Blog Post #4: Meme & Fan Art

I am not one to get really into a T.V. show, so when I really get into one, it must be good. One of my favorites is Showtime's Dexter. Most have probably seen snippets of it or at least heard of it. It's one of those shows of which you can't just watch one episode at a time. Thank heavens for Netflix, right?

If you are a Dexter fan, you'll probably think this is hilarious, too. It takes on the generic phrase of "I'm here to [task a] and [task b], and I'm all out of [something that task a or task b requires]." For some quick background if you haven't seen Dexter, he is a serial killer who ironically only kills serial killers. He leads a double life, serial killer by night but a forensics specialist by day. The "eat ice cream" part really has no significance to the plot, but I am guessing that this meme was meant to depict how casually Dexter murders serial killers. 

This next meme references the 90's cartoon Dexter's Laboratory. I grew up watching the cartoon, and that was the only relation I ever gave to the name "Dexter" until Showtime's Dexter came along. It looks like I wasn't the only one. This meme ties Dexter from Dexter's Laboratory to Dexter from the Showtime series and requires some knowledge of both. Dee Dee is Dexter's obnoxious sister on Dexter's Laboratory. Both Dexters are geniuses, which is why this actually kind of works.

This fan art of Dexter requires quite a bit of technological skill as it seems to be made in Photoshop. They may have selected a picture of Dexter that already existed and messed with it quite a bit. Either way, the photo obviously depicts Dexter's "Mr. Hyde" side. He is holding a slide of blood, which is his method of collecting trophies from every single one of his victims. The red glow on his face matches the red of blood. This fan art completely depicts his killer side and his need for blood.

Team Fortress 2 Fan Art

In search of fan art, I stuck with the military theme and stumbled onto a piece inspired by the Team Fortress 2 video game, and designed in the genre of WWII poster propaganda.

The graphic and typographic styles are so reminiscent of the era that a Channel One Russia documentary on WWII-era American propaganda apparently presented it as a legitimate artifact—kind of like foreign media outlets basing reports on stories in The Onion. I don’t know enough about generating images in a digitized format to comment with authority on how the artist put it together; e.g., did he/she draw the images and scan them, or were they stock images that were manipulated through drawing software? At any rate, the graphic is a composite of image and type set on a crumpled-wrapping–paper background that more than likely was a filler selected from a group of options. Same with the red swath beneath the soldier, which provides contrast and evokes the type of bloodthirstiness we see in the “Huns” portrayed in American WWI- and WWII-era posters and fliers. I think the piece effectively achieves the artist’s purpose in evoking some cultural context to add “realism” and fun to fellow gamers’ experience, while also poking fun at the ham-handed nature of wartime propaganda. 

I consume dragon souls, am a thane in every hold, and still I get talked down to by children.

So, this is probably outing me as a huge video game nerd, but I absolutely love the playstation game Skyrim. It is part of the Elder Scrolls series created by Bethesda games.

In Skyrim there are a number of strange physics, non-sensical consequences to actions, and repeated or unrelated dialogue. That said, Skyrim is an incredible achievement in open-world gaming. By open-world I mean that it does a better job of creating the illusion that your choices mean something and you are not being funneled through a specific story line in a specific order of sequences. The company that made the game, Bethesda, has been made fun of for having a number of "bugs" in their game code—earning the name Bugthesda. 

This meme is a screen shot from the game with the text super imposed. The joke is based on those strange game physics I talked about earlier. In the game if you walk up to a mountain you can just keep pushing the jump button and you will slowly work your way up the side of the mountain. The reason many people do this is because it takes less time than walking all the way around the mountain.The purpose of this particular meme is to express the gamer's feeling that there exists this weird loop hole in the game that is both immersion breaking and wildly convenient, especially if you have a horse— which can climb just about anything.

This meme is one of my favorite types, it is called stare dad. The joke here is based on a line that several of the guards in the game say in a condescending tone. The line from the game is, "I used to be an adventurer like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee." I feel the reason for this meme is that gamers joke a lot about this particular line but in the game it is actually very condescending and annoying to hear over and over. I think the meme expresses that frustration and the subsequent desire to stick an arrow in the leg of the guard who says it.

