Untethered

Eyebeam's website describes it as an "art and technology center" that provides the tools and environment for digital artists to experiment with their work and research. Creating work that is relative to current culture, the artists work together to share their ideas with the public. This is the first gallery that we visited that was not only a space for exhibiting work, but for creating it as well. In Eyebeam, curators, artists, and students can work in close proximity, influencing and inspiring each other to create unconventional artwork.

Eyebeam calls their "Untethered" exhibition a "sculpture garden of readymades." That it is; the artists have taken objects and repurposed them. The objects have been "deprogrammed" of their original uses. The artists then came up with new ways to use them, sometimes functional, sometimes surreal, sometimes surprising. Several interesting projects included a wall installation that reacts to its viewers, a piano that plays the internet, and a slew of iPods, PDAs and cell phones transformed into guitars, games, and sound-makers.

Although there were fifteen artists participating in the exhibition, I was instantly attracted to Joe Winter's "Xerox Astronomy and the Nebulous Object-Image Archive." Utilizing an office photocopier surrounded by a mechanical model of the universe, Winter employs robotic arms to illuminate the bed of the copier which continuously observes and records. The resulting photocopies resemble science-fiction-style, nebulous shapes. I would love to see the archive of images that the copier has produced. The format of the images encourages interpretation by the gallery visitors. I also appreciate the fact that the artwork is a machine that creates artwork. The resulting photocopies are endless, one cannot turn them into commodities because they are ever-reproducible.

Migration

The exhibition at 303 Gallery is of works by Doug Aitken, entitled "Migration." The gallery is filled with three billboards, gigantic screens playing films that Aitken created. The films are of wild North American migratory animals in roadside hotels and motels. On the large screens, we watch, among other animal films, an owl hop around on a maroon comforter in a datedly decorated hotel room, a mountain lion play with the sheets on a bed, and a moose wander around on the carpet, inspecting the television and the windows. These animals have been placed in environments that they are not accustomed to but they seem comfortable, the way one is supposed to feel in a hotel room. The showing of the films on three screens forces the gallery visitor to choose where to watch; will he want to see all three screens at once, two maybe, or only one?

Aitken's work is entrancing. We don't want to leave before we see what the deer will do with the fridge. The animals feel at home in the rooms, yet spend a lot of time exploring and playing with the objects they hold. I was fascinated by the films. The magnificent screens played a role in interesting me as well. I liked how Aitken used hotel rooms and billboards, both found on American highways as a home for his work. Overall Aitken's work made an impact on me, but I didn't feel inspired or as though he was doing anything to encourage discussion, other than possibly an uproar from PETA.

The Western Lands

The Nicholas Robinson Gallery claims that it intends to exhibit works from the quickly growing and evolving contemporary art industry. They also express a commitment to exhibiting what they call "exiting and radical contemporary art." While I would not describe Michael Zansky's "The Western Lands," as radical or exciting, it was an interesting but strange selection of works. The most interesting part of the exhibition was its references to "The Land of the Dead," the western banks of the Nile, referred to by ancient Egyptians as the netherworld, as well as to the novel by William Burroughs evoking the same themes, death, occultism, dreams, and magic.

The exhibition is a grouping of works that includes printed images, as well as set up scenes, some which are constantly moving, that we are forced to look at through gigantic magnifying glasses. Although we are encouraged to look through these glasses at the magnified forms, we are allowed to look behind he scenes and view the set-ups directly, seeing how they work in some cases. Zansky intended that we use the distorted images to question our perceptions of reality, and that we would see the objects that make up the groupings as references to history, art, science, and pop culture and as a reminder of the "unpredictability" of the universe.

I was not impressed by this series, but did take a closer look at one of the pieces. The protagonist was a clown, lying on top of a large sphere, rolling down a set of stairs surrounded by many other sets of stairs. Like the other pieces, this one looked very handmade and was distorted by a huge magnifying glass, making it more disturbing to me. I felt as though I was trying to get a look at something that was ugly, and in the end getting an even more descriptive view of it. I liked most of Zansky's basic ideas; the glass discs he used were visually interesting. They made his work cohesive, while his subject matter seemed, to me, somewhat all over the place. I think that maybe if I read some of the texts Zansky was referencing, I would get a better idea of what he was expressing through this series.

