Post 3 for Friday 11am Section

I grew up playing games like Doom. I grew up watching my father play games like Myst... OK, so that second statement isn't entirely true. Its more like “I grew up occasionally walking into the office to find my dad playing Myst.” Manovich cites both games as means by which one can see the potential and originality of new media. In my childhood “spatial journeys” I traveled down blocky corridors shooting aliens and demons and whatever else Doom-type games threw at me. When I saw my dad playing Myst, he would be swearing, struggling with where to go next or what to do to advance his narrative. When I walked in, I could give him advice and he would move on in a few minutes. Reading Manovich and reflecting back, I couldn't help but think about how one's familiarity with new media dictates or influences their experience. Though I was more accustomed to more action oriented games, I could give advice for more thought-provoking games like Myst. My father, on the other hand, just had a free CD-ROM that he figured he would try on his new computer, and found himself generally frustrated and confused.

Blog Entry 3

Friday, 11AM Section

As I was reading Mancovich I was thinking less about his ideas on the interface of new media, specifically in game design, but rather the progression of interface and how new media is the most engaging form. "In contrast to modern literature, theater, and cinema, which are built around psychological tension between characters and movement in psychological space, [new media] returns us to the ancient forms of narrative..." I think that sentence right there sums up his entire idea about the relationship of the interface and how we are at an era of engagement, we can become the heroes, enter the heterotopias, serf the web and find the answers, be whoever we want to be, do whatever we want to do. Through new media we can learn by questioning, or engage in the new writing process which instantly delivers to the audience in time thoughts and ideas via blogging or even go span the globe with the click of the mouse, visit the Great Barrier Reef or the Colosseum. With new media we can go anywhere and do anything. It engages the "user" in a way that is limitless and optional; in a way that other forms of media never could. "Movement through space allows the [user] to progress through the narrative, but it is also valuable in itself. It is a way for the [user] to explore the environment." The computer has become the perfect medium of navigable space.

The Flow of Culture: Response to Friedberg

Like all cultural movements, the current of the movement flows past all parts of culture. Be it the visual arts, music, entertainment, or personality, once a theme appears and begins to be spread, all aspects of life are infected, almost like a virus. The Romantic era, for example, saw a return of fantastical, medievalist elements in literature, an increased use of dissonance and chromaticism in music, and a revived obsession between art and expression. This movement influenced the people at the time and, through art we are able to see what kinds of lives people led. In the reverse fashion, as well, the people of the time, because of the influence art and entertainment has on them, will also facilitate the current of the movement and continue the virus’s path to mass contamination.

That’s what I thought of as I read Anne Friedberg’s The Virtual Window and its claims about multiplicity. While the Romantic era was characterized by an increased return to medieval and gothic characteristics, our current era, starting in the early 20th century, is one focused on the transformation of the individual into one of a multiplicity. And, like all other cultural movements, a recurring theme in culture is never without its affected counterparts. It’s flow and current will carry it past the personalities and lives of people, and into the art and entertainment. As Friedberg argues, multiplicity is appearing everywhere, on TV, in the movies, in art, in music.

On TV, the mere fact that there are hundreds of channels to choose from is an example of this multiplied quality of entertainment. Coupled with the remote control, the television becomes a formidable force for discovering the world and learning about everything. The ability to view a sequence of channels and shows opens up the world. One can find out about French food, exotic animals, and find out the latest happenings around the world just by pressing a single button on the remote.

In movies, as detailed by Friedberg, beginning some time around 1900, special effects involving splitting the screen to offer two or more perspectives of an image became more and more prevalent. Then came the obsession of frames within frames, then multiple screens, then Time Code, and 24, and suddenly movies were used to describe multiple stories of multiple people, moving away from the linearity of older more orthodox films.