This piece of fan art is one of the few I was able to find that was not comprised of original artwork. This is the compositing of selection of screenshots from the game. This particular piece I think required a huge amount of skill to create because it flows seamlessly from one image to the next. I don't know a lot about image manipulation but I assume that one of the main tools used by this creator was photoshop. This time, I think, the picture was created to highlight the huge diversity of the game and some of the elements that make it such a captivating and addicting game to play.

Hockey is the only real sport

 I fail. I'm sorry that I haven't posted before this. So this post is on memes. I love memes. They entertain me greatly. So, for this project I decided to go with something I would have tons of fun with. Hockey memes. I love hockey! I'm sorry it's probably not going to be as entertaining for you as it is me. So let's get this thing started! 

 So, this meme makes me laugh really hard. I have always had a beef with people who claim that football is a manly sport. No. This meme makes a very good point in making fun  of injuries sustained by other athletes. I always laugh when athletes get injured in other sports for something minor and miss six weeks. Hockey puck to the face, plays the rest of the game. Take that football!

This one. I have so much love for people that bash on the Philadelphia Flyers. I'm a Pittsburgh Penguins fan, and the rivalry between the Flyers and Penguins is intense. But let's discuss how they haven't won the Cup for 38 years. Yeah, that's what I thought. 

So fan art for hockey is odd, so I stuck with something safe for right now. With this first one there's a lot that goes into creating a digital image. The skills and technical abilities are something beyond me. I used to dabble with photoshop, but nothing to this extent.  

While this one isn't digital, so far as I know,  it's an amazing piece. This is my favorite player from the Penguins team. This is Kris Letang. The technical skills needed to ensure the textures were authentic and the realism was there is amazing. I can't imagine what it would be like to be able to draw like this.

My Topic Will Be...The Ender's Game Universe??

It was hard to choose a topic because there are so many out there that would be fantastic...but Ender's Game won:

Memes:

My favorite meme of all time is probably the Boromir "One does not simply" meme. (I almost picked LOTR...) It's one of those that has a history and meaning behind the usage of the picture, but because it almost always includes the text, "one does not simply", it doesn't require as much background knowledge as other memes.

If you are not familiar with Lord of the Rings, it may help to know some context of the image: The original line in the movie is "One does not simply walk into Mordor." Mordor is a super dark place always under the watchful psychic eye of the nigh-unbeatable warlord, Sauron. Not even the might of all the good wizards, elves, men, and etc. combined could hope to breach the gates of Mordor...so how could a group of nine even think it possible to just travel there and slip through the ever-present multitude of guards and armies? The meme's meaning is amplified when considering Boromir's history and experience with Mordor. He's the son of the steward of Minis Tirith, the city at the front lines in the battle with Sauron. He's seen first-hand its might and faced its armies with armies of his own.

A very common thread of Ender's Game memes and conversation online is the persona of Ender Wiggin. There are memes that talk about wanting to become him, memes that discuss his morals and achievements, and memes that express the aura of his reputation. I feel this Boromir meme sums this all up nicely. Trying to beat Ender Wiggin is like trying to simply walk past the eye of Sauron. This kid, as a General and tactical mastermind, is responsible for the near-genocide of the greatest threat humankind has ever faced in the Ender Universe, a threat that nearly wiped out the planet Earth in one go...One truly does not "simply beat Ender Wiggin."

This reputation of Ender's is actually more complicated than it may seem (especially if you've only seen the movie). In all of his novels, Orson Scott Card plays with a lot of concepts and morals in unique and deeply penetrating ways. The philosophical discussions that fill the white space of the books are especially apparent in the difference between the two child geniuses, Bean and Ender, two completely different persons, but both commanding some sort of aura and awe regarding their abilities. The meme comparing Bean and Ender on the left doesn't require much meme knowledge to dissect, as the Boromir meme might. It is an obvious comparison, with the two images and parallel statements placed side-by-side.