Self Organizing Still Life

The Sara Tecchia Roma gallery focuses on work that is not only aesthetically beautiful, but intriguing. Sara Tecchia is as interested in the thought behind a work, as the way it looks. This gallery is a place where artists can exhibit intellectual work, in memory of the legacy of the "20th Century Avant-Gardes," and an environment for "dialogue between artists and mediums."

David Fried's "Self Organizing Still Life" work is a series of sculptures that are interactive because they are sound-stimulated. They are made up of solid spheres resting on a solid flat object. There are no wires, no magnets. The spheres, when approached with any sound, begin to move. They never repeat the same movements. They each have their own personalities; some are fast, some wander around, some are attracted to others. Their behaviors are determined by the kind of sound they "hear." As soon as the sound that was encouraging their movement silences, they stop moving, they have now "self organized" into a still life.

I thought the Sara Tecchia Roma Gallery was very interesting. While I was not very moved by the work in the main room, I loved David Fried's SOS's. There is something about the combination of art and interactivity with the viewer that always gets me. It is as though as soon as each piece leaves David Fried's workshop, its resulting still life's are no longer his. The people in the gallery, making the noises and interacting with the sculpture, are now the artists, creating their own resulting still life's.

Politics as Usual

Bitforms Gallery is a space "devoted to emerging and established artists who embrace new media and contemporary art practice - resulting in new languages and artistic experiences." Their website description tells their story best; they support using contemporary art work to change patrons' viewpoints.

The current exhibit, R. Luke DuBois' first United States solo exhibition, "Politics As Usual," is the debut in New York of the artist's series, "Hindsight is Always 20/20" and his sound work "SSB." "Hindsight is Always 2/20" was commissioned by the City of Denver during the U.S. Democratic National Convention. The piece takes a great deal of information and compacts it. DuBois works from the annual State of the Union addresses and uses the format of the Snellen-Style eye chart. Ranking the words in each speech, DuBois gives the most-used words center stage at the top of the chart and those that are used less are in typical eye chart style, much smaller at the bottom. This process places words that can be used to describe each presidency at the top, "VETERANS," "NUCLEAR," "TERROR," and "DEFICITS" are a few that strike hard. What is great about the way DuBois executed this work is that most people will easily recognize the eye chart format and will thus understand the hierarchy of the piece quickly, taking a brief glance at each presidency and receiving a basic knowledge of each president's term.

I feel as though I cannot describe the thought behind the work better than the artist has:

"The aim of the piece is to make a statement about the perennial political metaphor of vision, without which much of the rhetoric of presidential politics quickly deflates. The choice of words employed by a given presidential administration to articulate its message is in many ways its signature. Looking back, we can use this vocabulary to test the metaphorical eyesight of the nation."

"SSB" is the generative sound work that comes along with "Hindsight is Always 20/20," working together within one theme. This piece is a recording of Lesley Flanigan singing the American national anthem, stretched to the length of four years, the exact length of the American election cycle.

The work of R. Luke DuBois was my favorite out of all of the exhibits we saw on Thursday. I love how he used a computer program, very contemporary, to come up with words, which he then printed with a letterpress, very antiquated. This combination, I believe, is what makes the work so beautiful. The crisp letters, clean pages, the indentations, these are the aspects of the pieces that interest me the most. If DuBois had taken his findings and run them across a digital screen in neon letters, I would not have thought twice about his work. While I was not very impressed by "SSB," "Hindsight is Always 20/20" has been ever-present in my mind since we left the gallery.

Frank Gehry's IAC Building

The Chelsea area of Manhattan has been going through a lot of changes recently that will contribute to the aesthetic of the neighborhood, which has become well known because of the galleries it holds. The transformation of the High Line into an above ground park, the planning of more than 5,000 apartments by famous designers Jean Nouvel and Robert A.M. Stern Architects, and the construction of the glass InterActiveCorp tower are among the many jump starts taking place in the rapid growth of the West Chelsea area. IAC is well known for its collection of Internet and retail companies including Ticketmaster, HSN, Match.com, and Ask Jeeves Inc. In the name of bringing his employees together in one place, IAC's Barry Diller has commissioned a striking tower to be designed and built by the renowned architect Frank Gehry. The creation of the eight arcs of the building, made of glass that is intended to bring to mind images of boat sails on the Hudson, will mark Gehry's first architectural feat in New York City. Giving thought to every little detail, the glass will be clear with frosted "curtains," rather than the iron tinted green that is regularly used for office buildings, so that the employees of IAC will have an uninhibited view of the river, and there will be a terrace and walkway.

