As a New Media major, I must say that the lecture we heard last week in the Neuberger was an interesting and informative one but it was not really anything I had not heard before. It was however better than many of the other lectures I have been subjected to. Our lecturer (whose name I have forgotten though I don’t think she ever introduced herself) gave a good fair and balanced look at what New Media is. Oftentimes people will focus on only a single aspect of New Media such as video or sound applications. New Media is a multifaceted monster that is ever changing and growing. In the 1950s, it was electronic music, today it is mainly considered web applications, tomorrow it could be cybernetic implants that make you hallucinate you are talking to historical figures. One thing I did enjoy was that our speaker acknowledged that many New Media works or “objects” are pieces of political activism. In many of our other New Media classes, that distinction is lost. We are told that it is art when many do not consider it “art” or “Art”, including myself. New Media has lost (or perhaps it never had) its title of art. I think this is because of its blending of art ideals, design and science. In her lecture, our speaker talked about circuit bending, repurposing old analog equipment to do something else. Electronic music alone required a completely new set of equipment to be invented. In a way, this lack of formal art in New Media is what helped bring it to the masses. I will get into this in more detail later on. This creation of new equipment and processes is in part what probably lead to such a blurred field of what New Media is because so much was happening at once. If you do a Google search for “New Media”, you will get 167,000,000 returns. Many of those sites have some definition of New Media on them and sometimes they are widely different other times they are similar. Let me give you are few examples:
UrbanDictionary.com: New media usually refers to a group of relatively recent mass media based on new information technology. Most frequently, the label would be understood to include the Internet and World Wide Web, video games and interactive media, CD-ROM and other forms of multimedia popular from the 1990s on. The phrase came to prominence in the 1990s, and is often used by technology writers like those at Wired magazine and by scholars in media studies.
Dictionary.com: developing usually electronic forms of media regarded as being experimental.
Wikipedia: New media is the marriage of mediated communications technologies with digital computers.
Oxford University Press: a general term covering non-traditional ways of delivering advertising or promotion messages, anything from text messaging to the Internet.
As you can see four similar yet slightly different definitions from four popular and somewhat reliable sources.
To try to expand on what I have been saying I will briefly relate New Media to some of the topics we have discussed recently in class. Please feel free to comment and add your own opinions and ideas.
New Media & Convergence:
New Media has everything to do with convergence. New Media itself is often and example of convergence. Take YouTube for example. There is video on a website that you can sit at your computer and watch and listen to it. Moreover, sometimes within the video there is text combining “old media” with the “new media”. Anyways the various technologies that make up New Media are often used to share and spread ideas. Let us use the Star Wars example from class. You can find online and “offline” Star Wars videos, music, games, hangouts, and a whole host of other products. Star Wars is an industry by itself. Games for example take different forms depending upon if they are on or offline. An online game could be a simple Flash shooter game or something more complex like Star Wars Galaxies, a MMORG. Offline they are a little simpler like “Star Wars: Battleship” or “Star Wars Trivia”. In the Star Wars Universe New Media has helped to combine two worlds.
New Media & Power:
New Media is becoming a tool of power. Let us go back to YouTube again for this example. For the 2008 Presidential Race you can find videos of each of the candidates and why they should be elected. If you surf around a bit, you will start to see flash banners and ads for candidates such as Giuliani, Clinton, and Dennis Kucinich. These all serve to remind us who is in charge and that they are the ones in control. Facebook even has new applications and groups that will let you proclaim your support for a candidate. This only serves to further their power and recognition. New Media is being used by those in power to spread messages and ideals that they want you to believe in. Then ordinary citizens are picking up these ideas and on their own using the power of New Media to keep spreading them.
New Media & Protest:
When New Media became a tool of power it dually become a tool of protest. Besides the candidate’s videos on YouTube there are videos from people that oppose those candidates online posting videos and why they should not be elected. Other forms of New Media such as text messaging is being used to coordinate protests and flash mobs. There are blogs online exposing perceived media and government lies. There are underground radio networks seeking to spread their own messages of equality and freedom. Every form of New Media can be and has been wield as a tool or either power or protest. This is where I decided that most New Media objects, (that’s right the proper term now is “objects” not “works” anymore) are not art. They seek to spread some kind of political message. The ease of use for a lot of New Media technologies has also allowed it populated among the common untrained masses, which explains its popularity and all the crap you see out there. New Media has allowed everyone to not only have a voice but to get in your face and scream.
New Media & Pleasure:
See YouTube
See comments on Star Wars
No seriously, New Media has created completely new forms of entertainment. There are games you can play online to amuse yourself like Tanks or World of Warcraft. There are funny videos you can watch to amuse yourself instead of watching TV. You can go to chat rooms or forums to meet new people and discuss topics of similar tastes like Star Wars or Buffy slash. New Media has created a new frontier or entertainment and new generation of lazy people.