In computers, the concept Windows created involving GUI and multiple windows open on a desktop is another clear example of the multiplicity of digital media that is now bombarding us. In a sense, the computer has become a sort of digitalized metaphor for our lives. In one big window, the screen, there is the taskbar, an organizing method to make sure we don’t get too carried away and lost under the deluge of windows and information. And there are the windows, that are limitless in the sense that a hundred windows can be opened, all on the same screen, so that we can have easy access to all of them. Like the split screens and multiple screens of film and TV, the computer offers us with multiple perspectives, bombarding us with information, but also allowing us to choose our own path, and read things our own way. This is strangely reminiscent of the writerly text. Perhaps, the very concept of television, split screen movies, and the computer are what Barthes would call the writerly text.

Finally, this transition from the singular to the multiple can be seen in the rise of the middle class, and the literature that was written after 1945. As the middle class began to grow, what Peter Drucker would call the inner compulsion began to give way to the outer will. In essence, the inner compulsion that used to drive individuals began to morph into the outer will, in effect replacing it despite the belief that the inner compulsion still existed. Ralph Ellison writes about this in the Invisible Man, as does Patrica Highsmith in The Talented Mr. Ripley, and countless other literary masterpieces.

It is interesting how all of these forms of media coincide and tell the same story. Perhaps it is only appropriate that the message is so strongly conveyed. Ironically, this is what our society has created.

S03 Manovich Response

In Lev Manovich’s chapter of the Language of New Media what really stuck with me was his slightly unorthodox comparison of humans and the Internet. More specifically the article brought an uneasiness how similarly my mind works to how the interworking of a computer function. Manovich states, “The interface imposes its own logic on [the media].” (65) Which I then paralleled to how everyday experiences impact my thoughts and actions in the future. For me it was also similar to how my Internet knows my top sites. Based on how many times I have visited a particular site, my main screen has a list of all those particular ones therefore “imposing its own logic” on my server. Manovich takes the duality of human and Internet even further by stating that “an artwork is the result of a collaboration between artist/programmer” 67. I interpreted this as “an artwork” being some one’s favorites bar or main screen and the “artist/programmer” represents the connection between human and Internet. I took this to mean that since artist and programmer are so alike in the way they act and think that they collaborate together to make a final project.

Conclusively I want to look back at the beginning of the chapter to end my thoughts. In the beginning Manovich brings up the 1982 film Blade Runner. After a brief reading of the film’s synopsis I got a Steven Spielberg A.I. vibe. However with the idea of a futuristic Artificial Intelligence in mind while continuing on my reading, I concluded that the similarities of humans and computer alongside the collaborative interactions today make the idea of artificial intelligence not that radical as it is almost in existence right now.

Manovich - The Language of New Media

-Manovich states that all digital-born art must be married to its interface. Form and content cannot be separated, they must be intentionally medium specific. For me, this raises the question, what are the interface and machine themselves specific to? I think the answer to this question is the human. The mouse or touchpad are designed specifically for the hand, the screen is placed at eye-level. Further, the code that the interface depends on is created from textual objects, already familiar to humans. Both the interface and the machine must be specific to the human body as its user and creator.

-On pages 90-91, Manovich draws on Alpers' description of Dutch Renaissance painting as a comparison to the modern computer screen and human-computer interface. Both provide symbolic clues to the culture of their times, however, while we can learn about the Dutch Renaissance 400 years after the fact, the computer screen can only teach us about ourselves now. 400 years from now we will probably not be able to access the interfaces we have now. What does this say about the current pace of technological evolution and what repercussions will it have?

-In his discussion of the screen, Manovich fails to mention the role light plays in its concept and medium. Here we must make a distinction between the screen of the cinema - onto which light is projected - and the screens of computers and television - from which light emanates. Anything on these screens will be lit from behind, as if from the image itself. This is counter to every image our brain is able to perceive in the observable and physical world: we see things when light is reflected off of them. Does this reversal of light's role in image making turn the screen itself into a heterotopia?