Aside from simply making a comment on the books or on the philosophical threads I mentioned, this meme is a powerful discussion of how much societal upbringing and exposure to violence encourages violence in an individual. (A topic that is very hot at different times on the web, especially in reference to video games.) In the books, Ender has a constant struggle with his abilities/need to survive and the consequences of these. He never intentionally kills anyone, but he leaves a long line of dead behind him. Bean, on the other hand, is far more aware of the consequences and circumstances he is in than Ender. But he doesn't leave quite the same record of kills behind him. As the meme mentions, this is especially interesting because of the differences in their upbringing.

There are probably several purposes in sharing these memes. Communicating and sharing the enjoyment one gets out of experiencing a Card novel is the obvious answer. Part of meme culture is having this experience of "connection" with the author/sharers. This can be an "oh, I get it!" moment or a "that is so true!" moment, etc. But another aspect of this, I think, is that Card's novels provide a lot of material for debate, discussion, and supporting ideals/philosophies. Ender and Bean are heroes that can be looked up to, but they are extremely complicated and traumatized heroes. There are a lot of readers/internet users that connect with them on different levels, and they share the complexity and connection with other people on the web.

Fan Art:

A lot of the fan art for movies and books involves icons and characters from the novel. This is an image which exemplifies both:

I'd say this image displays medium technological skill. Elements from different places were selected, cut from the movie, fan art images, and movie posters/trailers. Then the artist composited them here. I'm fairly sure the logos were made by fans, (though possibly not by the artist who put all of these elements together into this image). The font, filters, and other tools used to edit the images are examples of template items the artist used, tools and elements he selected and applied to the image, using some sort of image editor. The artist took care to carefully cut the character shots and blend them into the background, but the image as a whole still has some feel of a montage. It's obviously a collection of elements, not a seamless whole, though probably more of a seamless whole than the early new media Manovich talks about. (The artist didn't go out of his way to express that the elements were from different origins; he deliberately chose to try and make them match each other and blend together).

This particular fan art image is intended to be used as desktop wallpaper. People often make fan art as a tribute to the original piece of art (novel or movie), but I think they also display it to connect with the original work, gain inspiration from it again. Fan art can also be an interpretation or statement on the original work. People sometimes use it to fill in the gaps the original author left out or create the original in the way they imagine/think it should have been done.

Images from:
http://artofdarian.blogspot.com/2012/03/jeesh-desktop-images.html
http://www.endersansible.com/enders-game-memes/

I’m not 110 percent sure yet, but I’m considering the topic of misogyny in the military. As I was searching for memes, I happened on a letter sent last year from Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and top military officials, where she includes screen shots of memes posted on FaceBook that she claims “contribute to a culture that permits and seems to encourage sexual assault and abuse.” I guess I shouldn’t have been, but after googling “women in the military memes,” I was surprised at how many I had to work with, and after further review, I have to agree with Rep. Speier. The themes themselves predate the computer revolution: a woman’s place is in the kitchen (preferably barefoot & pregnant); her god-given role is sexual objectification; and when she forgets her place, she needs to be reminded that men are stronger by whatever means necessary:

If that’s not enough to convince her she’s no equal to real men, she’s a lousy driver:

The knowledge necessary to get the joke is baked into our patriarchal, Judeo-Christian-Moslem-dominated culture: God is male, omnipotent, and omniscient. He made woman to serve man. Get it? It gets a little more complex when we look into who supposedly posted these memes. According to Marines Corps Times, the offenders “indicated in interaction with their followers that they were women: ‘Veteran assistance, good laughs, sammiches, recipes for taste, love and destruction of societal norms — but most of all, we’re here to add levity and laughs to life,’ read the page description.” And the poster of the women-driver meme identified herself as a 19-year-old woman. This could very well be true in both cases, but what would that mean? God is still male, omnipotent, and omniscient.

