I can’t remember the first time I heard Gang of Four, but I do distinctly remember a lot of things making sense once I did. Their jagged and angular bursts of guitar, funky rhythms, deadpan vocals, and overtly personal-as-political lyrics predated so many other bands I’d been listening to. Dave Allen was the man behind the bass, and now he’s the man behind Pampelmoose, a Portland-based music and media blog. Continue reading “Dave Allen: Every Force Evolves a Form”
The Just Noticeable Difference
Marié Digby was lauded as the internet’s next big find, a phenomena that had grown organically through digital word-of-mouth, but the media’s multi-roomed echo chamber told on itself. Maybe it was too much, too quickly, but just after Digby’s couple of homey, simple YouTube videos started spreading online, she was featured on radio stations, MTV, iTunes, announcing that she’d been signed to Disney’s Hollywood Records. The official press release headline read, “Breakthrough YouTube Phenomenon Marié Digby Signs With Hollywood Records.” What didn’t come out until later was that her name appeared on that dotted line a year and a half previous. Her online “discovery” was orchestrated from around long, conference-room tables.
Digby wasn’t unlimited bandwidth’s first phony phenom. YouTube’s avidly watched Lonelygirl15, a high school anygirl with a webcam, turned out to be nineteen-year-old aspiring actress Jessica Rose. She’d answered a Craigslist ad for an independent film, landed the part, and — after the “directors” did a bit of explaining — became Lonelygirl15. There was no product attached to the project, but all involved made names for themselves and are now well-represented in Hollywood.
These two stories are postmodern-day examples of what it takes to break through our media-mad all-at-once-ness and get noticed, to float some semblance of signal in a sea of noise. To experience the new is really just to notice a difference. In psychophysics it’s called the just noticeable difference (the “jnd”). Creating that difference is becoming more and more difficult as the tide of noise rises higher and higher.
Where Hollywood records and the Lonelygirl15 crew manipulated an emerging media channel, Miralus Healthcare took the opposite tack with their HeadOn headache remedy. They took one look at new media and ran the opposite direction. The original HeadOn television spot, which some ironically claim induces headaches, looks like a print ad and sounds like a broken record. But it worked. The commercial stood in such stark contrast to everything else on TV that the product is known worldwide.
It is sometimes claimed that technology makes it so that anyone can perform a certain task, like Photoshop made everyone an artist or Pro Tools made everyone a record producer. We make or tools and our tools make us (as Marshall McLuhan once said), but our tools do not make us great.
The idea that the internet and Pro Tools and — whatever else the advent and proliferation of the computer hath wrought — enables anyone to be an artist is both true and false. True, everyone has the tools to do so, but so few people have the talent. The latter is and always will be the case.
New technologies are normalizing events. Think of it like a crosstown street race where the traffic signals are normalizing events. One might be in the lead for a good bit of the ride, but as soon as everyone is stopped at a traffic light, the race effectively starts over. By way of convoluted analogy, one might be “ahead” in the home production process until Soundforge’s new software hits the scene.
Sure, there are people making money producing music who are not that good, but that doesn’t mean that anyone can compete with Dr. Dre just because he or she sets up a MySpace page and posts some loops from Acid. I’ve heard this argument so often lately, that anyone can cut-and-paste a record together and become a producer. If that were true, then why does Dr. Dre even have a career? Simple: Because he’s good at what he does. Let everyone try it!
Yes, building a name is a huge part of this and one person’s bloated name can overshadow someone else’s immense talents, but the proliferation of tools and channels does not dilute the fact that it takes talent, skills, work, and chance — as an artist and a marketer — to get noticed. Computers, the internet, weblogs, and everything else haven’t made everyone a great writer and killed authors’ careers.
DJ Scratch nailed it when he said, “The reason we respect something as an art is because it’s hard as fuck to do.” Good production, good writing, and good marketing are still hard to do — and it’s getting harder and harder to get them noticed. New tools and new channels don’t change the talent and effort it takes to capture the attention and the imagination of the masses, but a new twist here or there can make the just noticeable difference, and that can be all the difference in the world.