Emily Martin - Matt's section

S03 - Text as the most useful cultural form

While reading Manovich’s text, I was surprised to find out how much we actually did not change in our attempts to change. So many people around me tell me how it is a huge waste of time to study anything related to literature and how I will probably never be able to earn enough to sustain my living. However, Manovich explains that it is precisely text that is one of the oldest cultural forms and it still manages to preserve its place in modern technology. Clearly, one can argue that text is being progressively replaced with cinema or HCI as cultural forms, but text nevertheless remains the most natural source of information, in my opinion. Manovich also suggests that it is a form that enables the user to focus, rather than breaking the focus by offering too many things at the same time. Studying text and its theories is probably one of the most interesting and useful things I can do. Text is one of the most important forms that shape the way in which we perceive the world. For me, nothing could be more useful than to know how everything we know is constructed.

Yet, similarly to many other people, I sometimes feel increasingly lost in the hypertext. It is sometimes scary to feel that bits of information are so overwhelming that I will never be able to consume them all. That is why I sometimes feel that hypertext is not the real measure of human capabilities. It seems that it is almost a paranoid attempt to preserve the information, save it from forgetting, but what is the point of it? We are at the point when we are losing control over what we really need to consume and what not.

Cultural forms are merging to create more successful interfaces, the ones that would provide information in more comprehensive or interesting ways. However, interface tends to offer more than we are able to perceive. It offers us innumerable bits of information, but we learn most effectively from the simplest interfaces. That is why I think that text as a cultural form still has the biggest potential in the new media. No matter how hard we try to replace it with cinema or HCI, it is still the form we are most used to - the form that perhaps provides the most effective learning and the form we will always come back to. Of course, we can increase its effectiveness by adding cinematic or HCI elements, but I feel that we still need to have text as the base of an interface in order to be able to fully utilize that interface.

A Heirarchy of Hyperlinks

Manovich mentions:

"the two sources connected through a hyperlink have equal weight; neither one dominates the other. Thus the acceptance of hyperlinking in the 1980s can be correlated with contemporary culture's suspicion of all hierarchies..."

Manovitch implies that, since hyperlinks have an egalitarian relationship, they lend themselves to representing nonhierarchical structures. I think that this is a logical fallacy; just because an individual hyperlink cannot directly form part of a hierarchy, this does not imply that hyperlinks have a tendency to represent nonhierarchical structures. As a counterexample, I propose search engine rankings, which are reflections of the hierarchy of the world wide web.

Hyperlinks are one-way, which imbues them with a sense of directionality. I think that this does, in fact, constitute a relationship of domination. Although directionality does not immediately imply a hierarchy, it certainly lends itself to representing hierarchical structures, since a distinguishing feature of a hierarchy is that there is a sense of "up" or "down." The page near the destination end of a hyperlink could be considered to be nearer the "top" of the hierarchy, since its content has been judged by the hyperlink's creator to be of some value. A page which is on the destination end of many hyperlinks is higher up in the hierarchy of the web, since there are many pages "below" it that link to it. Search engines take this into account and place linked-to pages higher up in their rankings, which reinforces and lends a stability to the hierarchy of the web. These linked-to pages are at higher levels in the hierarchy, not only because other web pages link to them, but also because search engines, which currently form the top of the web hierarchy, have given them the validation of a good ranking.

