MANOVICH - THE LANGUAGE OF NEW MEDIA - CH 1

Notes and Links

links and images for discussing
Lev Manovich - The Language of New Media, Introduction and Chapter 1

(Introduction)

1975 - 1985 - 1995

"...semiotic codes, modes of address and audience reception aptterns." p7

oppositions (p16-17)
  1. representation/simulation
  2. representation/control
  3. representation/action
  4. representation/communication
  5. visual illusionism/simulation
  6. representation/information


CH. 1

printing press 14th c.
photography 19th c.
(also telegraph, 19th c.)
"In contrast, the computer media revolution affects all stages of communciation, including acquisition, manipulation, storage, and distribution; it also affects all types of media..." (p 19)

1839 - daguerrotype
1833 babbage - the Analytyical Engine
1800 - Jacquard loom

technologies of mass societies:
totalitarianism / p.a. system / mass media

1890s moving pictures
Fred Ott Sneeze

film as medium... write data onto it, store it, retrieve it...

Konrad Zuse - functional computer 1941 - Z3

convergence... computational machines and represenational media...

"All existing media are translated into numerical data accessible for the computer[...] graphics, moving images [etc.] become computable [...] media become new media." p25


Charles Babbage, The Difference Engine (assembled after his death) view image
"The Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves." = Ada Augusta, Countess of Lovelace

PUNCH CARDS ("hanging chad")
punch card view image

punch card technology (book music) for mechanical organ view image

Jacquard loom view image

Louis Daguerre - Daguerrotype view image 1839

"The daguerreotype is an early type of photograph, developed by Louis Daguerre, in which the image is exposed directly onto a mirror-polished surface of silver bearing a coating of silver halide particles deposited by iodine vapor. In later developments bromine and chlorine vapors were also used, resulting in shorter exposure times. The daguerreotype is a negative image, but the mirrored surface of the metal plate reflects the image and makes it appears positive in the proper light. Thus, daguerreotypy is a direct photographic process without the capacity for duplication.

While the daguerreotype was not the first photographic process to be invented, earlier processes required hours for successful exposure, making daguerreotype the first commercially viable photographic process and the first to permanently record and fix an image with exposure time compatible with portrait photography." - Wikipedia

Kinetoscope view image
Developed at Edison lab, 1889-1892
"The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device. Though not a movie projectorâ??it was designed for films to be viewed individually through the window of a cabinet housing its componentsâ??the Kinetoscope introduced the basic approach that would become the standard for all cinematic projection before the advent of video: it creates the illusion of movement by conveying a strip of perforated film bearing sequential images over a light source with a high-speed shutter." - Wikipedia entry

Edison - Black Maria
(pronounced ma-RYE-uh) 1893 - studio for producing content for Kinetoscope
Fred Ott's sneeze (1894)

Annie Oakley (1894)

1894 - first Kinetoscope parlor - NYC

cinematographe view image
"The cinematographe is a film camera, which also serves as a film projector and developer. It was invented in the 1890s.
The first commercial, public screening of cinematographic films happened in Paris on 28 December 1895 and was organized by the Lumiere brothers." - Wikipedia
films shown at this screening

Hollerith
around 1890, tabulating machines using data punched into cards. His company eventually becomes IBM.

Alan Turing
In 1936 he publishes "On Computable Numbers" in which he conceptualizes a computer which would use a tape as a storage device for the commands which are input into the machine and for the information which is output. Manovich notes the similarity in concept to the film projector.

Konrad Zuse
Also in 1936, Zuse begins building a computer. He also uses punched tape... he uses discarded 35mm film.
p 29 reference to Lichtenstein and Sharits as materializing medium

Roy Lichtensten (1923-1997), pop art, dot pattern view image | view another image

Paul Sharits (1943 - 1993), structuralist film, frames and flicker clip