ZUR 393k: Effects of Mass Media 1. reception theory 2. digimodernism vs. postmodernism 3. FIVE characteristics of new media Kirby,“The Digimodernist Text” & “Digimodernism and Web 2.0” Wessels,“Exclusion, Inclusion and the Internet” & “Culture, Everyday Life and the Internet” Outline: Reception Theory • specific to communication/ media studies • adds CONTEXT to the investigation of meaning: the site where reader/text interactions occur • we can no longer separate interpersonal and mediated communication Reception Theory final caution David Morley: we must keep in mind the distinction between having power over an individual text (as an active reader) and power over the agenda in which the text is produced and presented David Morley: “The power of individuals to reinterpret meanings is hardly equivalent to the discursive power of centralized media institutions to construct the texts that the viewer then interprets, and to imagine otherwise is simply foolish” (“Active Audience Theory,” 1993, p. 16). to what extent does new media alter the power dynamic between media producers and consumers (between “writers” and “readers”)? Lawrence Lessig on Read/Write vs. Read Only Culture https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=7Q25-S7jzgs digimodernism “Since its first appearance in the second half of the 1990s under the impetus of new technologies, digimodernism has decisively displaced postmodernism to establish itself as the 21st century’s new cultural paradigm” (Kirby, p. 1) • digital modernism • pun: where digital technology meets textuality and text is (re)formulated by the fingers and thumbs (the digits) in the act of textual elaboration digimodernism • “a dominant cultural logic or hegemonic norm” (F. Jameson) • not a blanket description of all contemporary cultural production, but “the force field in which very different kinds of cultural impulses . . . must make their way” (Jameson, quoted in Kirby, p. 1-2). digimodernism • successor to and reaction against postmodernism “the arguable death of postmodernism” • postmodernism “born” in the 1950s • Lyotard: Auschwitz was “the crime opening postmodernity” Enlightenment Precepts http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/postmodernism/modules/introduction.html Characteristics of Postmodernism • no absolute truth • questioning of grand narratives • visuality and simulacrum vs. linearity and temporality • late capitalism • irony and parody • pastiche and bricolage The Sony Building (formerly AT&T building) in New York City, 1984, by Philip Johnson, illustrating a "Postmodern" spin with the inclusion of a classical broken pediment on the top which diverged from the boxy functional office towers common in Modern Architecture. http://www.partyearth.com/articles/architecture-6/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_architecture http://gosblr.tumblr.com/post/ 15932935404/postmodern-ryan- gosling http://www.annehelenpetersen/?p=2847 • contemporary theory (including postmodernism) believes in the local, the pragmatic, the particular. . . • . . .“but we live in a world where the political right acts globally and the postmodern left thinks locally” (Terry Eagleton, quoted in Kirby, p. 31) “the arguable death of postmodernism” digimodernism and postmodernism • some of digimodernism’s key traits (e.g. earnestness) serve as a repudiation of typical postmodern characteristics new media • convergence of two separate historical trajectories (both initiated in the 1830s) 1. Charles Babbage • first automatic computing engines A. difference engine B. analytical engine 1792-1871 2. Daguerre’s daguerreotype • silver iodide + mercury on copper plates • single image, not reproducible Abraham Lincoln Edgar Allan Poe Daguerreotype, Prague Castle new media 2 histories intersect in the mid-20th c. • modern digital computer • modern media technologies that allow for storage of still & moving images, sounds, and texts using different material forms (photographic plates, film stocks, gramophones, etc.) internet (Castells) • born of unlikely intersection of • major research institutions (big science) • military research • ideology: uncompromising defense of individual freedom architecture of openness • self-evolving development of technology • users are key producers new media • “new” ≠ “recent” • origins of computer date back to 1830s (Charles Babbage began designing “the Analytical Engine” in 1833) • first Internet demonstration: 1972 new media • “new” ≠ “new use” • popular definition: use of a computer for distribution and exhibition rather than production • problem with this definition: blurring of “old” and “new” media content new media • “new” ≠ “revolutionary” • printing press affected one STAGE of cultural communication (distribution) • photography affected one TYPE of cultural communication (still images) new media • “new” = scope of change • computer media affect all STAGES of communication (acquisition, manipulation, storage, and distribution) • computer media affect all TYPES of cultural communication (still images, moving images, sound & spatial constructions) “Computerization has changed and will change the text violently and forever, altering its production, consumption, form, content, economics, and value” 5 principles of new media (key differences between old and new media) • Lev Manovich • not absolute laws, but general tendencies of a culture undergoing computerization principles of new media ONE: numerical representation • all new media objects are composed of digital code • a new media object can be described formally • a new media object is subject to algorithmic manipulation digital code numerical representation • process of conversion of various forms of old media/analog media = digitization • sampling • quantification digital sampling Roy Lichtenstein: 1923-1997 principles of new media • TWO: modularity • the “fractal structure of new media” • media elements re-assembled/remixed, but each retains its separate identity The last three principles are dependent on these first two. principles of new media THREE: automation • numerical coding and the modular structure of a media object allow for the automation of many operations involved in media creation, manipulation, and access. • human intentionality can be removed from the creative process, at least in part. principles of new media FOUR: variability • a new media object is not something fixed once and for all, but something that can exist in different, potentially infinite versions • not identical copies, but different versions of the same media object forms of variability • information obtained from user creates customized web site experiences forms of variability • branching-type interactivity or menu-type interactivity • hypermedia/hyperlinks forms of variability • hypermedia/hyperlinks forms of variability • periodic updates (manual or automatic) forms of variability http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/10/a-real- time-map-of-births-and-deaths/280609/ • periodic updates (manual or automatic) http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/10/a-real- time-map-of-births-and-deaths/280609/ • periodic updates (manual or automatic) • scalability (variations in size, degree of detail) forms of variability • adjustments forms of variability http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2487211/Meet-woman-THAT- Photoshop-time-lapse-video-makeover.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hv--XUjj0bw http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2487211/Meet-woman-THAT- Photoshop-time-lapse-video-makeover.html principles of new media FIVE: cultural transcoding • new media consist of two layers • cultural layer • computer layer