A link to this article was kindly sent to me by a colleague. The related site it's from looks interesting too, so will be keeping tabs on it - URL's at the bottom. Some of the themes in Lev Manovich's essay might be worth taking forward (and have already proven fruitful as inspiration for a range of experiments - see this and older pages).
Summary: 'To understand media today, we need to understand media software - it's genealogy (where it comes from), it's anatomy (interfaces and operations) and practical and theoretical effects' (pp1).
LM proposes general schemes for analysing 'software applications'.
Scheme 1 divides all software techniques for working with media into two types depending on which data types they can work on:
1a. Media Specific (techniques). Media creation, manipulation and access techniques are specific to particular types of data e.g manipulating vectors in Illustrator - applying a Sharpen filter is meaningless for example.
1b. Non-specific Media (techniques). These are general techniques/ not specific to particular types of data e.g the 'View Control'.
Scheme 2 divides software techniques for working with data according to (relationships between software and the pre-digital):
2a. Simulations of prior physical media augmented with new properties and functions.
2b. New computational media (? techniques?) that do not have any obvious equivalents in previous physical or electronic media
LM adds; the above may not be meaningful to a digital native.
And that a key use of digital computers is automation i.e the algorithm.
"In the case of application software, the execution of any command involves 'low level' automation (since the computer automatically executes a sequence of steps of the algorithm behind the command). However, what is important from the user point of view is the level of automation being offered in the command's interface. Many software techniques that simulate physical tools share a fundamental property with these tools: they require a user to control them 'manually'. The user has to micro-mange the tool, so to speak, directing it step-by-step to produce the desired effect." (pp 4).
The above is extrapolated - brush tools and other traditional augmentations i.e simulation contrasted with procedural techniques (where control is dictated by parameters and not manual function - interpolation/ tweening as example).
More to follow...
To Follow Up:
(1) Manovich - Softbook (html)
(2) Softbook (Draft PDF)
(3) Porter. T, Duff. T "Compositing Computer Digital Images" in Computer Graphics vol. 18, no. 3 (July 1984): 253-259.
Other URL's:
Manovich - Inside Photoshop
Computationalculture.net
No comments:
Post a Comment