New Media & Machinima:
Machinima I know is considered by some to be an emerging New Media practice. It has become simpler and easier to do and all the tools you need are in most American homes these days. With an Xbox, Halo, and a video recording device anyone can become a movie director with little effort. Machinima videos are also spread by other New Media example like posting the videos on YouTube or having a blog that hosts and comments on these videos. How long until Machinima is used for power and protest? Or will it always be entertainment?
New Media & Queer Culture:
I had to think a little harder on this one but I think that New Media has provided a safe haven online for people to be who they are. For example in our social worlding unit we briefly discussed that in Second Life there is a place where gays can hang out and meet other people. There are forums online where gays can talk to other gays about issues or topics that concern them. There are even now dating services for gays online. They are also free to create their own power and protest tools and use them spread their ideals instead of more mainstream beliefs.
I hope I have provided you with enough food for thought. Please excuse any spelling or grammatical mistakes. Remember the opinions represented in this commentary are my own and not necessarily endorsed by Dr. Shaka McGlotten or Purchase College or the State of New York. If you feel there are any mistakes please let me know and I will attempt to rectify them.
Since it is the end of the semester here are some good videos about New Media to watch:
About New Media makers
About New Media Projects
A more serious one about Second Life
Comment away!
5 comments:
I like your disclaimer at the end, it made me chuckle.
As far as New Media and Queering Culture goes, you can entangle these with gaming. I have heard of people being able to attend support groups through Second Life. Through these groups they can find people they are comfortable with and possibly go on to make friends and find themselves more closely connected to the culture itself. They may also find it easier to share things such as slash fiction through these forums, feeling more comfortable with an extra "layer of protection" to keep them from being outed. It may also be someplace where they can find some sort of love interest, which happens online all the time.
And if we take that a step further, and expand media art to the creative profiles people put on their dating sites, who's to say that through something such as match.com or true.com, people within the queering culture may meet up with others. While this is a stretch of an example, I think it can still hold some validity to combine the two.
You mentioned that New Media has provided a safe haven online for people to express their true identities without fear of repercussion. While I see the value of online support communities in giving the voiceless a platform, I also think that there is a tendency by some to idealize the Internet as this amazing tool for democratization and social change when it also reinforces established power hierarchies.
Sure, you can access alternative media sources or post YouTube videos expressing viewpoints which may differ from the mainstream, but how much of this e-activism translates off-line? How many people actually actively seek this kind of stuff out? No one in class raised their hand when asked, and that speaks volumes about the so-called power of the Internet. What good is a blog without an audience? And even if there is an audience, for the most part, it's preaching to the converted...
When we discussed Second Life in class, the idea that people were using this virtual reality to reject the confines of mainstream society was discussed. From my perspective though, how is this better? Instead of being active in a non-virtual world, you're retreating into cyberspace and spending all this time and money 'hiding,' and giving money to whatever conglomerates own second life and not really doing anything meaningful.
I'm glad you formatted your blog in a way which showed the progression of New Media and it's influences on the subjects we talked about in class. It also gave me a little bit more insight and understanding to the topic.
There are many things I would like to comment on but ill save the discussion for others. Your link to machinima, however, was interesting. To answer your question, "How long until Machinima is used for power and protest? ", I think that in certain facets the majority of "objects"...not works :), especially using video games, focus on power and protest. Making a video of a videoGAME which depicts things such as battles and strategies can be used to express or show power. At the same time it can also be used to protest what we do in our everyday lives...games give us a chance to do what we sometimes can't do in the real world-and for some gamers, if not most, machinima video is a protest seeking a life full of fantasy.
It's good to know a fellow New Media student has the same perspective on the topic of New Media. I'm actually pretty glad our lecture went over the different forms of New Media because most lectures just stick to one aspect of New Media and then everyone believes it is just that. New Media is a very non-specific term but then again so is the whole genre.
Cybernetic implants? Sounds fun.
I actually have to disagree when you say New Media isn't really a form of art. I believe curtain pieces are art. Such as Joan Jonas's Vertical Roll and Mark Napier's work. However I will admit their are too many New Media artists who are overly political activists and it is those who confuses everyone into thinking New Media is something else.
"Instead of being active in a non-virtual world, you're retreating into cyberspace and spending all this time and money 'hiding,' and giving money to whatever conglomerates own second life and not really doing anything meaningful." You're basically saying all video games are meaningless and just a waste of money. It's called entertainment. These people that are using Second Life as a new life and rejecting society aren't trying to be activists or anything like that. They just want have fun and escape the harsh realities that might be part of their lives.
Regarding politically-motivated works in New Media as art or Art; it seems to me that, on the one hand, a large part of what may lead an audience to consider something to be a work of A/art rather than politics or activism (or commercialism, etc) is the apparent intent of the creator of the work. If the creator stands up and says that they did not make something to be viewed as A/art (or at least, not to be viewed solely as such), then it is not unreasonable to assume that the audience will follow suit. Similarly, while some may stand up and say that their work is A/art, the form and/or function of the work-- or the message it imparts to the audience --instead speaks for itself, and proclaims to the audience that it is either something more than only A/art, or something else entirely.
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