Variability in new media is the idea raised by Lev Manovich that an object is not fixed, but can “exist in different, potentially infinite versions” (link here). This allows the viewer to interact with the media in a more personal way, being able to tailor their own individual experience by using media fragments in a variety of ways. Variability in the context of our project (which we’ve decided to call Judging by the Cover) is the user’s ability to click through each of the videos at will, thus creating their own, pseudo-narrative. This is a very simple application of this concept, which I believe is something the continued development of the project should focus on addressing. An idea I had would be to create a version of the project in which users could submit their own videos and interpretations of a pre-set pool of album covers to “update” the program with new concepts. The viewer would then be shown a number of responses for the same album cover but by different producers, based on the viewer’s previous interactions. For example, if the program noticed the viewer selecting videos with a dark, sinister aesthetic, that style of video would be more likely to come up. This would of course require updating the project to a much larger scale to allow for a variety of video styles, as well as the incorporation of software to track each user’s activity on the project. While this update is far beyond both my technical knowledge and the constraints for this assignment, incorporating this feature would not be possible at this time, but I think it’s an way to allow a stronger response to Manovich’s concept of variability.