Category: Media

Media, Technology, and the Heliocurve

4/8/2017

What is the difference, if any, between media and technology?
The simplest way that I can understand the difference between media and technology is that media is essentially communication and technology is the means by which something is communicated. Technology can be broadened into skills, techniques, means of production, or processes that utilize scientific knowledge. Although modern media is inseparable from communication technology, they are semantically different concepts. Media is a message, a thought, an idea, a dialogue. Technology is how these things are transmitted. Perhaps the only examples of media without technology is that which is transmitted through human speech, but even early poets and playwrights utilized tools and techniques (technology) to amplify or augment their message. Picture an ancient shaman that stokes the fire, literally, to amplify the specific parts of the oral history being retold. However, perhaps someone could make the argument that even language itself is a form of technology (Hobbes called it an ‘invention’), therefore making media one particular modality of technology. I am not prepared to expand on that particular semantic argument.

I was in Seoul, South Korea, last December (2015). I was wandering through the recently opened Dongdeamun Design Plaza. I stumbled upon something called the Helio Curve. This week’s question about media and technology reminded me of this ingenious installation which seems to blur the lines between art, media, and technology. The artist, Reuben Margolin, created the Helio Curve for Hyundai in an attempt to embody their design philosophy. So it is part art, part advertisement, but all technology. Where is the separation? The Helio Curve, at least superficially, signifies the various aspect of new media; modalities (image, sound, light, movement), technology (cables, wheels, directional lighting, ambient music), practices (music, sculpture), and corporate formations (Hyundai).

What does “the media concept” offer that “the technology concept” does not?
Media offers some type of message that technology does not. There are myriad forms of information that technology collects, creates, and transmits that are not considered media. Think about your internet browsing history, location tracking data, or Fitbit statistics. These things are information but not media. With this interpretation I am still considering media to be a primarily communicative function while technology is simply the tool that transmits the message. So the Helio Curve is an interesting piece of technology, marrying engineering and aesthetics into a pleasing visual effect, but it is the relation to the message, corporate in this case, that it becomes media and carries a message.

Why is it important that we carefully define media or “the media”?
The difference between media and “the media” are important. In today’s ‘maker movement’ world of cheap and ubiquitous media production, everyone is capable of producing it and, in theory, distribute it to mass audiences. The media, with the definite article, seems to encapsulate a more rigid concept of those channels or outlets that control the flow of media. The big names like Google, Disney, and Sony still have significant control over what media we are able to consume. So by this distinction, media is communication in any form, regardless of distribution or consumption, while ‘the media’ are the corporate entities and other players with enough power to get their media widespread distribution.

What is media studies and what are its key concepts?
Media studies, at UBC, concerns itself with “technological innovations which ‘mediate’ interactions.” Students of Media Studies will analyse the nature of these innovations, interactions, and the effect they have upon society. There is also a focus on innovation and creative use of these mediating technologies.

What do we mean by “new media”?
When we say new media we are referring to media that is created and facilitated through digital technology, as opposed to former “print” and analog forms of media. However, we must also be wary of the temporal nature of that term and ask ourselves,

Is it merely instinctive to distinguish "new media" from old media? What are the implications of this?
I believe we, students of ETEC 531, are part of a transitional generation. We have seen changes in information technology and information communications technologies that have fundamentally changed media. We all probably remember a time before the internet. The Internet! A child born today will have little conception of such a world, regardless of how diligently she studies that period of ancient history. For her, ubiquitous, free, editable, and fluid media will be the norm, and the new media will be something that we can probably not even imagine yet. I think it is important for us students of the “new media” to remember that we are in an age of constant flux and the way in which we create and consume media will continue to change from here on out.

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Memes

4/4/2017

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This post is based on Lisa Nakamura's TED talk, "When internet shaming crosses the lines: racial spectacle and memetic culture."

I was glad to hear Lisa Nakamura talk about memes because it is a phenomenon that I have been interested in for some time. When I read Richard Dawkins “The Selfish Gene” many years ago, I didn’t realize that he coined the term “meme” because it seemed like an idea that had been around for quite some time. Now we use the term to talk about pictures and ideas that circulate the internet and carry some meaning for the initiated. Nakamura uses the word trope to describe the same thing.
   Nakamura describes how memes are related to other media and ways in which it can go viral. Memes need to be funny, shocking, surprising, odd, weird, or otherwise pleasurable or intriguing in order for the consumer to ‘like’ it or pass it on. She also notes that, like a virus, we can pass it on without knowing what we have. In this way cultural stereotypes get passed around and fortified by the viral nature of memes.
   I began to think about racist and prejudiced jokes while I was listening to Nakamura on YouTube. It is interesting how every culture seems to have similar jokes but the butt of those jokes are a different race or culture, usually one more localized. Every culture has some group that they disparage as lazy, stupid, cheap, or inbred, in the form of jokes. It is the type of thing that only works with a cultural context. If we were to remove the name of the group being mocked, the joke loses its punchline because the cultural context is needed. The racist or prejudiced trope is understood by most, even if they are not themselves prejudiced.
   I think a point that Nakamura is trying to make is that the visual nature of media that abounds on the internet operates on a less overt level than other forms. With jokes, we must use words and elicit ideas in our interlocutor. With visual memes on the internet we need not even understand the underlieing racism in order to pass it on.
   Between the article and the video I have come to realize that there are power struggles in the media that we consume on the internet that I never before considered. I think I need to consider what I watch, hear, and see, with a more critical lens in the future.

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Media, Technology, and the Heliocurve

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Conditioning:Discussions

Media, Technology, and the Heliocurve

Memes

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Conditioning:
Discussions