Going deep on the purpose of these memes requires some military intelligence: a 2012 Pentagon report “estimated 26,000 troops had been sexually abused in 2012, up 35 percent since the last survey in 2010.” Note the lack of gender-specificity in these stats, which, I believe, is the whole problem from the memes’ pov. Women get into the military and expect to be treated like men, and when they are, they bitch about it and ruin the entire esprit de corps, which apparently needed heavy non-gender-specific reinforcements in 2012. The fallout is that it’s becoming a little more apparent to civilians just how heavy a lift it’ll take to bring our military culture into compliance with civilians’ rights to a workplace free of sexual discrimination and abuse. Does US military service really require sexual dominance of supervisors over supervisees? Are US civilians really obligated to wink and nod?

As for the fanatical artistry engaged to further the cause of patriarchy, I’m not overly impressed. 

http://fortheleft.blogspot.com/2013/05/here-is-sexist-obscene-marine-facebook.html

http://www.memecenter.com/fun/161548/women-in-the-army

Note: embedded images repaired and image URLs added 9/29

Blog Post #3

Manovich believes that the interface of information severely affects how the information is portrayed and how it is used. I completely, wholeheartedly agree. My generation was the last to experience a few years of life without everything becoming completely digitized. I used video cassettes, music cassette tapes, read physical books instead of books on a tablet, and played real pinball games--the kind that actually use gravity, not the kind that comes as a default game on your computer. If I wanted to see a photo that I took, I had to take my film to get it developed. If I wanted to communicate with a friend, I would have to call their home phone and deal with the intimidation of asking their mom or dad, "Is so-and-so there?" or I would actually talk to them in person. We didn't text in class, we passed notes in class. By the time I was in high school, Facebook started to gain traction and everybody had ipods instead of CD collections. But for the majority of my childhood, technology wasn't king.

MUSIC

I remember when I first started using iTunes. Before iTunes came into my life, I was the proud owner of a beautiful shelf full of CD jewel cases, all neatly organized in alphabetical order by artist and then by date of publication (I was quite the organized 13 year-old). I only used iTunes to buy music to burn onto a CD to add to my collection. I got an Ipod for my 15th birthday, and my beautiful CD collection began to sit on the back burner of my mind. Within a few years, my CD's had collected dust and were simply little trophies of my past that I just couldn't get rid of. 

Thinking about it now, I miss the novelty of music that would come with getting a new CD. Over-playing a song wasn't as big of a deal because you had less of a variety of songs. If you wanted to listen to another artist, you would either pop in another album or you would listen to a compilation CD. A CD was timeless. Once you got a CD, you had it for a long time and listened to it somewhat frequently. Now, the liquidity of a song on a computer is far more than it used to be. Songs can be downloaded, deleted, altered or forgotten. On a CD, they were much more of a novelty. I find that now, I take my music for granted. Getting a new song really isn't that big of a deal. Once upon a time, getting a new CD was like a little piece of Christmas.

BOOKS/ARTICLES/MAGAZINES

Any bookworm will tell you that there is nothing like the feel and smell of a new book. I would thoroughly agree. I remember when I would wait for the next Harry Potter book to hit the shelves, anticipating it like a new movie that I just had to see. I would stand in line at Barnes & Noble with a twenty dollar bill in my hand, just waiting for the doors to open. Now, all that I have to do is pull out my Kindle Touch and download it after paying through the Internet. No lines, no new book smell, no twenty dollar bills -- I get it right away, I pay a lesser price, I save some trees and I save some space on my shelf. This is bitter-sweet to me, because yes, there is nothing like holding a book in your hands. At the same time, have you ever tried to read and you just can't get comfortable, no matter how you hold the book? 

With my Kindle, I can hold my book however I want without it flipping closed or sitting in a weird angle for my hands. My hands don't get tired trying to hold a brand new, stubborn, stiff book open. I can carry my entire library with me in my bag through the airport. I can look up definitions of words in books just by tapping the word on my Kindle screen. But I feel the same way about this as I do about music. I tend to take books for granted now that they are so easy to access. I will often be reading a book and then get busy, forgetting a week later that I am half way through it and just moving on to another book. It's easy to forget about it because it's just a title in a long list on my screen, not a physical book on my shelf. 

