NEW MEDIA - AN INTERACTIVE MEDIUM OF CULTURAL EXPRESSION

Research Paper
AEC 3179H – FALL 2005
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
Written by: Mark Greenspan (mark@markgreenspan.com)

Abstract
This paper is an exploration of new media through its theoretical roots. It defines new media as a medium of cultural expression and assesses the impacts of the interactive nature of the medium. This paper also explores the current stage of development of this medium and makes recommendations on furthering its development.


Just by its title new media appears to be a nebulous, dynamic and wide-ranging field of study. The term ‘new’ is tied to progress while the term ‘media’ reflects the wide scope of disciplines it embodies. This paper begins with a contextualization of my role in the new media industry and how this has affected me to frame my perception of the field. After recent career and academic developments and a survey of the leading new media theorists I have reframed my perception of the field. In this paper you will join me on my exploratory research of leading new media theorists Lev Manovich and Janet Murray. I also briefly touch upon the writings of game theorists Eric Zimmerman, Katie Salen and Brenda Laurel. Not to mention the media theory incantations of Marshall McLuhan. In this paper I will illustrate that new media is a medium of cultural expression of great importance due to its interactive and widespread nature. I believe that this medium is currently being misused and we must step back and take a more theoretical approach to its possible applications to realize its full potential. I now look to experimental new media art, theory and research as a fertile ground for ideas that could see this medium realize its full potential.

For the better part of the past ten years I’ve identified myself as a new media producer. Almost invariably it’s greeted with confused looks and subsequent questions. What is new media? What do you produce? Over the past ten years the slue of pre-prepared answers I have to choose from has changed considerably. I’d like to think that these changing answers have more to do with the ever-evolving field of new media rather then a tendency towards misrepresentation. In the span of ten years I have produced countless number of new media projects and upon reflection the only aspects they have in common are the following; they combined various forms of media such as images, text and audio. A computer was used to create them and in most of the cases I was producing them for commercial reasons. I am a new media producer who is predominately situated in the commercial realm of the industry, producing projects for the purpose of marketing products or services. This is much different than experimental and research driven new media art projects. As Lev Manovich (2003) points out there is a rich tradition of new media art dating back to the 1970’s with SIGGRAPH in the United States and Ars Electornic in Austria acting as annual gathering places of artists working with computers (pg. 13). It has not been until the past year that I have discovered the rich tradition of new media theory, art and experimentation. This discovery has reframed my view of the field of new media and this paper attempts to express this reframing.

In the past I had always defined new media through two related terms ‘interactive’ and ‘multimedia’. Multimedia, I explained, represented the combination of various different types of media primarily text, audio, and images, much like any standard advertisement on television. If we look to Manovich (2001) we can see that the roots of multimedia extend back much further than the development of television.

Before computer multimedia became commonplace around 1990, filmmakers were already combining moving images, sound and text (be it inter-titles of the silent era or the title sequences of the later period) for a whole century. Cinema thus was the original modern "multimedia." We can also much earlier? examples of multiple-media displays, such as medieval illuminated manuscripts, which combined text, graphics and representational images (pg. 67)

What occurs to me now is that in my definition of multimedia I would neglect to touch on the representational nature of the medium. It is more obvious to me now that by combining text, graphics and images you are putting together a particular representation of the world. Janet Murrary (2003) does a wonderful job of summarizing why the computer and new media is an effective medium for cultural representation.
The awe-inspiring representation power of the computer derives from its four defining qualities: its procedural, participatory, encyclopedic, and spatial properties(pg. 6).

Manovich (2001) describes the rise of new-media based arts as follows:
The fact that aspects of sensible reality can be recorded and that these recordings can be later combined, re-shaped and manipulated — in short, edited — made possible the new media-based arts which were soon to dominate the twentieth century: fiction films, radio concerts and music programs, television serials and news programs (pg. 151).

It is evident that new media is a compelling form of representation because of its incredible capacity to store, deliver and create representations of reality.

However, multimedia alone did not adequately fulfill my description of new media. I would have to follow with the term ‘interactivity’. Interactivity, I would go on, allowed someone to manipulate the combinations of media that were presented. Again, this straightforward technical description might work well at cocktail parties but it does not serve to speak to the type of interaction, its quality or its impact. I should have heeded Manovich’s (2001) warning when he wrote:

When we use the concept of “interactive media” exclusively in relation to computer-based media, there is danger that we interpret "interaction" literally, equating it with physical interaction between a user and a media object (pressing a button, choosing a link, moving the body), at the sake of psychological interaction. The psychological processes of filling-in, hypothesis forming, recall and identification, which are required for us to comprehend any text or image at all, are mistakenly identified with an objectively existing structure of interactive links (pg. 71).