Blog Post #3

While reading Manovich, I was struck by his statement that “a code is rarely simply a neutral transport mechanism; usually it affects the messages transmitted with its help.” (64) Of course the notion itself is not too surprising. As Prof. Chun mentioned in class, we were all born into the prison of language; it is not hard to admit that language, as the primary tool we use to conceptualize and communicate, yet which is itself a social/cultural construct, must also to a certain degree shape our conceptualization and communication. What is fresh to me, however, is to think of the computer in such a way – as pointed out by Manovich, “the role of the digital computer shifted from being a particular technology to a filter for all culture, a form through which all kinds of cultural and artistic production were mediated.” (64) Since it is in our era that the computer has become so predominant and the use of what Manovich calls “cultural interface” is so widespread, in what ways are they making our ways of conceptualization and communication differ from people from previous eras, who are accustomed to the forms of printed text or cinema? That computer media “replaced sequential storage with random-access storage; hierarchical organization of information with a flattened hypertext” struck me as something alarming. It follows that our way of organizing information and knowledge is fundamentally changing. I immediately think of my sense of feeling lost reading Internet text, following link from link that are all connected together in a rhizomatic fashion. It is true that through the Internet I now have access to infinitely more information, but it concerns me that some quality in analyzing/organizing/thinking through the information is lost compared to when I read an integrated book. Or maybe even the nature of knowledge is in a way different in our era.

By Qian Yin

Anna Fisher session

Reading over the Manovich text this week, I was struck by how some of the technologies mentioned seemed a bit dated – the book was published in 2000, which seems at first glance like it was only a few years ago. Of course, the year 2000 is actually a decade behind us now, and it was interesting to read the article in light of the real technological advancements that have changed the very media Manovich seeks to explicate.

For example, I liked the dichotomy set up between the “flaneur” and the “explorer” – the flaneur being a social entity who prefers total immersion in a complex and dynamic social environment, and the explorer preferring simpler and more direct spatial narratives. At the time Manovich wrote this book, this dichotomy was an existing binary in the technology. Internet browsers, at the turn of the millennium, were more straightforward vessels for exploring pretty static web content. Webmail (without Gmail) was not completely mainstream at that point, and Manovich is correct in pointing out that live chat and newsgroups were mostly conducted in non-browser applications like IRC or email clients which were distinct from internet browsers. It made me wonder: how would Manovich respond to the modern internet browser, which handles all kinds of live chat and a so much of our email. What would Manovich make of Google Wave? Or, for that matter, of Facebook, which I conceive of as heaven for the flaneur. No longer is the internet browser limited to searching for static web pages and making the explorer’s preferred, spatially-defined progression through cyberspace.

With the collapse of that dichotomy, have the flaneur and the explorer learned to coexist within the same interface? I believe, and I think Manovich would agree, that the interface itself has very deeply influenced the way in which we explore the Internet. I’d argue that, with the invent of webmail and social media websites, which very few Internet users can avoid, we’re all flaneurs now.

Thoughts on Manovich

Manovich talks about the mastery of the digital and physical world with the advent of the screen; but cutting reality into a 'sign and nothingness,' and takes it even further by suggesting that the body becomes imprisoned not only conceptually, but physically as well. This negates the ability of the user to keep a psychological distance between the virtual world, and the physical. Surely in looking at a screen the immediate digital world is the sole focus of the viewer, that does not make the user a 'passive' subject that accepts all of the short comings of the virtual interface.

However, the idea of bodily imprisonment is much more evident in the case of VR. To take a 'virtual' step in the 'virtual' world, one must take a step in the physical world. This makes the subject obedient to the digital world in the sense that they are not only reponsible for the viewing of the virtual world, they are now obligated to move, speak, and react in order to experience it. Also, the disappearace of the 'fake space' between an image and the surface it rests on is an important characteristic of VR. With no backdrop for the user to rely on, they become a visual and physical slave to the virtuality of the digital world.

Thurs 1pm Section: Manovich

While reading Manovich's article, I found myself solely focused on the idea of control in respect to VR (Virtual Realities) especially in the progressive changes in modern video games. The interface of a video game still takes into account the concept of control. The user feels they control the destiny of their virtual world, but this is a common misconception. The outcome of the game, or result if you will, is already determined. Therefore, how can the user have complete control if the path and destination have already been determined?