Articles and magazines online are much harder to trust than if they are in an actual magazine. In a published magazine or newspaper, there was much more of an editing process. Online, anybody can publish anything, any time. This is great for those who want to get the word out about things without having to be employed or undergo a complicated process. This is not so great if you want credible resources and research.

I Think I Owe the Internet. Maybe I'll buy it a pizza...

Ink on a Page

In my literature and creative writing classes, I often feel like the minority in discussions about print verses digital books. In almost every class, there is someone who begins to vehemently rant about ebooks or passionately declare their zeal and devotion for a physical-book experience. If people who support digital reading chime in, it is generally a last-minute defense, or a neutral comment.

I used to be one of the first to chime in and explain (as book-lovers almost always do) my love for the smell and feel of physical books. But now, because I stand firmly with one foot on both sides of this issue and because one side is generally not as well represented in my section of the English department, I generally play devil's advocate. So there's my bias, right up front.

I have a large collection of bound, paper novels. (Some of them actually reside in my home and some of are still only a part of my dream-library.) The books that I love the most, those that I want to read again and again and again...those I buy a hard copy of. That medium allows me to fasten my experience of actually reading the book in my memory. And it gives me an experience that is different than when I read on my ipad. (Notice that I said different, not better.)

But--I also like to have a digital copy of all the books in my hard-copy library. And all of my school books, every essay I've ever read (including the ones I read for non-school purposes), I prefer to read in a digital format. Why? Digital copies help me get through boring, long, or otherwise difficult texts. I read almost the entire Wheel of Time series in one summer because I had it on my ipad. I could just read and read, completely immersed, without being daunted by how long the book was. The digital format allowed me to have a positive, manageable relationship with that extremely long (but super awesome) series.

Ebooks also allow me to highlight and mark up my books. (As well as search through them, carry them all with me, and easily quote sections of the material.) It pains me to mark up my own physical copies because I can't fully erase the markup and physical texts are so much harder to find things in. I have a much better experience with my school texts when they are digital.

That being said, I find Manovich's commentary about cultural interfaces really interesting. When I read an ebook, I rarely read it on a desktop or laptop. The screen is too wide, the words are too small, it's too far away from my face, and it just doesn't look...magical. And books are magical. Instead, I normally read on my ipad. My kindle and notetaking apps allow me to have a tactile and aesthetically pleasing experience with the texts I'm reading (which allows me to appreciate them more and pay more attention to them). Even though this experience is different than the tactile and aesthetic experience of reading a physical book, I still enjoy it.

My husband asked me on our first date over Facebook

It's true. Some people might find that insensitive, impersonal, or etc., but the social media medium didn't negatively effect my experience or my relationship with my husband--it improved it.

Digital communication can enhance and extend relationships when people are separated by distance. The world is more connected than it ever has been. For me and my husband, there were many distances technology let us overcome. We lived down the street from each other growing up, but we both existed in very separate social circles. We both are more reclusive and prefer to interact with people we know well, not strangers. So the best way for him to start interacting with me (without me thinking he was a creepy stalker and shutting myself in my house) was over Facebook. When we started dating and I went off to Snow College, we skyped each other almost every night and had a closer relationship than couples I know who live in the same house as each other.

On the other hand, digital communication can also feel awkward or be of lesser quality than face-to-face communication. Now that I'm married and live with my husband, I don't like having extensive text message conversations with him, and talking to him over the phone is weird... I see him every day and get to talk to him every day, so chatting with him digitally is unnecessary and doesn't compare to the experience of actually being with him.

But it gets even more complicated than that...There are some people I can have a better experience with if I talk to them over email or skype. These are generally relationships I don't need or want to invest all of me into, or relationships that I need to handle carefully. Experiences that would be more pleasant and awkward face-to-face can be enhanced and more meaningful to me if I use a digital medium. I don't have to worry about that person's immediate emotional reaction, or my own immediate reaction. I have time to think and craft the experience in a way that is less volatile and creates less misunderstanding.