The Gehry building for IAC is very minimalist, yet beautiful in its curving glass walls and almost spray-painted looking outer design. I love how Gehry created a design that is sleek and modern, yet evokes memories of sailing and other water sports, especially since it is so near to the Hudson River. I run by this building every other day and have always wondered who designed it, so I am glad I now know. I also enjoy the surprise that no matter how many images I look at of this building, I never fail to find a new and interesting viewpoint.

LittleBigPlanet Turns Gamers into Creators

The swift maturation of interactive video game ideas, consider the Wii controllers and iPhone touch screens, has continued at a steady pace to bring us to our current position. Gamers are now not only able to use their bodies to affect the way video-games work, they are being handed the opportunity to actually design their own video-games through the creation of LittleBigPlanet. In addition to this great freedom, LittleBigPlanet gamers are allowed to share their creations and upload them for other players to experience. Similar to the concepts involved in The Sims and, the newly released, Spore, the building of the virtual world is a job given to the gamers themselves. This great jump in the gaming industry is a result of developments that combine the tools of a programmer, artist, scripter, and audio programmer. Rather than being forced to consult with all of these professionals, making a game exactly the way you want it to be is as simple as clicking a few buttons. LittleBigPlanet will provide continual additions through their online component and encourage multiplayer interaction through their website as well. Media Molecule held a contest at Parsons The New School for Design where students were given pre-release copies of the game and invited to do as much as they could think of to do with it. The results were interesting, however the full potential of the game is yet to be reached.

Creating your own virtual space, enhancing your own virtual experiences; this is how I think the gaming industry will encourage creativity. Many mistakenly see video-gaming as having a negative influence on children and even adults, but given this kind of creative control, everybody can use gaming as a learning tool that will spread not only through the gaming community, but to all kinds of people, from teenage girls, to middle-aged men, to young mothers.

Issuu

Issuu is a website where anybody can create interactive online publications for free. With a focus on instant gratification, Issuu lets people who may not have the means to publish an actual magazine get their ideas out into the world, literally an audience of millions of people. Some call Issuu a "YouTube for publications," referring to the opening up of the publishing world to the masses in the way YouTube made video-making something that anybody could do.

Issuu seems to be where publications are heading in the very near future. With the decline of using paper materials and the advent of new technology, many magazines are publishing their issues on the web in the same way Issuu allows its users to do. In addition to the technologies that magazines are using, Issuu also empowers its users with the capabilities to publish a magazine that can be read without having to download it. While allowing its users capabilities to publish a broad range of publications, Issuu lets its readers experience all kinds of magazines that they might not have bought in the first place.

PSFK

PSFK is a company that chronicles the global trends and innovations on their website PSFK.com. Its self-declared intention is to "help its readers, guests and clients make things better." The website reports on the most recent changes in popular, consumer, and business culture, namely, "trends." Growing from a website where a few friends shared ideas between New York and London, PSFK has become a must-visit website, with more than 350,000 followers from around the world.

I read many of the posts on trends and inspiration, and found that I was consistently interested in every topic the writers approached. Although PSFK covers every category from architecture to home & garden, to music, they do it in a way that makes most of the posts interesting to every reader. For example, I am in no way interested in becoming a drummer, but Dan Gould's post on The Bubblegum Sequencer was very intriguing to me. I may never become a professional drummer, but this is an interactive technology that I am interested in reading about.

The Immersive Cocoon

The Immersive Cocoon is a human-sized black sphere that, once you are inside, surrounds you with a 360 degree screen and surround sound. Motion-tracking cameras will follow the movement of your entire body, combining display, sound, and interaction into a full digital experience. NAU is the company that is developing this new technology that intends to revolutionize the way we interact with the world. Rather than experiencing the digital world through our fingers on a mouse and keyboard and our eyes on a screen, this project will allow us to fully experience it as though we are actually walking through it. Inhabiting the same vein as the Wii gaming system and the touch display of the iPhone, the Immersive Cocoon brings us new ways of interacting with technology.

