‘New Media Innovation from Old Media Techniques’, promised to be the the subject of this studio. Certainly the idea of evolving media is not a new concept, however, does media truly evolve or does it just become faster and simpler as time goes on. The digital revolution has clearly ushered in new processes and streamlined workflows but every one of these processes can be traced very easily back into the analogue world and in some cases, the analogue method is still preferred for aesthetic reasons. The question is whether or not New Media is really Innovation or is it just Old Media, evolved.
David M. Henkin in his journal article, On Forms and Media describes the historical process of media analysis in academic circles, “one could of course describe this traditional scholarship, as concerned with the forms that knowledge and information have taken. But modern media studies are often doubly formalist in the sense that they analyse the formal properties of media as well as the formal conditions of mediated messages.” Henkin suggests that the messages and communications that these media communicate, or their meaning is often separated from the formalist aspect of the medium itself. In the case of filmmaking process. A shot that used to be achieved using paint, film stock and plexiglass glass, can now be achieved in photoshop. The communication, however, is still identical, the outcome is still the same, one might argue, therefore, that only media processes are innovated.
At the beginning of this course Dan asked us to analyse why certain objects are media. Our group was given “doors”. We decided that doors are media because media by definition is a something that communicates something else. A door communicates people, if we change the mechanism by which the door opens, but the same person comes out the other side, is it innovation?
As much as new media isn’t necessarily always innovative, a few create entirely new ways of interacting with the media world.”From the iPod has emerged related ideas and terms in the new media sphere as well, including podcasting, which basically means producing and distributing audio files (not necessarily music) via the Internet for listening on computers or portable MP3 players.” John V. Pavlik in his book Media in the Digital Age explains, “Audiences are transforming into users in the digital media age. For most of the history of the media, the audience was characterized by pas-siveness—in the position of only receiving the reports published and broadcast by centralized news and media organizations. […] Through the advent of digital and networked technologies, the audi- ence has dramatically begun to reinvent itself as an active participant in the public-communication process.” These are certainly not new ideas, and I make an important point of that. But it does highlight that the form of new media is instrumental, not so much in the way meaning is constructed but certainly, and most importantly the way it is consumed and herein lies the innovation of digital media process.
It is difficult to extrapolate such a board idea and apply it to filmmaking. Certainly the creation of new genres and the ability for audiences to participate more easily in films is certainly a result of new media process. The accessibility of filmmaking techniques has made it easier for once passive audiences to not only participate but become creatives themselves. Pop films no longer exist on their own self contained tape, but they are constantly parodied and ‘memed’ by audience-come-critics.
In creating my final assignment for Old’s Cool, I set out with the intention of creating a very much more analogue outcome. Having explored the idea aesthetics, formality and materiality in my second and third assignments, I thought it would be important to add an old media feel to my new media artefact. However, in creating the piece I realised, as so often is the case that time restrictions in production and tight turn-arounds in post limited my ability to use older media. Digital media is faster, more malleable and quicker to experiment with. The conceptual change that the artefact underwent was significant and this was necessary. My focus changed from my initial awe and wonder at old processes like matte painting, “Wow, there’s a magnificent amount of time and effort that went into that effect.” to the more creatively open-ended question, “If I can achieve anything with digital technology, how far can I take the concept of mattes?” The result was an exploration of human form and media form. Media being a distinctly human pursuit, communication through anything other than speech, really, being a uniquely human trait. Expression is really what gets innovated by technology. New Media techniques are just evolved forms of expression, formality that is easier with deeper possibility.
Christian Schwarzenegger’s Exploring Digital Yesterdays – Reflections on New Media and the Future of Communication History delves into the idea that digital media technology is extremely transient and the line between private and public, the line between audience and producer is so blurred. “these are the challenges posed by digitalization, which is routinely said to be possibly one of the most important phenomena to have influenced Western culture over the last few decades (Jenkins 2006; Grant and Wilkinson 2009; Balbi 2011).” In attempting to make an accurate comment on New Media Innovation, I think what we have to ask ourselves as media practitioners is, “What are we ignoring that we have lost with new media?” Part of the difficulty of looking back on history is attempting to not taint it with nostalgia.
What I have learned across this studio is that to truly understand any new media process, you first have to understand its origin. In class someone made a comment about how they couldn’t believe that a record worked; that grooves on the surface of a piece of vinyl could produce music. I responded, “isn’t it more unbelievable that a laser would read ones and zeros on a CD and it make music?” but I suppose it isn’t really. In making our “Super 8” films (and I use the term Super 8 loosely), I realised how much of an impact that style of filmmaking had on me. I would never have thought that I would find myself learning from shooting with DV tape but there is something you learn, something that’s forced on you, in economically shooting, that you don’t learn when you have an infinite amount of digital storage media at your disposal. Each imperfection, each roadblock that old media’s legacy systems present, is really just a gateway to new media innovation. But I’ve learned to respect old media so much more over this course because now I understand its worth so much more.
Henkin, David M. “On Forms and Media.” Representations, vol. 104, no. 1, 2008, pp. 34–36. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/rep.2008.104.1.34.
PAVLIK, JOHN V. “INVENTORS AND INNOVATORS OF DIGITAL MEDIA.” Media in the Digital Age, Columbia University Press, 2008, pp. 214–233. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/pavl14208.16.
Oggolder, Christion. “Inside – Outside. Web History and the Ambivalent Relationship between Old and New Media.” Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung, vol. 37, no. 4 (142), 2012, pp. 134–149. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41756479.