Is it too late to unplug me doc? Are the changes permanent?

Can I just start by saying that I called it with my last post title. ("always connected, always 'plugged-in" pg. 113). I am sort of joking with my post title this time. I don't dislike the convenience of being so close to my cultural objects and technology. However, it does make me wonder what am I getting with it under the table that I am not realizing. It makes you almost feel like what my title suggests. That is: Should I be afraid of what is happening and should I try to preempt by opting-out? Anyway, now that I got that diatribe of fear out of the way, there is no doubt in my mind that with technology becoming an extension of our individual selves, and senses, that our relationship to cultural objects is changing. For example, in my lifetime I have been able to see how my relationship to music has changed. Music is a large part of my life so noting the differences for me,  I believe, will be transparent.

When I was a kid,  chances to experience music were very limited. For the most part if I wanted to hear a song I had to turn on my dad's radio which was static-y at best. Then, I remember listening to tapes ( you know the kind that could throw up its contents and you had to wind it back in with a pencil or something). I also can remember being so happy when cd players came out. But I never could have imagined how I experience music today. Namely, I can listen to music wherever I am since it is all on my phone and the quality is so clear it is like I am sitting in the studio.

In a similar vein, I am now able to store thousands and thousands of songs in my phone and carry them with me everywhere (a luxury I couldn't have imagined when I was toting around my 12-15 song cd's). As a result I am able to listen to music far more often and music plays a much more active role in my thought patterns and perceptions of the world. Also, since all the songs are in a digital format and not a physical format I can easily suggest the music I love to my friends and they can listen to it immediately via youtube, spotify, etc.

To use a another cultural object to highlight the changes in experiencing, storing, and sharing of those objects—I can't help but think of people. My ability to experience connections with other people has both shrunk and grown because of digital means. First, it has shrunk because the quality of interactions that I have with the majority of people I know has decreased. At the same time, the number of people I am able to connect with is far greater.  However, the state of communication with people has become a dangerous forum because of digital storing. Now, every time I write something to someone I have to consider what I say because I know that my words can be saved forever and used against me. This brings me to my last point. It is a scary thought to know that what I say can be shared with just about anybody. Not only what I say but who I am, at least my digital identity, can be shared with everybody. for me this digital identity is one of the main changes that digital interactions has created. My relationship to other people in digital interactions has caused me to see people as a picture and a list of qualities and interests. People are not as much of an emotional connection now as a compartmentalized identity. Wow that last sentence was deep/scary/self-revelatory to write.

The Painful March of Progress

You could say I’m in transition between my former and current analogue life and my current and future digital life in terms of reading books and listening to music. Although I enjoy a lot of the conveniences of digitized literature and music, the transition has been a pain in the ass in many ways, and it remains to be seen how long that will last.

Moving from reading physical copies to screens has coincided with moving between and within three states in the last 20 years. While I’ve successfully limited my hoarding to four categories—literature, music, rocks, and brewing equipment—each collection has followed me every step of the way and represents untold hours of moving, storing, and sweating. And now, after a recent house remodel, the only collection that’s currently on display and useable is my rock collection, and that’s up at my parents’ place in Heber. In the meantime, digitization has filled some of the gaps in very practical ways.

My office space is still in shambles, and my prized books are still in cardboard boxes waiting for me to build or buy bookshelves. So my Kindle library has been growing a lot faster than my physical library, which is a net positive. Reading books on my Kindle took some getting used to, but I really love it now, in some ways, at least. It’s fantastic to be able to reach over to my bed stand and pick up my library. I can even read in the dark so I don’t wake up my wife. Tapping on a word to see its definition or jumping onto Wikipedia to explore further context has made reading a lot more convenient. And I can still have my coffee while reading the morning paper online. What is missing in my Kindle is the tactile sensation of turning and flipping through the pages, and knowing where I am in the text and remembering where a passage lies, recto- and verso-wise. 