In the most advanced video games to date, the first-person visuals allow you to create your own character in a virtual world. Although the perspective of a first-person video game doesn't necessarily change the control, but alters it. The virtual worlds in which the characters exist begin to affect and change the interface (leaving an object at a previously visited spot, or seeing an event from any angle). This makes me question whether or not every possibility has been reviewed at every possible angle or true randomness can occur in the virtual world? In essence, I want to know if the progressive changes in video games is ultimately leading to a true alternate reality where there is no form of control except in the hands of the user?

Lastly, although it's repetitive, I want to touch on the point about interface control on everyday devices. Being an iPhone user myself, I find it interesting that it's rectangular interface, or homepage if you will, is a form of control through imprisonment. I think the iPhone is a revolutionary device that allows anyone to access any information anywhere in the world, so any form of control or imprisonment, to be frank, sounds far reaching.

Friday 11AM section: Manovich, continued! (Sorry)

I hate to be a “follower,” but I will stay with the theme of these blog postings- I find it interesting to see everyone discussing and expanding upon the ideas of one another about screens and imprisonment. I want to start off my blog posting with a picture (I’m not sure I can embed this, but if not, you can click the link)--http://9gag.com/gag/18754/

Though it is simply a comic, it says a lot. This representation of the modern-day subject made me think about Professor Chun’s and Manovich’s statements on the imprisonment and immobility of the subject, and also about our recent discussions of control. When looking at the interface, Manovich argues, “the body must be fixed in space if the viewer is to see the image at all.” Professor Chun asserted that to watch a screen is to drive a car: to go anywhere, you must stay still. What, then, does the iPhone (or BlackBerry, etc.) entail? The character in this comic is very mobile, however he is still unprecedentedly imprisoned. What would Manovich say about our modern-day technology? Has the iPhone, basically a pocket computer, changed the way we theorized screen imprisonment? Are we freer now that we can mobilize while gazing upon a screen, or does that freedom just lead to more control?

Personally, I find the mobility of the screen to disprove Manovich’s point on the bodily imprisonment of the subject. It fully supports his concept of mental and emotional imprisonment, but breaks the physical imprisonment. However, looking back at the notion of control, this mobile freedom leads, counter intuitively, to a more intense version of control. We are entranced by the screen and feel almost forced to work for the web: we update our Facebooks, our Twitters, and God knows what else, thus making these websites work. They barely have to do anything; it is the subject that ends up producing web content. Why do we do this, though? Because we are imprisoned by our mobile screens. (I realize this may allude to Terranova a bit from MC10, but it was relevant).

Friedberg: Spatial and Temporal Mobility

In her essay, “The Multiple,” The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft, Anne Friedberg explores the narrative possibilities of cinema and new media and illustrates the ways in which these technologies offer viewers (or participants) complex illusions and spatial and temporal mobility. First she recounts the history of film styles and the evolutionary model of the moving image; she introduces a variety of early filmic conventions such as superimposition, stop-motion, split frame composition, and multiple screen technique. According to Friedberg, the multiple screen technique “was organized with the logic of data compression, condensing a large quantity of information into a compressed physical space” (205).

Because cinema, at this time, was a new visual medium, there was room for experimentation; many directors used this creative freedom to play with the filmic structure, challenge the fixed perspective, and test the “fracturing of time and the multiplication of the video image” (214). For example, by placing two images next to each other on screen, one could change the essence or intent of the visual display, establishing a connection between these two separate representations: these images would absolutely adopt new meanings, ones defined by the contextual relationship. The conclusions drawn from this method were “comparative and analytic,” and fundamentally altered our mode of perception. Now, with On Demand, the Internet, and graphic interface, we have the capacity to navigate across multiple sites and networks and divide our attention among various objects of interest.

