, and whatever fantasy like image I am projecting- one that molds separate time periods as one.

 

Much like the instances we discovered in the hegirascope, and the first assignment of linking particular nouns to specific sites, words do in fact bring about a memory, a feeling, a fleeting thought that signifies its importance to you, and whether or not it deems further inquiry or interpretation. I saw these words and thought, surely this is a novel of cold hunger, much like the story, “Ordeal By Hunger”, (a war story involving the chronicles of men becoming men throughout a war zone). The tale, again, exemplifies that fantastic dementia between words, mind, interpretation, and sequence. (sequence, I speak of the placement of the words on the page, coinciding with the placement- rather importance- of certain words to the reader).

"Into the Sunset"   western edge desert motionless dissolute "Amanda" sky mystery truth naked ants thighs prude "Catalog  of Dreams"

What is so intriguing about this particular version of text is the presence of a familiar descriptive tone of voice- describing and setting the stage for each fragmented scene, (lexia), just as it would appear in a paragraph of a novel. Images are merely placed between the lines of ink and typed pages of blank screen; the style, the medium that this author utilizes, is not far from the tools that creators alike have found necessary to use for the intended message to be conveyed. In simpler terms, this piece is not far from the earlier pieces of literature, writing that our brains are so accustomed to interpreting- our eyes so attentive and molded to scan.

Aside from the textual media through which the author performs his message, (more like directs his audience through) the medium of writing as a linear composition is somewhat present. It is, as discussed in class, reminiscent to stories spoken through print. It carries the same element of sentence structure, of paragraphs, and descriptive themes that transport the reader to the desired location. However, the very precedent that determines whether a certain text is considered a book is twisted- twisted and shaped by a flash of screens, fragments of hypertext- lexia.

This lexia enables the separation of each of the scenes; essentially, it breaks up the paths in which the author intends for his audience to follow. Is it intentional that you can only form a particularly set road of travel? No. This form is still, as you know, closely related to- if not merely founded upon- the ancient form of linear construction.

As you journey through Higerascope, you encounter flashing screen with text. Immediately, this poses as an ultimate indicator that the author has set a definite pace for his readers, participants, and daring adventurers. It is apparent that, even in the midst of traveling through the dialogue- presented by the creator as general means of storytelling- the flashing lexia tell otherwise.

One lexia, in particular, titled “Into the Sunset”, paints a picture of a traveler on the road- perhaps on the road of discovery, of wandering through a desert land, in search of some place that had been awaiting his arrival. The words included in this lexia reflect the title, including the terms drive, objects unfold, arroyo, dry wash, mesquite, red rock. “A dissolute early moon slouches over some mountains. Motionless at 90 mph, Marshall drives with quiet dread into an American sunset which, as he has long suspected, was always there waiting for him.” Clearly, the language of Higerascope maintains a novel-like, descriptive nature. Available links for this particular site includes the western edge, desert, motionless, dissolute. One might assume that the links are determined by the nature and terms used in the lexia. However, this is not completely the case.

For the lexia titled “Amanda”, the links connected are not explicitly related to its body. Yet, the context of this story relates itself to its previously linked lexia, “Into the Sunset”- this linked by the term “desert”. Although this lexia consists of verbal links that are not explicitly linked to the text, these links are implicitly connected to the story. Essentially, doing so provides background information on the context of each lexia, and even strengthens any given information for a more cohesive understanding of the desired form of journey, (preferably an active journey) that the creator would have his audience take. Other links of the lexia, “Amanda”, include the desert, the sky, the mystery, the truth. Each term may not be explicitly found in the body of text on this particular lexia, but their relevance to the content of the story line exemplify there insertion. The sky, in itself, could represent the endless possibilities for this particular lexia’s ending. Boundless and infinite, the sky holds little background information as it pertains to the story, but does it pertain to the third lexia? Yes, this will be addressed later. The link, “the truth”, presents the idea that discovering the detail of the case—finding ‘the truth’— is an important part of the story. As of now, it remains a “mystery”.      

“Catalog of Dreams #14”, is the third lexia examined. It is about lust, a form of carnal desires, wanting so badly, for sake of those that carry its sensual charm, to disguise itself as love. Summer love, lying in the grass-losing yourself in the endless flow of the sky– (which, even as this term appeared to hold no significance in the secondly discussed lexia) appears in the third lexia. This third lexia incorporates the links naked, ants, thighs, and prude. Like the first disclosed lexia, #14’s provided links are terms explicitly found in its body of text.

Successfully, the creator of Higersacope opens the doors to an astoundingly different yet similar form of storytelling, in relation to its printing predecessor. Each discussed lexia is formatted in such a complexly different manner, unique to printed forms of storytelling. Simultaneously, it includes the very essence of a good story- the descriptive words, personal journey of, and/or the personal experiences of the premiered character.

The term hijerascope, stems from the root words hijera, meaning departure from, and scope, referring to the act of investigation. Higerascope, and the framework of each lexia, essentially represents the investigation of the departure of text from the past mediums of conveying a message- these past mediums solely restricting themselves to the printing form. Through these stories, he displays their effectiveness in showing and telling a story, the stimulating quality of treading the line that separates these two forms (print and hypermedia), and perhaps, how this balance act affects the reader’s interpretation.