The Immersive Cocoon would also be a great way to interact with virtual spaces, which are already being created by New York architects Asymptote. This firm has already developed the New York Stock Exchange's 3D trading floor as well as a virtual Guggenheim Museum. Rather than having images of artworks viewed online in a thumbnail format, The Guggenheim wanted to try to invent a virtual space that conceptually mirrors the architecture of their New York museum.

Architecture coming together with virtual 3D spaces is a combination that I hope will change the way we experience the internet. I truly would rather look at artwork on websites while experiencing the space of the museum. I cannot wait for the day I can have an Immersive Cocoon in my living room. The level of education of a human being, I believe, when this technology is available to the masses, will rise drastically. People may not enjoy reading a book about the Civil War, but what if they could stand in the middle of it? What if one day, we could experience Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous speech while virtually standing in the crowd below him?

The Future of Computer Gaming

Through the use of the Emotiv EPOC headset, a Brain Computer Interface, a generation of thought controlled games is quickly approaching. The EPOC uses traced brain activity patterns to pick up different expressions and actions. Many believe that, with the advent of this new technology, scenes from movies like The Matrix and Star Trek could soon become possible realities. The President and co-founder of Emotiv Systems, Tan Le, says that in tests there has been success with every single person. The growing importance in gaming on social interaction comes at a perfect time for this kind of technology. Similar to the introduction of the Wii's interactive control, the EPOC will continue to push gaming in the direction of more social interaction and stronger story-lines.

Although I anticipated that these kinds of technology were not far away from being created, I am actually surprised and a little bit scared that they are coming to life so quickly. The line between gaming and reality is quickly disintegrating. If programmers can come up with such intelligent video game technology, how will this affect the rest of our lives? Could we one day be sending thoughts to our kitchens to preheat the oven before we return home?

Profile of a Writer: Jorge Luis Borges

"Profile of a Writer: Jorge Luis Borges" is a movie documentary of the astonishing life of the accomplished author, Jorge Luis Borges. It was released on June 16, 2000.

Criticized and praised for its non-linear form, the arrangement of the film easily turns documentary, which can be a less interesting style sometimes, into a restless, and captivating educational project. Switching back and forth between sequences acted out from some of Borges' most famous written work and actual interviews with Borges himself, this film gives an encompassing view of Borges as a writer, a creative, and a person. Formatting this film in such a progressive way allows the viewer to feel as though they are actually getting to know this funny little man in his apartment, getting a close up look at all of his endearing characteristics and peculiar mannerisms. I found Borges to be an extremely interesting character who was enjoyable to watch. This was especially true because, after seeing his interviews, I gained a new perspective on his writing.

The New Media Reader: 01.-04.

01. The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges

In this essay, Borges describes a novel that can be read in multiple ways - a hypertext novel - before computers were even invented. Although Borges never actually wrote a hypertext novel, the first was written by Julio Cortazar in 1963. A theme in Borges ideas is that time is embraced with many possibilities, that infinite futures exist. Borges even describes a feeling of ghosts of himself in different positions than he is actually standing, emphasizing the opportunities he has chosen against in life, which would have led him to those positions and decisions rather than the place he is inhabiting. The Garden of Forking Paths was a precursor for many technological advances. I found this essay to be interesting because it gives me a feeling of technology that is warmer, based in folklore, than the history I have come to know.

02. As We May Think by Vannevar Bush

In this article, we are introduced to the "memex," an imaginary mechanized private file and library intended to organize the knowledge of its user and make it available to him at any time. Bush is, through coming up with these kinds of ideas, pushing for the development of technology that could be used for understanding and the "explosion of knowledge" rather than the destruction that he contributed to through his organization of the Manhattan Project, producing bombs that were used in the Cold War. Bush imagines the "memex" as a machine that contains many microfilms, holding information and photographs in the smallest of spaces. Images and text can be called upon and connected to create associative "trails" of knowledge. Bush's descriptions remind me of technologies that exist today, such as the Amazon Kindle and Wikipedia. He was obviously very far ahead of his time in conceptualizing these kinds of technological advances.

