Friday, November 12, 2010

The Human - Interface Interaction

I read Lev Manovich's article "New Media From Borges to HTML", it was sort of interesting, you can find it here!. I was intrigued by Manovich's thoughts on comparing new media to software design. Let me back track first though; the idea of this article is to try and figure out what we can call "new media". What is encapsulated by the set: new media art. Obviously this will be difficult to set limits or bounds because it's difficult to draw lines anywhere in the art world. Manovich points out the the true artists of the new media era are the software designers that have made it possible to actualize artists' projects. The section of Manovich's article I am most interested in is his discussion of the human - computer interface interaction. He calls this the most interactive work because of how often the user can manipulate what they're seeing in front of them. An example I can think of is someone created micosoft word, the possibilia of outcomes within any single document seem endless, yet each one can be personalized because of the easy to use host software. The interface that Manovich is describing is "deeper" into the technology. He gives credit to Douglas Engelbart, Ted Nelson and others for being the artists who have made the new media era possible.

It's interesting to think how new media art is different from art that came before it. When we think of art we often think of a painting, sometimes film or photography too; these are static (relatively) pieces. The new media art that Manovich is talking about is interactive. There isn't a sense of a static piece because the art interacts with the viewer/participant/user. This is a cool change in the history of art. Now, I'm not saying that art wasn't ever interactive before new media projects were made available, but the processes of creating a new media piece make sure there is interactivity on some level.

Another article I recently read was the introduction from "A Thousand Plateaus" by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. This was a complex reading. They bring to the text an idea of what they call a "rhizome". It seemed upon my reading that the rhizome was a way to introduce philosophical concepts of objects not being represented as just a thing, but as a multiplicity of relations. This is interesting, but I could not draw a clear focus out of the text that I read. The idea of multiplicity and their concept of identity being within mutual relations.

2 comments:

  1. It is so true that software designers are artist even though they do not refer themselves as one nor do others refer them as one. As a computer scientist I know exactly how much work and thoughts are put into each piece of programing. However, I don't know if I want to be called an artist. It just that the term, at least to me, has certain connotation that does not go with me. I could be wrong :)

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  2. Static art does often seem static. Easel paintings, tabletop sculptures, framed photographs seem relics of their time. Nostalgic.

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