The Interface and the Algorithm: Four Recent Books
The much-discussed, much-explored interface between humans and machines is seemingly our final frontier. Comparing the interface to the Victorian novel and the 1950s television show (both of which shaped society’s understanding at the time), Steven Johnson wrote, “There are few creative acts in modern life more significant than this one, and few with such broad social consequences.” The graphical user interface has come to represent all of the many processes going on inside the computer — and the way we interact with each other through them.
The machine is not the environment for the person; the person is the environment for the machine. — Aviv Bergman
With Beyond the Desktop Metaphor: Designing Integrated Digital Work Environments (MIT Press), editors Victor Kaptelinin and Mary Czerwinski have compiled essays finding the limits of the current widespread user interface and imagining a post-desktop interface. Studies have found that our current virtual desktop doesn’t afford supporting services for the growing areas of computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW), the ever-expanding diversity of technologies, or the multiple roles or tasks we find ourselves filling. Beyond the Desktop Metaphor is a compendium that reaches just that — beyond the desktop.
Looking back to look ahead, Thomas Erickson and David W. McDonald compiled HCI Remixed: Reflections on Works That Have Influenced the HCI Community (MIT Press). Erickson and McDonald asked fifty-one designers to reflect on one work — something at least ten-years old — that influenced their approach to human-computer interface design. The result is fifty-one brief essays covering artifacts spanning everything from books like Everett Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations (The Free Press) and Ted Nelson’s Computer Lib/Dream Machines, early innovations like Douglas Engelbart’s mouse and Ivan Sutherland’s SketchPad, and influential people like Edward Tufte and Jane Jacobs. In a field where the research and results are cutting-edge and exciting, but where the literature is often bogged down in minutia and, well, boring, HCI Remixed exhibits a novel approach and is actually fun to read.
It is all just an algorithm with enough unknowns to make a game of it. — McKenzie Wark
Nowhere has HCI been more “remixed” than in computer gaming. A simmering subculture for decades, supposedly the gaming industry has overtaken Hollywood in size, money, and attention. Making sense of this rapid growth and its influence on our culture has spawned confusion, reckless theorizing, and a whole new field of study. Fortunately for us, people like Alexander Galloway and McKenzie Wark have taken up the task of keeping things in perspective. Galloway’s Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture (University of Minnesota Press) draws from over fifty video games — from PONG and Space Invaders to Half-Life and Halo — (as well as his keen critical eye and l33t gamer skills) to deliver a holistic and seasoned approach to gaming studies.
Wark’s Gamer Theory (Harvard University Press), which was originally published in-progress online as “G4M3R 7H30RY,” is written in the aphoristic style of Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle (not unlike Wark’s previous book, A Hacker Manifesto). While its being published online has gotten more attention than the book itself, this should not be the case. Like Wark’s previous work, this is an important text for anyone interested in progressive thought on media and technology — and our relationships with it. Gamer Theory is less about the avatars, images, and interface, and more about the philosophy that drives them. It’s the algorithm as allegory, the formula as form, the rules as rubrics, and what all of it might mean to the culture they’re shaping.
Depending on what end of the human-computer spectrum you’re interested in — from haptics and CSCW to gaming and philosophy — these four books tap the pulse of the melding of humans and machines.
Haxploitation: Three Recent Books
Networks and network protocols are often seen as sites of control, but extreme connectivity eludes control. Diseases, worms, viruses, these all spread beyond our control because of connectivity — networks — that are beyond our control.