03. Computing Machinery and Intelligence by Alan Turing

Turing asks the question, "Can Machines Think?" and proceeds to set up a hypothetical experiment to prove this to be true. He decides to use a question and answer method to try and let a digital computer imitate a human. Comparisons between the human nervous system and digital computers are based in the fact that they are both electric. Turing eventually changes his question to the more fathomable, "Are there imaginable computers which would do well in the imitation game?" He suggests that in fifty years computers will exist which can fool the interrogator 70% of the time. This essay was written in 1950 and already in 1966 Joseph Weizenbaum's "Eliza," a conversational computer program, was fooling people into thinking that it was a real person. Turing illuminates several objections to his question before launching into an interesting comparison of the human mind and a computer. The child at birth, is mirrored to the "child program" or the beginning computer. The education of a human child to adulthood is called, for the computer, the "education process," and includes progress through programming and through positive and negative feedback from a "teacher." In conclusion, Turing never proves or disproves his theory, but suggests that it will be able to be proven and experimented with in years to come when computers have larger storage space.

04. Men, Machines, and the World About by Norbert Wiener

Wiener's essay was interesting to me because of its focus on scientists being engaged with the social outcomes of their work. Wiener also discusses "automatic control," a system, through which machines can be used to work in dangerous industries rather than risking human lives. The industrial revolution that Wiener describes is based mainly in "replacing human judgement and discrimination at low levels by the discrimination of the machine." This replacement, is not, as originally thought, about power but actually about communication. Wiener finally preaches about the danger the human race faces in giving technology too much importance. He fears that once we give machines this much of a place in our lives, we will never be able to rid ourselves of them. Wiener was right; with each new machine I buy, whether it be an iPod or a new computer, a mere week after its purchase, I cannot imagine how I survived without it.

Microcosmos

Microcosmos is a nature film created by Claude Nuridsany and Marie Pérennou and released in 1996. Using "macrovision," and extremely complex cameras, the world of insects and plants is brought to the viewer in extremely close detail for 84 minutes. After fifteen years of research, two years of equipment design, and three years of filming, Nuridsany and Pérennou were able to entrance audiences with fantastic clips of all sorts of flora and fauna.

Through the use of close-ups, slow motion, and time-lapse photography, I was continually mesmerized throughout the entire film. The creators made the film so fascinating by making the real world seem unreal. I was constantly reminding myself that every shot in the entire project was actually a captured moment in time. The almost alien-like planet that we see in this film, is unbelievably a documentation of actions and events that occur daily, even hourly, in the space beneath our feet.

The Engine Room

"The Engine Room" is a contest between teams from all over the world to produce digital art. The contest is available to watch on mtvU, MTV, and even on the internet. Sponsored by Hewlett-Packard, the show will mirror "The Real World" in that it will bring strangers together in a loft, but will create a point of difference by focusing on contestants' artistic abilities. This show is similar to the mtvU reality series for Ford, "College 500," which is another branded-entertainment project. The use of entertainment to feature products and basically advertise them is becoming more widely accepted.

The idea for "The Engine Room" came from the fact that, although Hewlett-Packard was very successful in its commercials, there was an opportunity for change. Nancy Reyes, an account director on the Hewlett-Packard account, said, "We take three, four months to create a commercial," in reference to Pete Connolly's "celebrity from the neck down" work, "and we saw kids creating parodies on YouTube in a fraction of the time." Hewlett-Packard saw no reason not to give this creative group of innovators using the web as a stage, a physical stage through a television show.

Making this show available online is another progressive step that many networks are accepting as useful. With the web serials and viral videos of the internet and YouTube becoming so successful, to really get your product or idea out into the world, you must take advantage of what the web has to offer. This is especially important as a transition from TV to the internet is being made.

In a world like today's, I cannot expect to see a television show that doesn't have some sort of hidden promotion. Therefore, these kinds of productions are somehow becoming acceptable. "The Engine Room's" website shamelessly promotes HP in every way possible. We are constantly bombarded with advertisements and now we are forced to watch them, being fooled into thinking that we are being entertained.

Web Serials

"The Medium, Serial Killers," was an article written by Virginia Heffernan to discuss the growing medium of web based TV shows. You may have heard of a few of the most successful serials. "Lonelygirl15," an interactive web serial focusing on the fictional life of the girl pictured above, and "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog," are two well known web serials.

