Blog 5

Rightly so, the introduction was very concerned with an overview of software and its capabilities. Manovich is right to be concerned with it. It encompasses each of us on a daily basis. We are all students, and we each are required to use email, eLearning, and myUNIverse, all created using software. It has become a part of our campus community or culture. And once we leave UNI, I am inclined to believe it will always be a part of our society at large. I believe this class is most concerned with “application software.” That is, we are interested in creation; an interest tempting more young people today than ever before. I also find it interesting that Manovich stresses the importance of the history of software. I enjoy history, and in and Intro. to Film class last year, I feel like I learned a lot about how film has changed in technique through the ages. Ideas are easily generated from past generations.

Manovich seems (overly) concerned with the “remediation” of media during the 20^th century. He asks, “…what happened to the techniques, languages, and the concepts of twentieth century media as a result of their computerization” (pg. 36). The question is answered by Manovich, who says that Alan Kay takes the responsibility of “software-izing” the media. Tradition is of the utmost importance to Manovich, and I think many middle-aged adults would agree. Computers seem too complex for many, while the younger generations embrace the meshed technology. For us, it means unleashing the creativity we find inside us, for them, software/technology is daunting and it questions their intelligence. In my opinion, I love being able to transform projects from one type to another. (Photoshop to Dreamweaver, for sure in this class.) It allows us to publicize our work. We get to feel like we’ve really accomplished something.

Metamedium, describing the computer as being a medium for all other mediums, leads right into Manovich’s 2^nd chapter, “Understanding Metamedia.” While multimedia is defined as contents that can appear next to each other on a processor, metamedia is more of a hybrid. I believe Google maps is used as an example, where aerial footage is combined with traditional map information.

“The new “global aesthetics”

celebrates media hybridity and uses it to create

emotional impacts, drive narratives, and create user

experiences. In other words, it is all about hybridity.

To put this differently, it is the ability to combine

previously non-compatible techniques of different

media which is the single common feature of millions

of designs being created yearly by professionals and

students alike and seen on the web, in print, on big

and small screens, in built environments, and so on.”

This explains how easy it has become for cinematographers to make movies more than film. Design is almost too simple to weave throughout a fantasy film. And as technique becomes more and more advanced, the designs themselves will become more and more advanced and reality-based.

As for the motionographer blog, I loved it. Here is what Malcolm Sutherland says about his short film, Umbra.

“I think the design in Umbra had to be simple to convey a sense of emptiness that was key to the film. There is an idea in Buddhism which is that everything in existence is empty – this isn’t nihilistic, it just says that at the core everything is empty of a concrete, fixed, self; and the truth behind the form is that everything is transient and interconnected. For me contact with this “emptiness” can be both wonderfully liberating and a terrifying thing! So in my mind this is basically what the character in the film is confronting. A simple yet organic design seemed necessary to get that sense of pervasive “emptiness” into the film. I think it was important to have that contrast with to the dense inner voyage of the character.”

Personally, I think it looks like Umbra was created using maybe Flash, but there are plenty of softwares that could have helped the design process along, like Photoshop. He also makes a comment near the end of the entry where he says he has no clue where any of this (being his work, I presume) is going. We don’t ever really know where a design will end up. We have ideas and dreams about how things should look, but once you’re working on a project, more ideas will coincide with the originals, resulting in something completely new and exciting.