Section 3 -

"From the "abstraction" of the 1910s to the "process" of the 1960s, artists have continued to invent concepts and procedures to assure the impossibility of painting some preexistent content." (Manovich 66)

Many artistic computer-technology developments have been the result of human desire to create that which does not exist. The Graphical User Interface was one such development that turned computers from typewriting calculators to self-painting canvases. This is not to say that the GUI was strictly an art-related development, but that depends on your definition of art. According to Wikipedia–the God of the collective knowledge of the human race–art is "the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions." According to this definition, the GUI is art in that it deliberately processes technologically coded informational elements and produces an interface appealing to our senses and/or emotions. Other definitions of art require that the product have no function except to act as art, which would not include the GUI.

But whether or not the GUI is art is not an issue (thanks for reading the intro paragraph though!), what is important is that computers now have the ability to create and display art in a way many humans find appealing to their senses. Computers aren't creative–they don't chose which paints to apply where, based on their personal tastes–but they are productive; they produce both the process and product of new media art.

During the Cubist and Dadaist reformations of the definition of art, artists like Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp explored assemblage as a new option for the artistic process and product. They were using relatively new technologies like the photograph to create brand new compositions, most likely on a quest for the non-preexistent content Manovich references above. Similarly, in the late 1950's musicians started experimenting with using new audio recording technologies as a creative tool. In 1961, John Tenney made a song called "Collage #1 ('Blue Suede')" by editing together different parts and sounds from a recording of Elvis Presley's "Blue Suede Shoes". Now, software like Adobe Photoshop and Apple Logic have turned Picasso's, Duchamp's, and Tenney's complicated visual and musical compositions into commonplace child's play.

What now is non-preexistent? Does the GUI and computer open endless doors for creation, or instead destroy the options for desirable creativity by making everything possible? Children's jaws don't drop as easily in the movie theatre as they may have when clay-mation explosions were commonplace instead of CGI ("computer generated graphics" or graphics generated by a computer). While the medium of media art (which I would argue is related to software) continues to improve, so does the canvas (or hardware). As Apple's Final Cut Pro is upgraded to edit HD video ("high definition" video with definition that is high), hardware is improved to play HD footage, such as LED screens ("light emitting diode" screens where diodes emit light), and ultimately the overall experience is improved with new never-before had possibilities. New game consoles outdate their predecessors with promises for more realistic graphics, faster speeds, and new revolutionary features (i.e. motion sensors and virtual goggles) to help improve the overall sensual experience. In music art, programs like Apple's Logic and Digidesign's Pro Tools make it possible for musicians without formal training in any given instrument the ability to create sounds from them. Some see this as a horrible travesty, destroying all the ideals and standards of what good music is. I would argue rather that it breaks down walls limiting the definition of music, and encourages humans to find new ways to explore with the new tools we have been given. But in a world where anything can be created visually and audibly using the computer, what is the next big media revolution going to be? Stone tablets were outdated by papyrus and paper which has been outdated by video screens and eventually touchscreen GUIs. But what could possibly be more technologically artistic and sweetass than an iPad?

Willing Prisoners

For this week’s blog post I would like to talk more about, like many others have done, the screen as a prison. Instead of going into why the screen is a prison (which I think has been touched upon sufficiently, I would like to think about the idea of the viewer’s role in his own control. Having a blackberry and being a Facebook addict since 2006, I have a lot of personal experience being controlled, if you will, but also not caring. I find that many others share this sentiment in my generation, which I think is very interesting.

In his post, Kyle talked about the screen as something from which we can physically separate ourselves, but something we also constantly go back to. I fully agree with this statement since by going back to the screen, our lives are easier. E-mail is fetched for us, friend updates are given to us and we are shown what to think is important before we even think of searching for it – all of it is very addicting, but it’s also very invasive. For example, my blackberry connects all of my numbers with all of my Facebook friends who put their numbers on their profile. I personally abstain from sharing that information, but many of my friends do. It then sets their profile photos as their contact picture in my phone. Along with putting my event RSVP’s into my calendar, the device makes my life much easier. Do I care that it is looking through my Facebook? No. That’s the same answer I have when it comes to Gmail. I know it’s scanning my e-mails looking for terms to show me advertisements and news headlines tailored to my interests, but again, I don’t really care. Gmail is easy and those headlines are interesting. As Manovich states in “The Interface,” the computer is taking things, both literally and figuratively, from other forms of media (e.g. text, television and cinema) but it also takes from the human. Just as it pulls from other mediums to make our lives easier, we give it permission to “borrow… [from us to] reformulate…other media, both past and present” (p. 89) and to make our lives easier. We are the ones who are speeding up “the computerization of culture [and have been doing so] since the 1940s” (p. 85.)