There is a rich theoretical framework for the definition of ‘interactivity’ that I will draw on below. In his book, ‘Rules of Play’ gaming theorists Eric Zimmerman and Katie Salen (2003) position interaction with the creation of meaning. ‘The careful crafting of player experience through a system of interaction is critical to the design of meaningful play’(pg. 58). Although Zimmerman and Salen’s definition stems from a design perspective it illustrates the agency inherent in interactivity. That interacting with a system can act to create meaning. Media theorist Brenda Laurel (1993) continues with the notion of agency and brings the concept of representation to the understanding of the term interactivity when she states ”…..something is interactive when people can participate as agents within a representational context. An agent is ‘one who initiates actions’” (pg. 112). Laurel’s model emphasizes the interpretive component of interactive experiences, framing an interactive system as a representational. My take on interactivity is that it involves the ability to make choices and with choices comes agency, responsibility and morality. Choice can be equated to participation and participation can be equated with democracy. Therefore the interactive quality of the medium of new media characterizes it as a participatory medium and potentially democratic medium. New media can also be characterized as a digital medium of expression, a representational space. It is in Janet Murray’s words (2003), ‘how we see the world and how we communicate the world to the rest of the world’ (pg. 6). As a medium, new media is ‘a means to convey ideas or information’. (Encarta, 1999). Renowned media theorist, Marshall McLuhan (1964) would agree with the importance of this focus as he notably argues, ‘The medium is the message because it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action’ (pg. 203). Murray (2003) would agree with McLuhan when she states ‘The right instruments organize not just the outer world but consciousness itself’ (pg. 6). Murray (2003) goes on to say:
We are drawn to a new medium of representation because we are pattern makers who are thinking beyond our old tools. We cannot rewind our collective cognitive effort, since the digital medium is as much a pattern of thinking and perceiving as it is a pattern of making things. We are drawn to this medium because we need it to understand the world and our place in it (pg. 8).

In her description Murray eloquently illustrates the relationship between our patterns of thinking, perceiving and new media. As a digital medium of expression the main tools and instruments of new media are the computer, the computer interface and the Internet. These tools are of vast significance because they shape the manner in which we interact with the cultural forms of expression that are delivered to us. It is also important to consider the proliferation of these tools in order to effectively consider their current and potential impacts. Manovich (2001) does an incredible job of summarizing these impacts in the following paragraph.

What had also come by 1995 was Internet—the most material and visible sign of globalization. And, by the end of the decade, it has also become clear that the gradual computerization of culture will eventually transform all of it. So, to invoke the old Marxist model of base and superstructure, if the economic base of modern society from the 1950s onward started to shift toward a service and information economy, becoming by the 1970s a so-called “post-industrial society” (Daniel Bell), and then later a “network society” (Manual Castells), by the 1990s the superstructure started to feel the full impact of this change. If the “postmodernism” of the 1980s was the first, preliminary echo of this shift still to come—still weak, still possible to ignore—the 1990s’ rapid transformation of culture into e-culture, of computers into universal culture carriers, of media into new media, demanded that we rethink our categories and models (pg. 32).

The models and categories? that I would like to consider are: what are the implications of the notion that computers are not only culture carriers but also tools that can interact with culture on a global scale. At first thought you would think that radical new forms of cultural expression and participation would be produced. Also, given the current rates of proliferation of computers and the Internet it also would seem to offer great promises in shaping not only the representations of our world but our world itself. A highly democratic tool which would enable everyone to participate in cultural expression on a global scale. However, upon reflection and researching of the social trends and cultural developments of the past ten years, I am convinced that on a societal level new media has not delivered on this lofty potential. We have seen very few original creative movements in the 90’s and 00’s, primarily just the repurposing of existing material and ideas. We have also seen the rapid and extensive proliferation of western European ideologies across the globe. The global resurgence of the eighties movement, the remixing and re-sampling involved in the hip-hop culture, the rise of the DJ as a master sampler. It’s as if we are so pre-occupied with using the capabilities of this new digital medium to re-sort and re-combine everything that has been created before and distributing it widely across the globe. Manovich (2001) suggests we look to the fundamental forms and operations of a computer to explain this phenomenon, the Graphical User Interface (GUI).

