lovehistory.net

I will begin by saying that any book that uses the word “reified” has automatically found a place very dear in my heart. I like that word in all its forms and all its meanings because I think it says something very fundamental about how we human beings construct the world around us, and it always startles me that it does not enjoy wider use among us all, which perhaps may have something to do with revealing the man behind the curtain.

Detaching myself from vocabulary fetishism, I really enjoyed The Language of New Media. Books of this type, with an almost esoteric focus on theory bolstered by constructing narratives (buzz word!) from the historical record and cultural consciousness, are some of my favorites to read, though I feel it’s impossible to fully enjoy them or benefit from them without the aide of discussing them with fellow readers. As is such, my comments won’t be too lengthy (I say now) because I an looking forward to picking this book apart in class tonight. I will, however, throw out some random observations or thoughts I had while reading this book, or in some cases, questions that arose for me while reading that I wasn’t able to answer alone:

1. It is interesting to me that this book is almost necessarily an example of how quickly technological innovations die or are replaced. Much of the software Manovich mentions is outdated, i.e. has become defunct or replaced my many different stages of upgrades. It made me wonder how different this work would be in some cases if Manovich was writing to different software developments. For example, Google: how would he treat it? Would it just be another database? He doesn’t spend very much time at all talking about search engines and keyword culture, but I think Google may have profoundly effected the way we interact with computers and culture/the world at large over the past decade. It would be interesting to see if Google would play a similar cursory role to Yahoo or if Manovich would restructure his work. In that line, what would he say about things like Facebook and Twitter?
2. Does Manovich spend too much time focusing on cinema as his lens or lifeline for exploring new media? Do you buy his argument that sees the dialog between cinema and new media as an endless feedback loop between two competing/sympathetic modes of production/interactivity/creation/visualization, etc? Why didn’t he spend more time talking about books? For me this was a “new media” investigation in more than one sense – I am so used to reading about how important the printing press is/was, it was really fascinating to read about the role of cinema in developing how we conceptualize ourselves/interact with the world, etc. As this phenomenon is being contextualized it is already being linked by Manovich to perhaps the next information/technological “revolution.”
3. How would Manovich react to a show like Boardwalk Empire and why doesn’t he talk about Pixar more? To speak to Pixar first, it seems to me that Manovich greatly underplays the importance of animation to both cinema and new media, and only brings it back to reprivilege it at the end of his book. Toy Story came out in 1995, and while I was only 10, even I remember how huge of a deal that movie was, especially because of its very nature as a piece of computer animation. I kept waiting and waiting for the chapter on how important Pixar/the computer animated film is to new media, but it never came. Was it an oversight, or do you think Manovich didn’t need to include it? Also, in relation to Boardwalk Empire, Manovich speaks about new media’s valiant efforts to obtain photo-realism, only privileging the fantastic in sci-fiction or fantasy movies, where the premise allows visuals to be otherwordly. I wonder how he would react to shows like Boardwalk Empire, set in our historical past and visually imagined to resemble that era as “realistically” as possible which necessitates the use of amazing special effects just to create sets. It took me several episodes to understand why the coloring on the outdoor shots bothered me so much: everything, the air, the light, was way too clean. Then I remembered the show is set in the 1920s, before “modern” pollution, and this brightness of color may be an attempt on the producer’s part to convey the idea of the show as being literally physically shot in a past reality where even the air has a different color. How is this different from any other filtering effect, then? This show and its use of new media may not contradict Manovich, but it is interesting to think about.

Okay, I have many more thoughts and questions, but I will wait for tonight and will perhaps post a follow up blog to elaborate. Ideally, anyway.