From being directly controlled through cinema to a more subtle control of Facebook, blackberries and VR, we are definitely being controlled. Some are blissfully ignorant and go along thinking that they can stop using technology whenever they want to, but then there are those like myself who know that all of their status updates, photos, videos and anything else they put online are no longer their own, but now are things that anyone can see. In Kapil’s post, he talks about how control screens can free us from our every day and often mundane tasks, we love these screens for this purpose – it can control us while giving us the feeling of freedom. We love this feeling, and don’t care what we sacrifice to get it. Manovich talks about the idea of the immobile prison of the theater taking over Anne Friedberg’s idea of “a mobilized virtual gaze” (p. 107,) but now with the new mobility of current technology, we are still prisoners, but now we are willing ones. I think that Michael Wesch sums it up perfectly in his 1/31/2007 video “Web 2.0… The Machine is Us/ing Us” that “we’ll need to rethink [what we want out of and how we use] copyright, authorship, identity…governance, privacy…[and] ourselves” (4:02-4:18.)

More on Screens and Prisons

I’d like to address Kyle’s post “blog 3: more on screens and prisons” and say that I completely agree with how the Blackberry, Facebook, and Chat Roulette imprison the user because he/she cannot escape from it. While there is evidence for this imprisonment, I’d like to also consider how liberating these sources of media are. These screens pull us out of the world we are in. Standing anywhere from an airport to a cafeteria line, we can detach ourselves from the world around us and immerse into the world of the screen.
I consider this one of the major appeals of online gaming and how the strive for better visual graphics makes this out-of-world experience better. Essentially, it is a prison because of the appeal it brings and how it “traps” the user, but it can also serve as a mode of relief from reality. What I think is interesting is the idea that the screen is a prison depends on the quality of the screen itself. For example, a compelling commercial such as the Google super bowl ad, can entrance the viewers and essentially “imprison” them to the screen. Yet an Esurance ad sends everyone running away, or more literally, forces the audience to switch channels.
I guess imprisonment is a form of better marketing and a better product. I still agree with how the car and facebook can be dealing with the process of imprisonment, but it seems like sources of media are striving for this.

Personalized Sameness

I thought that the Manovich's representation of the desktop as a battlefield of dualities was very apt. I was especially intrigued by the uniqueness vs. standardization aspect of the comparisons. As different as we might want to make our desktops, it will always have the same functions as any other desktop. So although it is virtually unlimited, functionally it is confined. In this sense, it reminded me of hypertext, or rather manifestations of hypertext (Patchwork Girl for example), since although hypertext is limitless and ever changing, it is pre-coded and therefore confined.

I think that this delusion of uniqueness reflects us as individuals. We all look different and, “of course,” we are all unique. And yet, on the microscopic level, we are all the same. Our DNA is basically in the same pattern and our internal organs function in the same way. So although we are “different”, we are very much “the same.”

I also thought about the deceptive nature of desktops. You can make certain files hidden and that way you won’t be able to “see” them. It presents an interesting question about being present without occupying space. It is also possible to change the pictures of the icons on your desktop too so you can make a folder look like a photo or vice versa. I think these tie back to the idea that although you are free to edit and personalize the shell, the visual, the context and/or the code cannot be changed by the users.

