Time Frames

I'm glad to see someone is studying the conventions and rules of the comic art form. Personally I have learned much from Chris Ware, one of the most innovative comic artists I've read. Enjoy!

CHRIS WARE LINK

Also good.....A Softer World

Mythinfromation

The hottest issue in new media is the surveillance state. Having a devise in my pocket with GPS, a microphone, and a camera which is wirelessly connected to a larger network, I am intensely concerned about this issue. 

Obviously no one is listening in on me. The idea of anyone really caring about what I'm doing is ridiculous. However, with increased storage capabilities, I bet someone's recording everything I do. Why not? Why wouldn't companies or the government record everything I do. If not to save all he black mail they can get, then for marketing analytics at least. 

When people discovered that facebook was being used as a research tool for advertisers, they flipped. People felt betrayed, exploited, but worse they felt they had been spied on. If companies are studying me to find out how better to sell me something, or design something which I may buy, aren't I all the better for it? 

Brenda Laurel

Laurel takes a unique, yet vital approach in her analysis of new media- she looks through an Aristotelian lens. By this I mean she looks at computers from a humanistic perspective, using well defined models established for other forms of art. 

I feel this is vital as new media pervades nearly every aspect of the human experience. I can't function anymore without interacting with an some sort of electronic device...unfortunately. Without humanists involved in the design and creation of these devices, my life would be dull and grey. However, I wonder if we would have adopted our technologies to the extent that we have if they hadn't been designed with purely engineering thought.

The Media Monopoly

Despite the ever growing amount of media out there for our consumption, Bagdikian points out that fewer and fewer people control it. This is frightening. 

But what is more frightening is the threat that big business poses on the possibilities posed by the internet. The coercion of Napster into corporate hands is a key example of such a great service being destroyed by the financial and legal pressures of big business. The NMR posits that two way communication may one day be limited by big corporations. Indeed, many internet service providers like Time Warner Cable attempt to restrict the upload and download speeds of their internet users, as well as the speed at which specific sites are allowed to be uploaded. 

I argue that due internets primary communicative capability, these powerhouses of the capitalist system will have no option not only to keep the communication capabilities of the internet at a status quo, but will actually attempt to improve them. With phenomenons such as twitter and facebook, what people really want from the internet are social communicative capabilities. Since capitalists are in the game of making money, they have strong incentives at improving these services.

Thoughts on Video Art

Bill Viola is considered to be one of the most high profile video artists. His work is beautiful and, more than any other video artist, "lyrical." However, we have to question the role of the video artist in an image centric society.

In the world of video, video art is normally makes us reconsider the form as opposed to communicating a message. Looking to Nam June Paik, one sees that his experiments in video art clearly influenced the early MTV aesthetic. This aesthetic dominated airwaves while the corporate music industry filtered its messaging through. 

Through this we begin to see both the dangers and powers of explorations in video art. As film and TV are arguably the most powerful forms of media consumed, and as they are almost always controlled by corporate America and advertisers, the aesthetics that their mass audiences in become their most powerful tools. When people like Nam June Paik and Bill Viola make breakthroughs in the video aesthetic, their work is frequently reappropriated towards capitalistic ends. 

Though this is not necessarily a negative result, I simply find it interesting that an art form that is not necessarily attempting at communication is continually reappropriated by the communication giants so to sell sell sell.

Virtual Realities- Krueger, Morningstar, and Farmer

Myron W. Krueger's work is probably more important than we know now. Many anticipate that our lives will be spent more and more in virtual worlds. Indeed, there are always those, such as the characters of the web series The Guild, who spend most of their waking hours in these virtual worlds. 

For this reason Krueger claims, "The design of such intimate technologies is an aesthetic issue as much as an engineering one. We must recognize this if we are to understand and choose what we become as a result of what we have made." Truly, we are the products of our inventions. I see this more and more as I become more and more distant from friends who are engulfed in the virtual worlds of massive multi player games and Second Life.

But what does it mean when these virtual worlds become as meaningful and real to us as real life? For example, a couple met eachother on Second Life. After their relationship grew, they married and began to live together in real life. However, the wife caught her husband months later with another woman. However, the woman was on Second Life. Is it a problem when we begin to see the social interactions present in virtual spaces just as meaningful as those in real life?

"The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat" by Morningstar and Farmer seem to pose an answer. Through their work on Habitat, they learned that for inhabitants of cyberspace, personal interactions between other inhabitants are far more important than the sexy technology by which it is presented. As such, we begin to see that cyberspaces draw in inhabitants not for their aesthetics, but because they provide alternative means of social interaction. Bars in the East Village tend to provide the same thing.

Enzensberger and Baudrillard

Enzensberger sees problems stemming from media's tendency to limit communication by making it a one way conversation from producer to consumer. He argues that the consumer should have the ability to respond to the messages of the producer, therefore creating a two way conversation. Baudrillard will take this a step further and say that content should be produced jointly by producers and consumers. Perhaps this is being done in the blogosphere and sites like YouTube. Even the current election shows signs that this is happening as traditional forms of media like the TV channel CNN uses blogs and consumer's letters and opinions in their reporting. Though it seems as if the philosophical qualms Enzensberger and Baudrillard have with media are being solved, a whole new political problem is emerging. Now that everyone has a voice and the ability to create, the significance of each voice is diminished. However, there still exists a power structure where, even though CNN is using consumer content in its production, it still has the power to decide whose voice is heard and what it will broadcast. Is it possible to transgress the existing media superstructure? Or will the evolving discourses emerging form new media forever exist along side the flawed one way communication of traditional media?