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Sunday, January 22, 2006 |
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Murray and Manovich |
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Reflections on the Introductions to "The New Media Reader", written by Janet H. Murray and Lev Manovich, assigned by Joline Blais for NMD 206
1. Janet Murray, Inventing the Medium
(excerpt)
Murray lists four defining qualities of computers: They are procedural, participatory, encyclopedic, and spatial. These traits bear some resemblance to our natural surroundings, most likely because our computers were designed to reflect our natural understanding of our environments. Our brains have evolved with a predisposition to mental maps and navigation. That the new media environment is highly participatory only elevates the sense that what we perceive is a "natural" environment, though it is important to remember that any representation of reality is bound to build in misrepresentations of reality.
Particularly since the web, as we currently know it, is still a text based medium, it is conducive to misrepresentation in a way that observable, physical reality isn't. For all that is said about the participatory nature of the media, it is a far cry from saying that human beings will easily adapt to the participation element of the media. If a text looks initially verifiable and accurate, that is, at best, the last stop on a Google search before the question is filed away as resolved, and at a worse level, the last document glanced at by a judge in determining the validity of a search request on an American citizen.
Murray also talks about the "Second Self" as described by Sherry Turkle (Murray, p.9) in describing the psychological and social interactions taking place between an individual and a computerized environment. While complex social networks do develop, these are a far cry from actual, physically realized social networks. Is a second life really all that desirable, no matter how complicated and rich it might be, if it is lived in an isolated location? Surely it can provide a relief to those who are already isolated, but not in a way that is preferable to actual interaction. It would seem that one of the challenges of a progressive, humanist New Media is to degrade the spectacle of false community and interaction it has spawned. Consider the distancing effect that traditional media, such as print and television, had prior to the introduction of "interactivity", as Murray writes, "exercising even greater holding power over consumers, further alienating them from the 'real' world" (Murray, p.7).
Is "interaction" just embracing a more satisfying distance from ourselves?
Certainly, the interactive element of new media has opened up new venues for creative play, which is liberating in and of itself. But the actions of interactivity in a coded environment can still impose a set of conditions, or limits, on the user which can merely encourage the user- particularly in "reality based" participatory media, like social networks, chat groups, or mailing lists- to share and perpetuate a projected delusion of one's environment. Popular video games do a great deal to indoctrinate militarism as a cultural tenet, even some being designed and distributed as training vehicles for youth. Rarely do these participatory games or environments allow us to actually interact with ourselves. Solitude is never mentioned as a core component of New Media, but it's a vital element of a sane society.
The difference now is that we do not create this new media in a vacuum. The nature of the network is what changes "the voice on high" of old testament media declaring our cultural and individual commandments into a chorus of options. That is why access to the web is not nearly as important as literacy in the tools for producing the webs content - if we allow the chorus to be heard, we can create a light to shine in the darkness of professional, mediated culture that is thriving under the guise of community and interactivity. We each have to liberate ourselves from the spell of technology on our own, or we don't do it at all. A chorus of authentic voices creating alternatives and critiques is bound to help.
2. Lev Manovich, New Media from Borges to HTML
(excerpt)
American culture is driven by the idea that we have earned our wealth through hard work. This "hard work" is afforded sparse dignity in the aristocratic cultures that thrive on it, and mostly consists of repetitive tasks. Luxury is defined in terms of what we can afford, rather than we can afford to think. Art in America gets little support because it betrays all of these concepts: artists don't engage in endlessly repeating tasks, and they serve no one by questioning the endlessly repeating task. What art does is ask people to think as a recreational activity, something that is shunned by the working class as a leisure activity reserved to the savaged ruling class, and something the working man, in reality, cannot afford to do without losing the myth of dignity afforded to work by those who profit from it. Art does, indeed, have a market in the United States, when it serves practical uses. Consider the commercial success of artists such as Thomas Kinkaide, whose paintings reinforce the work ethic, or the success of landscape painters who serve the middle class by reminding them of their vacations.
New Media in the early 90's, as Manovich points out, was integrated very quickly into American culture, where competition and its practical revolution made it an instant background hum in living rooms and kitchens from coast to coast, sparing the reflection and cynicism that Europeans had time for due to higher costs and slower speeds (Manovich, p 13). New Media flourished as a field of academic interest in Europe thanks to institutions like the Soros Foundation, who saw New Media as a way of reaching out to the recovering Soviet Bloc countries. The artists working in this period, and whom are considered the hub of the net.art "group" (when that false distinction is applied), were all European: Jodi, of Belgium/Barcelona, Vuk Cosic, of Slovenia, Heath Bunting of the UK, Alexei Shulgin and Olia Lialina of Russia. The European artists flourished in an academic context, while American artists- reflecting their contexts- were neatly packed into the "design" world (Superbad, for example).
As Manovich points out, the academic and intellectual study of net.art created a "ghettoization" of these artists who were, after all, not linked by a particular ideology so much as they were linked by a common technology. As the technology became more and more integrated overseas, the new media utopianism (or cynicism) failed to rally around any collective theory of information. When the "Web Stalker" program was designed by I/O/D, Alexei Shulgin told them, "You've killed net.art." But what software did was shift the dialogue from net.art, and art production, to software and the tools of production. In its best cases, the tools of production were easier to use and access.
I feel like Manovich tries to get a little too revolutionary when he calls inventors of software out as the only "truly important" (Manovich, p.15) artists of our time. It seems a bit too romantic a notion to declare radically designed, participatory artists tools to be art in and of themselves, a shift in semantics that works neatly but doesn't say very much. Of course, every human creative endeavor has some element of art within it. But surely, Final Cut Pro is not "the greatest avant garde film" (Manovich, p.15) any more than oil paint is not the greatest painting. I don't mean to minimize the importance of software or engineering, but why must we fall into the very American trap of justifying the greatness of art by its utilitarian value? Artists may use these tools to ask questions and instigate a dialogue, but the tools themselves do not. Instead, I would say the most vital tools created by new media to empower authentic and spontaneous acts of creativity and understanding are works of art second, so much as they are triumphs of psychology and democracy primarily. New Media is really science of widespread media empowerment, a psychology that embraces a participatory environment, for better or for ill. Google may be an elegant work of art, but it is primarily a democratic tool, a universal library. To call it art merely because it is a work of genius is similar to calling Einstein's e=mc2 a work of art. It may be true, but we have also designed a particular term to embody his accomplishment more accurately, and that is physics.
The question of whether software is art is secondary to the dissemination of tools that make creative play exciting and worthwhile for artists and closet artists alike. What new media can create is a landscape where creativity can seep into all elements of life. From art, yes, and very importantly so. But also in work and recreation, allowing individuals to empower themselves into a position of true humanity and creative, united problem solving as opposed to their designation as a numbered "worker". Is that the greatest work of art ever created? It probably is. But for this particular task, it requires the complete loss of any distinction between art production and every day life. Creativity needs to be, if not liberated from art, then borrowed and brought into the world of every day experiences. It is about inspiring solutions rather than delegating them through an instruction manual. Artists, it seems, need to stop being so possessive of claiming every work of genius as part of their own work environment!
Posted by
Eryk @
4:52 PM
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