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Excerpts from The Language of New Media by Lev Manovich
SPEAKING THE LANGUAGE
A hundred years after cinema's birth, cinematic ways of seeing the world of structuring time, of narrating a story, of linking one experience to the next, have become the basic means by which computer users access and interact with all cultural data. In this respect, the computer fulfills the promise of cinema as a visual Esperanto. Today millions of computer users communicate with each other through the same computer interface. And in contrast to cinema, where most "users" are able to "understand" cinematic language but not "speak" it (i.e. make films), all computer users can "speak" the language of interface. They are active users of the interface, employing it to perform many tasks: send e-mail, organize files, run various applications, and so on.
THE DIGITAL GRID REALITY
Whose vision is it? It is the vision of a computer, a cyborg, or automatic missle. It is a realistic representation of human vision in the future, when it will be augmented by computer graphics and cleansed from noise. It is the vision of a digital grid. Synthetic computer generated imagery is not an inferior representation of our reality, but a realistic representation of a different reality.
VERTOV'S ARGUMENT - THE KINO-EYE
The new techniques of obtaining images and manipulating them (kino-eye) can be used to decode the world. Vertov's goal is to seduce us into his way of seeing and thinking, to make us share his excitement, as he discovers a new language for film.
_ THE DATBASE _
The gradual process of discovery is film's main narrative, and it is told through a catalogue of discoveries. Thus, the database (this normally static and "objective" form, becomes dynamic and subjective). He merged database and narrative into a new form. It is a database of new interface operations that together aim to go beyond simple human navigation through physical space.
IF/THEN REPEAT/WHILE: The Cyberscape Cartoon Perversion
The loop is considered as the elementary control as the new narrative form in this books introduction. What Manovich touches on here is significant for it is what Zizek refers to as the perverse nature of the cyberscape. A space with no laws that enables us to refuse castration: escape mortality, explore our identities simultaneously, engage in repeated activities, without the contraints of the Real. Here we are able to explore without having to choose identities, gender and when faced with an unpleasant result we are free to try again. Zizek's correlation between the cyberscape as the evolved interactive cartoon is incredibly fascinating to me.
SPEAKING THE LANGUAGE
A hundred years after cinema's birth, cinematic ways of seeing the world of structuring time, of narrating a story, of linking one experience to the next, have become the basic means by which computer users access and interact with all cultural data. In this respect, the computer fulfills the promise of cinema as a visual Esperanto. Today millions of computer users communicate with each other through the same computer interface. And in contrast to cinema, where most "users" are able to "understand" cinematic language but not "speak" it (i.e. make films), all computer users can "speak" the language of interface. They are active users of the interface, employing it to perform many tasks: send e-mail, organize files, run various applications, and so on.
THE DIGITAL GRID REALITY
Whose vision is it? It is the vision of a computer, a cyborg, or automatic missle. It is a realistic representation of human vision in the future, when it will be augmented by computer graphics and cleansed from noise. It is the vision of a digital grid. Synthetic computer generated imagery is not an inferior representation of our reality, but a realistic representation of a different reality.
VERTOV'S ARGUMENT - THE KINO-EYE
The new techniques of obtaining images and manipulating them (kino-eye) can be used to decode the world. Vertov's goal is to seduce us into his way of seeing and thinking, to make us share his excitement, as he discovers a new language for film.
_ THE DATBASE _
The gradual process of discovery is film's main narrative, and it is told through a catalogue of discoveries. Thus, the database (this normally static and "objective" form, becomes dynamic and subjective). He merged database and narrative into a new form. It is a database of new interface operations that together aim to go beyond simple human navigation through physical space.
IF/THEN REPEAT/WHILE: The Cyberscape Cartoon Perversion
The loop is considered as the elementary control as the new narrative form in this books introduction. What Manovich touches on here is significant for it is what Zizek refers to as the perverse nature of the cyberscape. A space with no laws that enables us to refuse castration: escape mortality, explore our identities simultaneously, engage in repeated activities, without the contraints of the Real. Here we are able to explore without having to choose identities, gender and when faced with an unpleasant result we are free to try again. Zizek's correlation between the cyberscape as the evolved interactive cartoon is incredibly fascinating to me.