It is not accidental that the development of GUI which legitimized “cut and paste” logic as well as media manipulation software such as Photoshop, which popularized plug-in architecture, took place during the 1980s — the same decade when contemporary culture became “post-modern.” In evoking this term I follow Fredric Jameson’s usage of post-modernism as “a periodizing concept whose function is to correlate the emergence of new formal features in culture with the emergence of a new type of social life and a new economic order.” As it became apparent by the early 1980s for critics such as Jameson, culture no longer tried to “make it new.” Rather, endless recycling and quoting of the past media content, artistic styles and forms became the new “international style” and the new cultural logic of modern society (pg. 126).

Manovich (2001) goes on to say.

Rather than assembling more media recordings of reality, culture is now busy re-working, recombining and analyzing the already accumulated media material. Invoking the metaphor of Plato’s cave, Jameson writes that post-modern cultural production “can no longer look directly out of its eyes at the real word but must, as in Plato’s cave, trace its mental images of the world on its confining walls.” In my view, this new cultural condition found its perfect reflection in the emerging computer software of the 1980s which privileged the selection from already existing media elements over creating them from scratch. And at the same time, to a large extent it is this software which made post-modernism possible (pg. 126).

While Manovich privileges the basic structures of the medium such as the software I would go further to suggest that it is because of the rapid pace of adoption of technology combined with the lack of wide spread theoretical training we find ourselves in this stage of development. To Manovich’s (2001) credit he would agree with this assumption and writes, ‘the speed with which new technologies are assimilated in the United States makes them ‘invisible’ almost overnight: they become an assumed part of the everyday existence, something which does not seem to require much reflection’ (pg. 13). Apart from being a new media producer I’m also a new media educator and I have developed and taught new media curriculum in both developed and non-developed countries at the college level. These courses have all been skill-based courses and have contained minimal amounts of theoretical training. What I’ve noticed is that when it comes to technology training there is a focus on skill transfer. I would consider this to be because it provides easily quantifiable results. However, it is extremely important, especially a this stage of the development of new media that we take a step back and consider not only the impacts of this medium but how to best approach it. Perhaps, Marshal McLuhan (1964) would answer my call with the following quote.
Our conventional response to all media, namely that is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot. For the ‘content’ of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind’ (pg. 207)

However he does go on to say that ‘the serious artist is the only person able to encounter technology with impunity, just because he is an expert aware of the changes in sense perception. (McLuhan, pg. 208, 1964) What I’m calling for is that all users of new media approach it like the serious artist that McLuhan describes. If we are to participate fully in shaping this new medium it is essential that we become experts in our approach to it.


References

Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

Laurel, Brenda. (1993). Computers as Theatre. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.

McLuhan, Marhsall. (1964). The Medium is the Message. In Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort, The New Media Reader (pp. 203 – 209). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Manovich, Lev. (2001). The Language of New Media. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Manovich, Lev. (2003). New Media from Borges to HTML. In Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort, The New Media Reader (pp. 13 – 25). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Murray, Janet. H. (2003). Inventing the Medium. In Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort, The New Media Reader (pp. 3 – 11). Cambridge, MIT Press.

Salen, Katie & Zimmerman, Eric. (2003). Rules of Play. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

ABORIGINAL WAYS OF KNOWING

AEC 1100: Outline Of Adult Education
WINTER 2006

ABORIGINAL WAYS OF KNOWING

In August of 2005, I spent three days camping on the first nations reserve in Moosonee, Ontario. From an aboriginal perspective, I did this because I wanted to walk the land in order to begin to better understand the plight of the first nations people in Canada.
As stated in the 1996 Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, ‘Persons schooled in a literate culture are accustomed to having all the context they need to understand a communication embedded in the text before them….persons taught to use all their senses to absorb every clue to interpreting a complete, dynamic reality may well smile at the illusion that words alone, stripped of complementary sound and colour and texture, can convey meaning adequately.' (Canada 1999, 1:622 -3).