When networks cause problems is it because they work too well, not because they are broken. Continue reading “Haxploitation: Three Recent Books”
Amen, Brother
V. Vale sent this out in his most recent newsletter (thanks, Vale). It’s a mini-documentary of a six-second drum break from the B-side of a Winstons’ record, a track called “Amen Brother,” that’s been sampled, looped, and reapproriated — by everyone from N.W.A. to car manufacturers — since its release in 1969. This is Nate Harrison’s meditation on that break, the “Amen Break.” It is “Amazing Grace” to his Bill Moyers, and this is a deep monologue on the ownership of cultural artifacts, the legality of sampling, and this six seconds of recorded history. Continue reading “Amen, Brother”
The Disintegration of the Compact Disc
When The Cure was recording their 1989 record, Disintegration, Robert Smith said it was the first time that they went into the studio knowing that they’d be recording for a release on compact disc, which meant they could shoot for over an hour of music. “Disintegration is the first real CD-LP,” he claimed, “It was about time the musicians learned to use this format: instead of two twenty-minute sides of an LP, you now have a seventy-minute stream of music without interruptions.” The LP had restricted bands to a runtime of forty-five minutes, but with the advent of CD came additional time to record songs (“bonus tracks,” anyone?). Continue reading “The Disintegration of the Compact Disc”
Christian Marclay mini-documentary
Artist Christian Marclay has been manipulating records and turntables in a very un-Hip-hop manner since anyone else has (Hip-hop or otherwise). As someone who creates new compositions out of old ones using turntables and records, he very well might be the first turntablist. Continue reading “Christian Marclay mini-documentary”
The Architect’s Brother Revisited
Robert and Shana ParkHarrison‘s exhibit, The Architect’s Brother, has been one of my favorite statements on our relationship with our technology and our planet since I first saw it in San Diego almost four years ago. This time around, I caught the display — including several pieces I hadn’t seen before — at The Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science in Tallhassee, Florida. Continue reading “The Architect’s Brother Revisited”
Digital Media Demo Day at Georgia Tech
I ventured to Atlanta again this year for Georgia Tech’s Digital Media department‘s Winter Demo Day, and it definitely re-greased the mental wheels. When you’re stuck while thinking about technology and media, an event like this is sure to shake things loose.
The Digital Media program at Georgia Tech spans the spectrum that runs from Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) to film production. Students and faculty come from all points on the spectrum as well, thereby making the input and the output of the department is as diverse as its people. Their semiannual Demo Days allow them to strut their wares, from fully immersive digital environments and emergent games to interactive TV and experimental film, from completed works to projects-in progress. A loose theme this year could’ve been merging the virtual with the corporeal: There were lots of projects bridging bodies and avatars and several others exhibited new approaches to haptics. It’s very difficult to keep a summary about such an event brief, but here are a few highlights.
Kenny Chow’s Generative Visual Renku project uses Fox Harrell’s GRIOT System to create a digital environment for collaborative, linked-poetry using pictographs. Renku is similar to Haiku except that it is a form of linked poetry. Chow’s project allows groups of people connected via a network (e.g., the internet, an intranet, or a social space such as Facebook) to collaborate on pieces of artwork using icons. In the process, GRIOT and Chow’s Renku system create a visual grammar by which the artworks can be built and interpreted.
Over the past couple of years, Susan Robinson has been quietly remediating her Oscar-nominated film Building Bombs (which is now available on DVD) into an interactive piece, the engine behind which manages the relationships among the various personalities and issues in the film. By dragging pictures and icons around on the screen, the user can see how they react to each other and watch video clips from the film. It’s much more impressive and interesting than I can make it sound here.
Space Vectors by Ari Velazquez, Jimmy Truesdell, and Kurt Stilwell is a tabletop video game for up to four players. Each player has a base to protect and three types of space vessels — controlled by tangible objects placed on the tabletop — with which to protect it and attack the others. As it stands now, players set up initial conditions, press “start,” and watch the game unfold. Eventually, Ari says, the game will be very active over the course of play. The interesting thing about Space Vectors‘ current state is how complex the game play is given its relative simplicity. Set up a few pieces, let the game go, and watch to see if your strategy works.