Similarly, there are advantages and disadvantages to digitized music. I stream radio stations from all around the country while I’m working, which is very cool, and I’ve stored most of my CDs in iTunes. Spotify exposes me to music I’ve never heard, or haven’t heard in years. We have iThing docks and Wi-fi speakers in all the strategic locations in the house, and they’re handy (when they don’t lose the signal), but they still don’t sound much like my 3-way, 15-inch-woofer JBLs, which are still in storage with my 100-watt analogue amp, receiver, dubbing deck, CD player, turntable, and long-play stereophonic vinyl albums (haven’t found the perfect place to set all those up yet, for the first time since I was a teenager--sigh). 

All told, having grown up paging through books and grooving to concept albums, I haven’t yet found the degree of “continuousness” (Manovich 28, 112) in digitized media platforms that I enjoyed in analogue. I know it’s probably just a matter of getting used to the newer formats, but there are still things I miss from the old.

Blog Post #2

1. Numerical Representation

Numerical representation, as described by the writer, is simply when numbers and equations form a grid of colors on screen, ultimately forming an image. A photograph and an image on screen (whether a still frame or a video) are different in this way. It is highly customizable and the basics of all images on screen. The words you are reading right now are not actually physical writings, but simply results of a bunch of numbers signaling certain colors to appear on screen. When a photograph is scanned onto a computer, it is converted to this form.

2. Modularity

Modularity is the concept that a whole something is created by several independent parts. HTML consists completely of this idea, as one hyperlink code may be a completely different object than an image code, yet they together make up the contents of one web page. I pictured a newspaper while reading this section. To get rid of the image, you would have to cut the image out of the paper, making the paper not whole anymore. But on a web page, all you need to do is delete the code. In most cases, the page will not completely fall apart because the image was an independent piece.

3. Automation

This is basically the ability of a computer to "think" for itself or to respond to a manual action and create. For example, Google has a database of web pages -- almost every single one on the web, I dare say. When I type in a keyword and/or a boolean phrase, the computer responds and sorts through its data. This is surprisingly a similar action to playing a video game. I visited my parents the other day and played Mario Kart with my youngest brother. I raced against "the computer," which raced in a seemingly random pattern as if it was a person. However, it simply was manipulated from codes that responded to the way I raced--when my car hit theirs or when I attacked their car with an item.

4. Variability

This is perhaps the most popular reason to use the internet these days, other than for social media and business. Variability is the ability to take one thing and change it. This is something that is nearly impossible with a physical image or page. You would only be pasting, writing or drawing over it, but the image itself underneath would be the same. On a computer, I can take a video and completely change it to however I want. I can take a clip from my favorite T.V. show (which is, by the way, Dexter. I highly recommend it if you don't mind some profanity here and there) and splice it, change it to black and white, or add a caption. Just as easily, anybody can take that same clip and do whatever they want with it. This also made me think of Bad Lip Readings on Youtube (also highly recommended). People take a video clip and customize the corresponding audio.

5. Transcoding

This is the idea that the "computer world" is divided in two: The cultural layer and the computer layer. The computer layer is everything behind the screen -- the codes and the equations. The cultural layer is what the average person can see and do on the internet. Basically, it is a person's interactions with the codes. I likened this to a play. If you have ever been in a play, you will know that there is so much more going on than what you see on stage. To the audience, it is quite simple--just the story on the stage. To the actors, there is a whole other world back there to make it all happen. The stage crew is working the lights, the set, and the sound system. Actors are back stage changing costumes for other scenes or scampering around to get props, to rehearse lines and to help out with the set. Assistant directors and other leadership are also backstage. Dancers may be rehearsing. Makeup and hair artists are doing their work backstage. Sometimes, somebody is doing an emergency repair on a set piece. This is all happening before, during and after the actual play. This is much like the function of a website.


