In the first class of Week 4, we went through part of the reading (Manovich Lev, The Language of New Media) together, and analysed these basic characteristics, which helped to come up with more ideas of our own projects.

Our group mainly focused on ‘numerical representation’ to discover the differences between old and new media forms. Basically, ‘numerical’ means that a new media object such as picture or video can exist in a digital way. When we upload a video on Internet, it can be seen as a link to share instantly with others, which reminds me of the ‘group facetime’ project we did in class. The project I chose in MIT database named The Sheep Market also shows this characteristic that the founder asked participants to draw a sheep by using mouse on their computer, so all the sheep were produced in a numerical form. If the project is done in an old form, the founder will need to find 10,000 people in the real world to draw their sheep on paper, which is much more difficult. In the new media world, the internet sometimes works like a huge database to collect users’ information in a mathematically way.

The second principle ‘modularity’ also inspired me a lot. Manovich points out that elements in new media always keep the independence but also can be used into a larger scale of work. For instance, theme song is popular idea for both films and television series. A film likes to cooperate with a suitable singer to create a new song and release before the film to advertise. The theme song itself is a completed media work that people can listen to it without watching the film. At the same time, film audiences can view the song and the film as a whole.

For my own small scale project, I will like to explore how online collaboration can benefit the interactive experience of viewers, also, learn more about using the non-linear or ‘fragment’ form to produce media work.