Post 1: Review of the articles (multimedia, new media)

Week 44-45

Multimedia

Many names have emerged to describe computer-based forms, such as digital media, new media, hypermedia, or multimedia. The articles we had to read in week 44 looked at multimedia.

Rockwell and Mactavish combine several definitons with a focus on multimedia as a genre of communicative work and define multimedia work as a computer-based rhetorical artifact in which multiple media are integrated into an interactive whole. Multimedia works, whether born digital or remediated, share common characteristics including emerging modes of electronic production, distribution, and consumption. However, when Manovich describes new media (a term closely related to multimedia), he identifies it with the use of a computer for distribution and exhibition, rather than with production. To bring an example, photos which are put on a CD-ROM and require a computer to view them are considered new media, while the same photos printed as a book are not. Even though these photos might have been taken with a digital camera.

There are a number of ways to classify multimedia works. For example, we could classify them in terms of their perceived use, from entertainment to education. We could look at the means of distribution and the context of consumption of such works, from free websites that require a high-speed Internet connection, to expensive CD-ROM games that require the latest video cards to be playable. We could classify multimedia by the media combined, from remediated works that take a musical work and add synchronized textual commentary, to virtual spaces that are navigated. Other criteria for classification could be the technologies of production, the sensory modalities engaged, the type of organization that created the work, or the type of interactivity.

Packer and Jordan mention many of the same concepts (integration, interactivity, hypermedia, immersion, and narrativity) to determine the scope of multimedia's capabilities for expression. Integration can be seen as combining of artistic forms and technology into a hybrid form of expression, while hypertext is the linking of separate media elements into one another to create a trail of personal association. Interactivity is the ability of the user to directly manipulate and influence their experience of media, whereas immersion is the experience of entering into the simulation or suggestion of a three-dimesional (3-D) environment. And finally, narrativity can be seen as the aesthetic and formal strategies resulting in non-linear expressive forms.

One of the latest developments in multimedia systems has been the 3-D virtual space, a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds. While virtual worlds are becoming increasingly popular with a growing number of users losing – or in some cases finding – themselves in the fantasy environments, Rockwell and Mactavish point out another direction in the industry. Looking at the developments of the past decades, they say: "The desktop multimedia systems of the 1990s are now being repackaged as portable devices that can play multiple media. The keyboard and the mouse are being replaced by input devices like pen interfaces on personal digital assistants (PDAs). Rather than immersing ourselves in virtual caves, we are bringing multimedia computing out of the office or lab and weaving it in our surroundings. The challenge to multimedia design is how to scale interfaces appropriately for hand-held devices like MP3 players and mobile phones." Both are true as multimedia is the answer to multiple choices.

Coming back to Rockwell's and Mactavish's attempt to describe multimedia, there are two ways we can think through it. The first is to think about multimedia through definitions, histories, examples, and theoretical problems. The second way is to use multimedia to think and to communicate thought. To think with multimedia is to use multimedia to explore ideas and to communicate them. In a field like multimedia, where what we think about is so new, it is important to think with.

I quite agree. As we have seen, analyzing and examining the theoretical foundations of new media (and other computer-based forms) together with their various characteristics (such as interactivity), throughout other courses, it is rather impossible to elaborate an all-encompassing definition. It is easier and way more exciting to think of it through personal ideas and user experiences. After all, the dynamic life of today's new media content and its interactive relationship with the media consumer, moves, breathes and flows with pulsing excitement in real time. Yet we try so hard to capture it in a countless number of definitons, one more lifeless than another. New media has become a true benefit to everyone because it allows people to express their artwork in more than one way with the technology that we have today and there is no longer a limit to what we can do with our creativity. So let us be creative.