Recap lectures Introduction to New Media and Digital Culture/ Inleiding Nieuwe Media en Digitale Cultuur, English, lecture week 8, 2018/2019, first year Taal- en Cultuurstudies.
Recap Week 1: History and Role
->Teleological account of history vs. Genealogical account of history
->Remediation
->Technological Imaginary vs. Moral Panics
______________________________________
T. D.
• McLuhan
• Media=Technology (material)
• Media extent our senses
• Media transform our sensory experiences of the world around us and as such start to
determine our society and our human condition (we cannot escape them)
– 'Primitive' oral culture – Culture of literacy – Print culture – Electronic culture
• Medium is the message (not content, not intent)
– Content is always another medium → remediation
S.C.
• Williams
• Media=Technology Use (a tool)
• Media are made and used by humans
• So… media do not determine social change but humans do (agency versus causality –
Humanism)
• That “change” is more often business as usual (reinforcing dominant social, political,
economic, and cultural ideologies) → we need to be aware of this!
• If we have agency, we can also use media to our advantage, free ourselves from the
shackles of big corporations, and other powers that be (“workers of the world unite”)
Recap Week 2: Characteristics
Affordances …
1. … exist in between user and technology.
2. … thereby also offer us more than a taxonomy of essential technological characteristics
(what it affords, not what it is).
3. … offer a perspective in between TD and SC.
4. … help to characterize and compare media and consider their historical development.
___
Technological characteristics
- Digital (vs analogue)
• Data storage (electronic en compressed)
• Data access (high speed and non-linear)
• Data manipulation (remix culture, prosumer)
- Interactive - Ideological connotations (active, power, independence, choice)
- 1) Hypertext navigation (database: links on a website)
- 2) Immersive navigation (spatial: most games)
- 3) Registrational interactivity (adding: wikipedia, comments, forum)
- 4) Interactive communication (dialogue: chat, video conference)
- Hypertextual
- Non-linear connections between different units of material/files (text, image, sound)
- 1) Intertextuality and notes and bibliography
- 2) Vannevar Bush (1945): The “Memex” -> Ted Nelson (1982): “Project Xanadu”
- Networked
- Media as nodes in a larger (almost) global network, (relatively freely) accessible to
everyone, all the time.
, - Consumption: mass media → specialized supply, fragmented audience
- Distribution: centralised (one-many) → decentralised (many-many)
- Production: professional → ‘user-generated-content’ (prosumer)
- Virtual
- From incomplete reality to another/different reality (with real effects – virtual money)
- VR; (In-between) space/cloud; descriptor for a cyber/mediatised society
- Simulation
- Postmodernist: Baudrillard’s ‘hyperreality’ -> The Matrix (obfuscation/replacement of the
real)
- Computer simulation: Prensky -> e.g. weather simulation software (prediction/visualization/
modelling of processes)
- Simulation games: e.g. Frasca, 2001 (modelling complex rule systems)
Recap Week 3: Visual Culture (VR)
The social developments of technologies as media (B. Winston, 1999):
− New technologies have their basis in general scientific competence ('feasability’)
− From this competence, prototypes are formed ('ideation’)
− Once the prototypes become more socially accepted and find grounds for commercial
growth, they become… (‘inventions’)
Virtual as “an object to think with”
Raises questions about:
• Our reality (what is real?)
• Our perceptions of our bodily experience of our reality (embodiment)
• Immersion, simulation, representation, realism
-Immersion
- Stepping into a different (virtual) reality (more than absorption)
- Alberti’s window (1450’s)
- Creates a “virtual” space in a painting
- Continuation of physical space into virtual space
• “Environmental”
• “Head-mounted”
-Simulation
• Simulations are real things before (or sometimes even without) representing something else
• Simulations present rather than represent
• Simulations have lost their connection to an original
->It focuses our attention on how the thing models/functions (the underlying system) rather
than on what it represents/means Frasca, 2001
• And as such, it raises questions about the relationship between reality and the virtual
-Realism
• Referential → perceptual realism
• Verisimilitude: Approaches the visual appearance of our world as it appears to the human
eye
• Indexicality: Direct relationship between picture and the depicted
• Photorealism: Presentation (rather than representation) of a realistic looking image
(remediating the photo)
• Hyperrealism: Dominant aesthetic form in Disney animation films in which live action
cinema conventions are remediated and combined with more animationspecific forms
('plasmaticness’)
->CGI:
• Plays with (challenges) our idea of realism
– Illusory
– New reality
• At the same time, fascination for technological ingenuity and a sense of heightened illusion
• Normative connotation: spectacular superficiality
Voordelen van het kopen van samenvattingen bij Stuvia op een rij:
Verzekerd van kwaliteit door reviews
Stuvia-klanten hebben meer dan 700.000 samenvattingen beoordeeld. Zo weet je zeker dat je de beste documenten koopt!
Snel en makkelijk kopen
Je betaalt supersnel en eenmalig met iDeal, creditcard of Stuvia-tegoed voor de samenvatting. Zonder lidmaatschap.
Focus op de essentie
Samenvattingen worden geschreven voor en door anderen. Daarom zijn de samenvattingen altijd betrouwbaar en actueel. Zo kom je snel tot de kern!
Veelgestelde vragen
Wat krijg ik als ik dit document koop?
Je krijgt een PDF, die direct beschikbaar is na je aankoop. Het gekochte document is altijd, overal en oneindig toegankelijk via je profiel.
Tevredenheidsgarantie: hoe werkt dat?
Onze tevredenheidsgarantie zorgt ervoor dat je altijd een studiedocument vindt dat goed bij je past. Je vult een formulier in en onze klantenservice regelt de rest.
Van wie koop ik deze samenvatting?
Stuvia is een marktplaats, je koop dit document dus niet van ons, maar van verkoper elenavanhattum. Stuvia faciliteert de betaling aan de verkoper.
Zit ik meteen vast aan een abonnement?
Nee, je koopt alleen deze samenvatting voor €2,99. Je zit daarna nergens aan vast.