From a literate culture perspective, the purpose of reviewing Marlene Brant Castellano's article ‘Updating Aboriginal Traditional of Knowledge’ is to continue to increase awareness for the plight of the first nations people of Canada; to gain more exposure to aboriginal forms of knowledge; and to be able to better integrate them into my life and practice as and educator. In the examples illustrated above, the purpose of forming knowledge is the same but the means are strikingly different. Does this imply that one way of forming knowledge is more valid then the other? Unfortunately, as Castellano points out in her article, this seems to be the case when comparing aboriginal traditions of knowledge and contemporary forms of knowledge. Castellano’s purpose in writing the article was to affirm and define aboriginal traditions of knowledge while calling for the need to integrate and adapt these traditions with contemporary society. In Castellano’s own words:

‘Aboriginal knowledge has been under assault for many years. In residential schools and other educational institutions, in the workplace, in social relations, and in political forum, aboriginal people have been bombarded with the message that what they know from their culture is of no value. Intergenerational transmission of ancient knowledge has been disrupted, and the damage has not been limited to the loss of what once was known: the process of knowledge creation – that is the use of cultural resources to refine knowledge in the laboratory of daily living – has also been disrupted. As aboriginal people reassert their right to practise their cultures in a somewhat more hospitable social environment, they will have to decide how to adapt their tradition to a contemporary environment' (pg. 25)

This article is an accessible point for a detailed understanding of aboriginal traditional knowledge due to the fact that Castellano skillfully deconstructs the major sources and characteristics of aboriginal knowledge. Castellano defines the five characteristics of aboriginal knowledge as personal, oral, experiential, holistic and conveyed in narrative or metaphorical language. She identifies the main sources of aboriginal knowledge as traditional teachings, empirical observations and revelation. Through this description, it becomes easier to see the challenges faced in preserving and integrating a predominantly oral culture of knowledge in a world which functions through a literate culture of knowledge. In the context of Habermas’ paradigms of education I found aboriginal traditions of knowledge to be more closely related with the humanist paradigm - built collaboratively through consensus and valuing the potential of the individual. However, in contemporary society, knowledge is transferred primarily through what Paulo Freire described as the "banking model of education". Knowledge quantified and transferred to learners en masse. This is more related to Habermas’s technical paradigm of adult education and is relatively at odds with aboriginal traditions of knowledge.

What I found to be extremely interesting is the correlation between aboriginal traditions of knowledge and how knowledge is created in cyberspace. In Castenello’s words ‘Aboriginal knowledge is rooted in personal experience and lays no claim to universality' (pg. 26). She goes on to state that ‘Aboriginal societies make a distinction between perceptions, which are personal, and wisdom, which has social validity and can serve as a basis for common action. Knowledge is validated through collective analysis and consensus building.' (pg. 26).

Knowledge in cyberspace inherently lays no claim to universality and is validated through collective analysis and consensus building. An illustration of an active and dynamic knowledge building community is Wikipedia, a multilingual content encyclopedia on the Internet that contains over two million articles posted by users from around the world.

In the article, Castellano poses three important questions: Can the integrity of aboriginal knowledge survive the transition to a literate form? What are the tests of authenticity? Who has the authority to represent aboriginal knowledge? (pg. 31). I would argue that new forms of knowledge construction in cyberspace will not only support the integrity of aboriginal knowledge but influence our literate society to adapt a more diverse and collaborative model of knowledge creation. Where the challenge and the hard work lay is in the integration of emerging forms of knowledge construction into the daily practice of transmitting knowledge from Aboriginal elders to both aboriginal and non-aboriginal youth.

References

Canada. 1996. Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples: Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Volume 1, Looking Forward, Looking Back; Volume 2, Restructuring the Relationship; Volume 3, Gathering Strength; Volume 4, Perspectives and Realities; and Volume 5, Renewal: A Twenty-Year Commitment. Ottawa: Canada Communications Group. (Also available with related documentation on CD-ROM under the title For Seven Generations; An Information Legacy of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Ottawa, Libraxus, 1997.)

Castellano, Marlene Brant “Updating Aboriginal Traditions of Knowledge” in George Dei et al (eds). Indigenous Knowledges in Global Contexts: Multiple Readings of Our World. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000

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BASECAMP ONE SHEET

Basecamp
http://www.basecamphq.com/

"We have this big thing about embracing constraints. When you have constraints -- less time, less money -- people care about every dollar they spend”

-Jason Fried, Founder of 37Signals creator of Basecamp

What is Basecamp?

Basecamp is a simple-to- use web-based tool for managing and collaborating on projects.

Basecamp is an example of a new wave of Internet applications that promote collaboration through effective interface design, leveraging cost effective online digital storage space and the functionality broadband networks are able to deliver.

Why is Basecamp useful?

-It is a simple and clever way to manage the sharing of information regarding a project across multiple locations and team members

-It consolidates all project information into one accessible location online

-It’s free if you require only limited functionality, but there is a monthly fee if you want to be able to upload files.

What are Basecamp’s drawbacks?

