NMT Lecture notes
week 1
Manovich article
context
Lev Manovich has written a book in 2001 “the language of new media”. And also “software take
command”. The context of medium specificity. He was in fine art and filmmaking. The start of
modern art. The art became self-reflective. Like clement Greenberg. Like Magritte ceci n’est pas
une pipe. Thinking about the medium and not what is represented. The medium is the message.
Manovich is interested in people who create their own media like photoshop. Similar to Jenkins
with participatory culture.
Metamedium
“What exactly is media after software” p.110. the idea is that the computer media is two things.
One it can simulate prior media (simulate a piano online and play it). Other is like new media with
no precedent (like 3d modeling or creating music with a synthizer). Metamedium can simulate and
create new media. However, simulation isn’t only the picture but simulation shows it acquires new
properties like filters. Like Jim Carrey’s video with anti-aging properties. It can be manipulated.
Techniques: media-independent vs media-specific
An original file can be manipulated using software. it is important to Manovich. Through these
manipulations is how the object is not static. Some are media-specific and other are media-
independent. Specific is for images or a 3d object and one type of data. The other one is like copy-
pasting, search engine or looking for a place, food, love etc.. they are media-independent.
Operations that work across media and data-type. What is new according to Manovich is media-
independent software techniques. “They are general concepts translated into algorithms, which
can operate on particular data types” p.113-114. First it is a concept, a functionality. Then it is
transformed in an algo. Function and effects are the same. Idea of the functions is the same but
data and algo are different. Also in art there was media-independency. Like surrealism. So
metamedium +software techniques.
“there is only software”
Raw file is the image visibly. Like modifying with photoshop. But digital media objects like data
type is like programming. There is only software no digital media. The properties Digital media is
defined by the software.
Chun article
Execution
Command->execution->result. For chun she erases the execution on the software. For chun she
thinks we need to focus on this. Software is legible and hardware is illegible as it is part of the
execution. We need to engage with software. We need to critically examine the limitations of
software.
Pre-automation programming (yes,sir)
- ENIAC
o Mathematicians create a plan, which is read to a girl which codes the ENIAC
- HARVARD MARK 1
o Filled with perforated paper tape
,Programming as languages
- Shift to commanding a girl to commanding a machine
- Doesn’t need planning, can be programmed directly
- Same source code can run on multiple machines
o Machine independent (universal)
- Separation between hardware/software, creates hardware ignorance.
- Brings power because the user is in command
- Execution is hardware level
Software as ideology
- False consciousness: we think that we have direct control over the code, but the real
execution is the process going on behind the code.
- Representation of an imaginary subject relation (Althusser): Software produces users.
Gives an idendity.
- Hegemonic common sense (Gramsci): Software is now common sense. We only know
our machine through software.
- Critique that there is only software.
Automatic programming – programming as languages
Command/results – cause/effects
Software as ideology
, Week 2
Parikka
Media materialism -> focus on materialism’s meaning: there are many types of it.
In terms of theory, it starts from Marx: Historical materialism. Spirit Ideology<- material world, he
offered a critique to idealism that was there before him. Marx material world/world conditions
our idea, so like the industrial revolution those are the material base that condition our idea, so
the world condition how we thinki i.e class struggle=the lack of opportunity. Hegel: idealism he
develop this concept and it means that the history of human kind of the world, so through the
spirit we come more intelligent and the way we make sense of the world evolves, it is important to
think of ideology, which conditions the material world. So through science, and other stuff, we are
able to change the material world.
Parikka 20th century there is Media Materialism, which is different.
He highlights that there is this strand of media theory called ‘’ German Media Theory’’ which has
to do with Friendrick Kittler. He was influenced by Foucault, he proposed to revisit the history of
humanity through media. He was polemical, our machine determine the way we live (tech det).
For Parikka this is very materialistic.
After Kittler, Media Archeology, as a question of time.
Wolfgand Ernst-> microtemporality: temporality that machines have while they operate (machine
temporalities).
Siefried Zielinski -> deep time (genealogies of machines). He looks how machine are constructed,
and how are influenced by the development of other machine and how some of them never
evolved.
New type of media materialism: Parikka
What if there is another level of media materialism that is not easily dismissed as we would think?
What if media materialism is not something that bones in on the machine only? Where do
machines come from, what composes technology in its materiality and media after it becomes
disused, dysfunctional dead media that refuse to die? There is such a thing as geology of media: a
different sort of temporal and spatial materialism of media culture that the one that focuses solely
on machines or even networks of technologies as nonhuman agencies. A materialism that is not
restricted to traditional idea about media as devices but can refer back to cosmology and geology:
that the geological sciences and astronomy have already opened up the idea of the earth, light,
air, and time as media.
He is not interested in the technologies as devices , he wants to know what the are made of, the
life cycle of the device, more than how operate.
Geology of Media-> Parikka looks outside the usual definition of media: instead of looking at a
radio, he prefers to think that components and materials enable such technologies, instead of
networking we need to remember the importance of copper and other materials that made it
possible.
Claim: Geology becomes a way to investigate materiality of the technological media world. It
becomes a conceptual trajectory, a creative intervention to the cultural history of the
contemporary.
So looking at media’s provenance, you go back to geology, to where it comes from and what it is
made of.
Language is geophysics*, the way to understand geology in media.
doing research of geology but using machine. Use of machine to computation, to geo-modelling, a
lot of calculation. This is a scientific language to approach media
