Understanding New Media
Understanding New Media
Communications Lab(Morgan Barnard)
09/ 12/ 2006
Youjoeng PAIK
My feelings after this reading were that it provided a clear explanation for what New Media is in a very detailed way. I have studied this field related to new media in my past studies, but I could not understand these concepts clearly. It was a new field that I was involved in while I was studying motion graphics in Korea and the courses I took did not have clearly defined subjects or explanation of what new media is and what the fundamentals are behind it. Studying “New Media,” in Korea without clear and descriptive knowledge of what New Media is, I often wondered why I have to take computer programming, or how this could be applied to different types of genres the modern society. There were many questions that I could not answer, and there were also very little references in Korean University programs that were available for reference. The only references that were available were in English and because of this many students had difficulty translating and understanding the material.
This book or (reading) written by Lev Manovich not only gave me some clues to understanding new media but also allowed me to assemble my past experiences and knowledge about this subject. After reading, I could understand clearly what is Digital or Analog Media. Moreover, I am somewhat inspired to do challenging things in Digital Media. I believe that based on these concepts in New Media and Old Media there can be a varieties of applications and possibilities for us to pursue something new and unique in the New Media era.
I think the most interesting part of this reading were the part in this book that suggest several principles of New Media. Principals such as Numerical Representation which are composed of digital code, Modularity, Automation, Variability, and Transcoding and of this the description that on one level, new media is old media that has been digitized. In the last part of this reading, it suggests how New Media differ from Old Media by exemplifying cinema as New Media. It is said that New Media is analog media converted to a digital representation and that this allows different media types to be displayed using one machine such as a computer. It is also said that in it’s representation it contains a fixed amount of information and that it can be copied endlessly without degradation. I think the most important part or the most interesting fact about New Media that it is interactive, and in the process of interaction the user can choose which elements to display or which paths to follow, thus generating a unique work. In this way the user becomes the co-author of the work.
In short, I have found a very interesting point of view in this reading. It is the concept of the representation in New Media. “Concept of Representation,” seems easy to understand, but I think it contains profound meaning in New Media. I believe that every element and concept of New Media have already existed in media before, and now we represent them by manipulating, controlling, assembling, sorting, and distributing them in our own work. I feel that change from analog to digital is inevitable, not revolutionary.