New Media Operations

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New Media Operations

• Computers English
• Matt Barton

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If you begin with the screen
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Key Questions

1. Whats under the hood of a new media project?
   (The computer layer)
2. How does the computer layer affect/define/delimit
   new media? (The cultural layer)
3. In what ways does our societys way of making
   sense of the world affect the way we build
   cultural interfaces, and how do those interfaces
   in turn affect our society?

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A Two Way Street

• Software operations become part of how we
  understand ourselves, others, and the world.
• Strategies of working with computer data become
  our general cognitive strategies.
• At the same time, the design of software
  reflects a larger social logic, ideology, and
  imaginary of the contemporary society.

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Means of New Media Production

• New media production tools are easier for
  amateurs to adopt
• Modding engines make it easy for users to
  create their own levels and spin-offs other
  tools (Frontpage, Garage Band, Visual Basic)
  allow novice users to do advanced tasks.
• However, advanced features like Flash,
  Javascript, Java applets, SQL, PHP, and so on
  help maintain the need for professionals.

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Separation of Ops and Data

• In programming, the tendency towards
  abstraction means keeping the data separate
  from the program.
• A program might be used to sort anything
  alphabetically, not just the list of names you
  need sorted at the moment.
• This separation carries over into new media
  production in the split between operations
  (engine) and media data (content or assets).

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Selection

• New media objects are rarely created completely
  from scratch usually they are assembled from
  ready-made parts.
• Authentic creation has been replaced by
  selection from a menu.
• Examples PowerPoint slide designs (or clip art),
  DVD authoring software templates, construction
  kits and level editors for games
• Musicians compose new works by selecting and
  arranging pre-built loops.

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The Myth of Creationism

• Is authentic creation even possible?
• The realist artist can only represent nature by
  relying on already established representational
  schemes.
• The author is pulling together a tissue of
  quotations drawn from innumerable centers of
  culture.

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Art by Selection

• The process of art has finally caught up with
  modern times. It has become synchronized with
  the rest of modern society, where everything from
  objects to identities is assembled from
  ready-made parts.
• The modern subject proceeds through life by
  selecting from menus and catalogs.

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Compositing

• Digital Compositing
• The process of combining a number of moving image
  sequences, and possibly stills, into a single
  sequence with the help of special compositing
  software.
• Separating the image into elements that can be
  independently rendered saves time.

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3 Steps of Compositing

1. Construction of a seamless 3-D virtual space from
   different elements.
2. Simulation of a camera move through this space
   (optional).
3. Simulation of the artifacts of a particular media
   (optional).

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Montage and Continuity

• Where old media relied on montage, new media
  substitutes the aesthetics of continuity.
• Whereas movies feature lots of cuts in space
  and time, new media favors continuous action and
  frowns on interruptions.
• Exceptions Cut scenes in games
• Montage strives to create dissonance among
  elements compositing aims to blend them into a
  seamless whole.

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Whats so new?

• Digital compositing does represent a
  qualitatively new step in the history of visual
  simulation because it allows the creation of
  moving images of nonexistent worlds.

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New Montage

• Computer media privileges spatial dimensions
  over temporal development.
• Spatial order of layers in a composite (2.5D
  space)
• Virtual space constructed through compositing (3D
  space),
• 2D movement of layers in relation to the image
  frame (2D space),
• Relationship between the moving image and linked
  information in other windows (2D space).

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Teleaction

• Teleaction technology allows the viewer to
  manipulate reality through representations.
• It allows the subject to control not just the
  simulation but reality itself.
• Examples Remote surgery, robot submarines,
  super cockpit