My opinion of what is most important is probably not so original, but that is only because it is the most true. Transcoding is by far the most influential. I would not venture to say that it is the most important, however, because without the others, this aspect would not exist. It is transcoding, though, that truly made the internet as much of a necessity and a want as it is today. Between social media, image and document editing programs, research, banking, and everything else that has become so simple, transcoding is a fascinating concept.

Plug Me In...

In his book The Language of New Media, Lev Manovich makes a metaphorical map, of sorts, to help readers understand how new media came about from its' earliest ancestry. After accounting the history of new media, Manovich begins to define the terminology and characteristics that separate new media from old media. The five terms that he gives are: numerical representation, modularity, automation, variability, and transcoding.

What Manovich means by numerical representation is that everything that exists in the digital world of computers is represented by a string of numbers, which represent different characteristics of the analog item. In other words, if I draw a picture in a computer program with a paintbrush tool no actual strokes are being made instead there is a complex set of algorithms and numerical values to represent the brush stroke and the image that stroke is creating. In a way, numerical representation is a mathematical substitution for something "real". An example of numerical representation is designing a poster on your computer: unlike a poster in in the physical world, all the elements of a poster designed on the computer  are stored as data that is interpreted by the operating system of the computer.

Modularity means that new media objects are comprised of many self contained elements that can be used and interchanged to make something new. An easy way to think of it is legos, there are many parts which can be combined to make something and those parts can be replaced by other shaped pieces or by similarly shaped pieces. While the legos idea might be an over simplification, the idea behind modularity is that all new media objects exist independently of others are not permanently fixed to each other. An example of modularity is creating a film in final cut pro: as I am editing I can place in different video clips or audio clips and combine audio clips or video clips as needed. It is because of the independent nature of each of the audio or video clips insert or remove them into my project, or various projects, without destroying the project as a whole.

The term automation can be linked to the concept of adaptability. Meaning, a new media object that can react and change as a response to certain inputs or stimuli. In other words, automation is the principle that would allow for robots to take over the world, for those who believe artificial intelligence will surpass us as humans and become our rulers. Automation is split into two sub sections; low-level and high-level. Low-level automation has a simple algorithm that can execute an action or series of actions based on the users commands. For example, a low-level automation is the audio filters on the music recording program GarageBand. When I select the reduce treble feature the computer automatically adapts the audio to reflect that action.  High-level automation is where a program is adapted to respond to a human element. A great example of high-level automation is Siri. When you speak to Siri "she" has to adapt to your diction and your location and react to your questions or comments.

Variability means that no new media object exists in one form forever instead it can be changed and edited. An easier way to think of variability is to imagine a sculpture made of play doh except there are an infinite number of exact copies of the play doh sculpture that can be remolded. The added nuance of variability is that it does not need a human creator to produce new versions. In the digital world, new media objects can exist in a list and can be compiled in a number of ways by the computer itself. An example of variability is memes, a human creator can take an old image and apply new text to create something new. Another example is interactive programs that can display an icon or image based on where the mouse is clicked or dragged.

Transcoding is probably the most difficult to describe but it is best described as two sides of a coin. What I really mean to say is all new media objects have two sides, a side that appears like the old media and a hidden layer which is comprised of numerical data. Manovich suggests that the relation between computer and physical formats shape the way that people think and view the world. For Manovich, transcoding is leading to the computerization of society. In other words, we as people structure are lives and define our lives in relation to computers. A great example of transcoding is a poem or novel written in Microsoft Word. On the user's side a document is all that is visible just like a hand-written document, but on the computers end there is just a long series of numbers that represent that visual image.

To me it seems that transcoding is the most obvious element that is causing a computerization of our culture. The reason this seems to be the case is because transcoding is deceitful in nature. What I mean by deceitful is that a new media object appears to be the same as old media but that is only the side that we as people interact with. The "secret code" that lies behind it causes us to think differently what is real and what is important. As I said in my response to Dean my life is shaped around my electronic devices and it is those devices that I feel allow me to function. My new media objects, like Facebook  comments give me the same feeling as writing a hand-written note to somebody.