Week 1

This week’s readings covered the basis of new media and in particular sound.

The Manovich piece “Principles of New Media” does a good job of trying to define and new media and explain what aspects it possesses and how it differs from old media. I don’t completely agree that new media can be described mathematically, because new media just like old media has the potential to age and become corrupted. Bits on computers can be flipped randomly by solar wind in ways that cannot be predicted. Furthermore files sometimes need to be compressed and sometimes this occurs in irreversible ways. This is another point that I think should be emphasized. New media is fast, but there are limits. Of course it takes time to, say, ship a painting across the world whereas an email can be sent nearly instantly. However the nature of digital media communication leads to some interesting effects. For instance it would take an equivalent amount of effort to ship a canvas across the world regardless of what is painted on the canvas, in fact the canvas may even be blank. On the other hand the effort to email a large image file can vary wildly depending on the Kolmogorov complexity of the painting and how compression is used even if the image dimensions are fixed. One well known effect of this is the confetti effect.

I thought the Hatcher work and the LONG RONG SONG both show much periodicity. In the video the words are stated in a regular cadence and are placed in a regular grid. Periodicity is especially evident in Hatcher’s Ping. In that piece the rhythm of computer pings and packet routing is contrasted with heartbeat and blood flow.

I agreed with Cayley analysis that 'audible literature' is an oxymoron, although insofar as listening and reading have mechanistic differences, I think it is possible for there to be meaningful differences caused by the different mediums. One example that comes to mind is tone.