After reading Heffernan's article, I was intrigued and looked up a few of the serials on my own. One that I really enjoyed was titled, "You Suck at Photoshop." The creator managed to turn what functions as a Photoshop tutorial, into a well made, flatly humorous, video that integrates a computer screen with real life vocals. Over my uncontrollable laughing I actually learned about photoshop!

Heffernan includes in her article a discussion of the expenses once required to create a film. She quotes Jean Cocteau, "Film will only become art, when its materials are as inexpensive as paper and pencil." Now that these barriers have been broken, and, as Heffernan marks that thirteen hours of video are uploaded every minute on YouTube, it will be interesting to see how film as an art will change.

The History of the Internet

The documentary internet history film, "The Internet Behind the Web," was a fascinating look into what makes the internet work, who created it, and all of the history surrounding it. Watching this film, I realized how much about the internet I take for granted. Today more emails than letters are sent. It is hard to imagine a world where when one needed to communicate something it would take several days rather than several seconds. All of this is possible because of the Internet.

It was interesting to learn about the "hot potato" routing that allows a piece of information to make it to its destination even if part of a network is broken. I was also a little bit shocked that most of this technological progress was not made to further people's intelligence, make their ways of life better, but out of fear of Soviet domination.

I never realized how much trial and error had to occur to create the smoothly running internet and email that we use today. A transfer from the keyboard to a computer to a network to another computer to a screen is a great distance for information to travel and allows a lot of room for error. While it took a long time and a lot of thought to perfect this journey, the thrill of touching somebody far away so quickly was a major driving factor in the creators' work. The way the internet was created, with a broad and open ended foundation, allows it to do almost anything.

In 1992 there were about 50 pages on the Internet. On June 9, 1992 congress passed the Internet from government hands to the public and spurred a 341,000% growth in 1993. While the first Internet work was done in 1969 between four universities, the whole world now had access and it was becoming a very useful tool.

I think that, "The Internet Behind the Web," was a very interesting film. I did not know any of the information that it presented and thus left class with a broad knowledge of where the internet came from, which will hopefully help me to understand how I can use the internet to further my own artwork.

Ryan

"Ryan" is a film, directed by Chris Landreth, as a tribute to the Canadian animator Ryan Larkin. The film follows a 3D character who represents Ryan Larkin, as the real Ryan Larkin's voice converses with another disembodied character, the voice of Chris Landreth. In 2004 "Ryan" won the Academy Award for Animated Short Film and the 25th Genie Award for Best Animated Short.

Rather than giving a character facial expressions, Landreth uses psychorealism to represent each character's inside feelings with outside imagery. The animated characters' heads and bodies are all different, visualizing what they are thinking, as well as what sometimes seems to be their pasts. Brightly colored lights unfurl from Landreth's mind, sometimes wrapping around the front of his face. Almost all of the characters are missing a body part or have extensive holes covering their surfaces.

After watching this 14 minute film, I was amazed at the imagination that Landreth must have had to come up with all of the creative twists he visualizes in the film. Although the "Ryan" is set up in a way that makes it seem documentary based, using the recorded interview, Ryan Larkin's story is made to be a memorable one through the imagery Landreth creates.

Bingo

"Bingo" is a pioneering animation created by Chris Landreth using Maya, a 3D animation and special effects software. The animation is an adaptation of the live theater performance, "Disregard This Play." Chris Landreth is an animator who has worked not only on "Bingo," but on several other CGI animated films including the work he is best known for, "Ryan." "Bingo" was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1996. Landreth is notable for his use of psychorealism, what Karen Singh has described as, "the glorious complexity of the human psyche depicted through the visual medium of art and animation."

The short story follows a man who is harassed by several circus characters into believing that he is, in fact, the character, "Bingo," that they say he is. This character starts the film by sitting in a chair and denying all knowledge of "Bingo," but after being spoken to by a clown smoking a cigarette, he seems slightly shaken. A scarily sweet young girl has a conversation with him as well, while her balloons mysteriously pop every few seconds. A final conversation with a man covered with money and waving seven arms pushes the "Bingo" character over the edge to the point that he declares that he is indeed "Bingo." Between each meeting another circus character enters and begins a musical performance. The characters seem to shift shapes, becoming more and more terrifying, changing sizes, and nearly jumping off the screen.