-It requires members of your project team to learn how to use a web based utility and track a username and password

-It requires members of your project team to modify their existing workflow processes

-It requires a minimum level of technical ability for all team members

How do I try Basecamp out for myself?

1. Log onto http://www.basecamphq.com/
2. Set up a trial project
3. Add members of your project team
4. Create your first message
5. Create your first milestone
6. Create your first to-do list
7. Create your first write-board

BASECAMP

The following is a paper about one of the best online project management and collaboration tools available right now (March 2006)

Basecamp
http://www.basecamphq.com/
AEC 1100: OUTLINE OF ADULT EDUCATION
Mark Greenspan


What is Basecamp?

Basecamp is a simple-to-use web-based tool for managing and collaborating on projects.

Basecamp is an example of a new wave of Internet applications that promote collaboration through effective interface design, leveraging cost effective online digital storage space and the functionality broadband networks are able to deliver.

Basecamp serves as an excellent example of a Web 2.0 application.

Web 2.0

According to Wikipedia’s definition (copied directly from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0)

Web 2.0 is a term popularized by O'Reilly Media and MediaLive International as the name for a series of Web development conferences that started in October 2004. This term has since become what some people see as a second phase of architecture and application development for the World Wide Web

As used by its proponents, the phrase "Web 2.0" refers to one or more of the following:

-The transition of websites from isolated information silos to sources of content and functionality, thus becoming a computing platform serving web applications to end users.

-A social phenomenon referring to an approach to creating and distributing Web content itself, characterized by open communication, de-centralization of authority, freedom to share and re-use, and "the market as a conversation".

-A more organized and categorized type of content, with a far more developed deep-linking web architecture.

-A shift in the economic value of the web, possibly surpassing the dot com boom of the late 1990s.

-A marketing term to differentiate new web businesses from those of the dot com boom, which, due to the bust, now seem discredited

-The resurgence of excitement around the possibilities of innovative web applications and service that gained a lot of momentum around mid 2005.

Basecamp is an excellent example of a Web 2.0 application as it is a website that is more like a computer application then a static source of information. It facilitates collaboration and the sharing of information and is created by a next generation web company called 37signals.

Basecamp Functionality

Basecamp’s main pieces of functionality consist of messages, milestones, to-do lists and write boards.

MESSAGES

Messages are the foundation of Basecamp. Messages can be text based, contain files and link to specific websites.

Multiple comments can be added to each message. This functionality allows for threads of conversation around topics and/or files.

Messages can also be directed to an entire project team or directly emailed to select members of a team.

Messages appear in reverse chronological order so the latest information is always at the top of the screen.

MILESTONES

Basecamp lets you track important project milestones and note who is responsible for each one. Basecamp automatically categorizes your milestones into late (shown in red), upcoming (shown in yellow) or completed (shown in green) milestones. You can add new milestones one at a time, or up to 10 at a time.

TO-DO LISTS

Basecamp allows you to create a detailed and hierarchical categorization of activities that need to be accomplished on your project. Each To-Do list can contain up to a 1000 items that can be assigned to members of your project team and tracked accordingly.


WRITEBOARDS

Writeboards are sharable, web-based text documents that let you save every edit, roll back to any version, and easily compare changes. Writeboards allow you to work collaboratively on text documents and you can compare different versions of a document, be automatically notified of changes and have your text hosted in one location.

Drawbacks to Basecamp include:

-Requiring members of your project team to learn how to use a web based utility and track a username and password.

-Requiring members of your project team to modify their existing workflow processes.

-Requiring a minimum level of technical ability for all team members.

-The to-do lists are only limited to a two-tiered hierarchy.

-The milestone feature allows for input of one deadline at a time.

Who developed Basecamp?

A 5-person company which was founded in Chicago in 1999 called 37signals designed Basecamp. In his article in salon.com, Farhad Manjoo does a wonderful job of describing how 37signals evolved and Basecamp came to being.

"The story of how 37 Signals morphed from a Web design firm that built sites for businesses into a Web software company that builds applications for regular people is reminiscent of the Native American legend about Indian tribes who found a use for every part of the slain buffalo." (Manjoo)

"We have this big thing about embracing constraints," says Jason Fried, the company's founder. "When you have constraints -- less time, less money -- people care about every dollar they spend. Customers ask us, 'How does Basecamp compare with other project-management tools?' We say it does less. Our products do less, and that's why they're successful. People don't want bloated products, and constraints force us to keep our products small, and to keep them valuable." (Manjoo)



REFERENCES

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2005/08/10/37signals/print.html

http://www.basecamphq.com/