Blog 3: More on Screens and Prisons

I'd like to think more deeply about the screen as a device of imprisonment and freedom, as Tristan, Daniel, and several others discuss in their posts for this week. Manovich contends that such imprisonment is related to the immobility of the viewer in looking at the screen. As Professor Chun points out, this process of imprisonment is related to the act of driving a car. The driver remains immobile, fixed in the prison of the automobile, while the images around him are constantly in flux.

Unlike Tristan and Daniel, I do not want to push back on whether screens are a form of 'imprisonment' or of freedom, but rather think more through how imprisonment might operate in the context of the screen. In class today we discussed the 'crackberry'/blackberry as a screen that users can't free themselves from, thereby blurring the distinction between work and the personal. In this case, the screen imprisons not merely by fixing the user's gaze and attention (as Tristan describes), but by producing an unquenchable desire in the user to come back to the prison of the blackberry. As in the case of Google, the blackberry then operates as a screen that we can navigate away from (by putting in our pocket), but from which we cannot escape (because desire keeps pulling us back in).

I view Facebook (and Chat Roulette for that matter) as operating in a similar way. Facebook imprisons not just through the physical immobility it necessitates, but also through the online community it creates, which the user constantly wants to get back to. The danger associated with such imprisonment, then, is not just that the user is couched next to a screen, in some way physically controlled. Rather, it has to do with the imprisonment of the mind within the world of the screen, rather than of the real.

WS Screens and the POST-

In Lev Manovich’s The Language of New Media, Manovich discusses the changing role of the screen and as a result, the ways in which each medium or interface address and relate to their subjects. Tracing digital media’s influences in such apparatuses as film and television, as well as military technologies, Manovich argues that while the position of the spectator (as in the cinematic apparatus), is one docility and identification with the camera. In the televisual apparatus, the position is as a viewer with a type of freedom, whose ability to channel surf offers a changed relation to the image and screen. Interface, as Manovich argues, positions the individual as a user, the subject assuming a role of freedom and interaction with the medium previously unimaginable with the two previously mentioned modes of representation.

In Manovich’s assertions, however, I would like to question the unproblematic positioning and process of identification that Manovich assumes:

"In cinema viewing, the viewer is asked to merge completely with the screen's space" (96).

It is not only the space in which the viewer is situated that remains unproblematic for Manovich, but also the ease with which such identifications are made that I see as a potential shortcoming of Manovich’s argument. This is assuming that all spectators are positioned in the same way and occupy the same spaces -- that all processes of identification are the same. In what ways has this not been the case? I bring this up because it seems relevant to the relationship between interface and the user. If Manovich parallels the two modes of identification, then in what ways do such addresses not have the intended address? How does interface address its subjects?

Going further in his argument, on the next page, Manovich writes:

“Or, more precisely, we can say that the two spaces -- the real, physical space and the virtual, simulated space -- coincide. The virtual space, previously confined to a painting or movie screen, now completely encompasses the real space. Frontality, rectangular surface, difference in scale are all gone. The screen has vanished" (Manovich 97).

This passage is particularly provocative. Manovich makes the jump from a multiplicity of screen to their disappearance. In section, it would be interesting to discuss the status of the screen and what is at stake in such a disappearance. For Manovich, this disappearance would seem to be a part of ever-present, inescapable technologies of surveillance and modes of control. However, to what extent have those technologies been paramount to the development of the cinematic apparatus itself (and perhaps not merely to public entertainment, as Manovich would believe)? What would be the distinction (if there is one) between the screen and modes of perception (the materiality of the screen and perception) according to Manovich?

These questions lead me to the shift that both Friedberg and Manovich seem to make -- the “post-cinematic”. With this, digital media and interface are also positioned as post-televisual and even “postperspectival” (Friedberg 94). Similar to the question posed earlier, but more broadly speaking, what is at stake in the post- ? In its shift, what else is it also getting rid of? The way in which these posts- are grouped, are all of the posts- the same?

Monica G.