I thought that this was a great way to show off the Maya program. Ignoring the growing fear one experiences watching this film, it is a beautiful showcase of the animation skills of Landreth as well as the program's capabilities. It is interesting how far computers really can go to make imagery in these types of films so realistic and captivating.

The New Media Reader: Introduction 1 & 2

Perspectives on New Media: Two Introductions

In Introduction Part One: “Inventing the Medium,” Janet H. Murray argues that human knowledge has advanced to a level of complexity that is impossible to adequately organize with a bookshelf. She posits that we need new and more advanced ways of thinking about the world, and that this need is being relieved through computer technology. I agree with Murray that inventing new media to cope with the world's heightened complexity is critical to our further development as a people. Murray continues by advocating the use of computers because of their element of spatiality, which allows user participation, and thus immersion in this representational medium. The web and computers’ ability to captivate multiple audiences: the youth through videogames, artists, writers, and educators through word processing, and finally the entire world through information consolidation, is a topic that Murray fiercely defends on the basis that it allows “us to say more complicated things to more people with greater understanding.”

In Introduction Part Two: “New Media from Borges to HTML,” Lev Manovich takes a brief historical look at New Media and rightly describes it as “computer-based artistic activities.” He notes that in the United States, technology is assimilated so quickly that it feels “assumed,” and that since we lack adequate governmental funds for the arts, our country has focused the majority of experimentation in new media on commercial culture. Manovich continues to claim that software designers should be hailed as the modern artists of our time. In his eight propositions defining New Media, Manovich compares Cyberculture, (social and networking), to New Media, (cultural and computing). He stresses the important role digital computer technology plays in the distribution and exhibition of the cultural objects considered New Media. Another interesting point that Manovich makes is that whereas in film we have not taken advantage of the possibilities that software could bring to fruition--the creation of personally customized films by artificial intelligence--we have made those advances in the video game world. Manovich’s essay concludes with a definition of the digital computer as a “manipulator of existing media,” as well as a “media synthesizer,” and a completely “new medium.”

I found that reading The New Media Reader’s Introduction set the stage for the many points of view to be conveyed through the essayists work. Murray and Manovich both call attention to the important place that New Media holds in our ever-advancing culture. Manovich’s discussion of New Media as “a faster execution of algorithms previously executed manually” was note-worthy in its casting of the "cut-and-paste" command as a modern reemergence of the avant-garde medium of collage. I am most excited about reading The New Media Reader because of Manovich’s reference to combinatorics and Sol Lewitt. Even though I was somewhat distracted by the myriad grammatical and spelling errors in this text, I think that the further development of the conceptual artwork of the 1960s into the interactive computer art of the 1980s and today is a topic that will continue to affect the way I understand New Media and even create my own New Media.

The Guild

The Guild is an online sitcom that premiered July 27, 2007. It was written by Felicia Day, directed by Jane Selle Morgan and Greg Bensen, and produced by Jane Selle Morgan and Ken Evey. It is made up of succinct 3-6 minute episodes chronicling the adventures of Cyd Sherman, (Felicia Day), and her guild's real and digital lives.

The "webisodes" are available for viewing on youtube.com and for purchase on DVD, yet have not yet made the move to television, most likely due to their niche audience and brevity. The series has won several awards including the Yahoo! Video Award for Best Series and the YouTube Award for Best Series.

Felicia Day, an actress who once suffered from video-gaming addiction, parodies video gamers’ ways of life in not only a humorous, but intelligent way. Rather than fortifying worldwide beliefs about people who play video games, The Guild succeeds in giving its characters, while stereotypically presented, endearing qualities that humanize them in a way that most video game parodies could not. Roles played include the expected: overweight gamer, Middle-Eastern gamer, Asian gamer, teen gamer, lonely gamer, and bored gamer. The gaming community in The Guild is, although to some extent exaggerated, represented as a group of people enjoying each other’s company while doing something that they love.

As a person who has very limited experience with or knowledge about video gaming, I was interested in watching the Guild only as an opportunity for an educational glimpse into an unknown world. Surprisingly to me, after watching the first ten episodes of Season One, I was fascinated to the point of telling my friends about the clever little clips and even sending a youtube.com link to my 16-year-old brother.