Archive for the 'new media' Category
The theorist George Landow, writing on Hypertext, urges us to forget the usual conceptual elements which hold language together and, instead, use new substitutes ‘such as multilinearity, nodes, links, or networks.’ Elements of syntax - and, when, so, or - are now converted to a range of physical manoeuvres: mouse up, mouse over, mouse down etc. A click now links us to our mediated world.’ In this new world, the internet is often described as a virtual landscape without a horizon but, with the average lifespan of a website measured in months rather than years, in practice it has surprisingly many broken links/dead-ends. Although the web links us to snapshots of ‘history’ in unlimited supply, it has no memory - just a post saying ‘this page is no longer on this server…’
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Somewhat late in the day, in reference to an earlier post on Limited Language, “After Digital” [April 2005]…
The posting points to the assumption, which in some respects is fairly entrenched already, that we have the hang of digital media, we can sit down, put our feet up in front of the widescreen, its freeview box and broadband access, and work out what our options are. [In the last 12 months, broadband and blog sites have made one’s relationship with “the digital world out there” much more effortless - one quickly forgets how 56K dial-up used to limit one’s range. Graphic Design has once again become a hot discussion point - what’s it all about? - but the discourse is mostly refereed by those that were there the last time round. Here we go again.]
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Sight and hearing are arguably the two most powerful human senses with which we understand and navigate through our world – whether it is the simple relationship between a green flashing man, and an audio beeping at a pedestrian crossing or the more complex emotions we might feel when watching a movie – where the ‘tragic’ break-up is accompanied by a symphonic cascade of violin strings. Sound and image when harnessed by design becomes a powerful partnership which, either can impart life saving information, manipulate emotions or be empathetic to any given experience – concert lighting, movie soundtracks, audio navigation systems all draw upon long held traditions or relationships to how we see and how we hear.
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