Notably missing this year — or maybe I just notably missed them — were Brian Shrank and company and their Mashboard Games (one of my favorites from last year, which explores haptics by mining affordances from the standard QWERTY keyboard). Also M.I.A. were Ian Bogost and Eugene Thacker. Next time, guys…
Other highlights included Second Life/Augmented Reality (which involved combining physical actors with digital avatars), Mermaids (an MMOG that explores the emergent behavior of large groups), Flourishing Future (an interactive children’s tangible-object tabletop video game involving making a city more environmentally friendly), and Machinima Futurista (which uses the Second Life/Augmented Reality project to recreate the 1916 Italian Futurist film Vita Futurista), among many others.
If any of you get a chance to attend GA Tech’s Demo Day and see what they’re up to there, I strongly recommend doing so: good food, good people, and lots of great ideas. Many thanks to the presenters, and Susan Robinson, Jay Bolter, and Janet Murray for making us feel welcome and for making it another brain-sparking good time.
Too Much Information: Four Recent Books
In his 1995 book, Being Digital (Vintage), Nicholas Negroponte drew a sharp and important distinction between bits and atoms, bits being the smallest workable unit of the digital world, and atoms being their closest analog (no pun intended) in the physical world. In the meantime, this distinction has become more and more important as our world becomes increasingly digital or reliant on digital technologies.
As an over-simplified example, shelf space in a regular “bricks and mortar” bookstore is limited, but online it isn’t. In order to pay its rent and stay in business, a physical bookstore has to carry books that sell at a faster pace than an online store, which can afford to carry books that sell less often. The latter is called “the long tail,” and it’s how Amazon was able to stake its claim as “The World’s Largest Bookstore” and eventually to expand into every other product line one can put in a box or an inbox. When it comes to purely digital artifacts and products (e.g., digital file sharing, music downloads, ebooks, etc.), the power law on which the long tail is based isn’t truncated (as it is eventually in the Amazon example, and sooner in the traditional bookstore example).
Chris Anderson admittedly didn’t invent the idea (Jeff Bezos for one has been making millions with it for years), but no one else has covered it like he has in his book. The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More (Hyperion, 2006) is the concept shot from every angle, through every available lens. The idea is that blockbusters, hits, best sellers form “the short head” of the graph, and the niche items, cult phenomenon, lesser sellers form “the long tail.” Our culture is moving down the tail (i.e., it has become “niche-driven” as opposed to hit-driven) and off the shelf (online as opposed to in the store). Most retail stores only have room to carry items in the short head, while online “etailers” can carry items further down the tail. And when it comes to digital products, shelves are no longer an obstacle, in more ways than one.
When products move from shelves to databases, the way they can be organized changes. Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder (Times Books, 2007) is David Weinberger’s take on Web 2.0’s tags and folksonomies, set in contrast to objects in physical space (bits vs atoms). “Orders of order” he calls them. Items on shelves are limited by the rules of the physical world. Items in a database are not. The former can be filed in one category, on one shelf, in one place (the first order of order). The latter can be searched, browsed, alphabetized, tagged — all at the same time (the third order of order). These orders of order also apply to encyclopedic information — Wikipedia’s bits as opposed to Encyclopedia Britannica’s atoms — and the way it is created.
In Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge (Oxford, 2006), Cass R. Sunstein continues some of the work he did in Why Societies Need Dissent regarding deliberation, group polarization, and emergent knowledge. The most obvious and most successful example is Wikipedia. Whereas mindless mobs wait at the bottom of many collaborative slippery slopes (see a sharp antithesis to Wikipedia at Urban Dictionary), Wikipedia is frighteningly accurate. My friend and colleague Tim Mitchell proposed a great test of Wikipedia’s success: If you doubt the site’s aggregate knowledge, check its information against something you do know, as opposed to something you don’t. Sunstein’s book goes a long way to explaining the ins and outs of why collaborative filtering might provide the best method for knowing things.
Mark Hurst’s Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload (Good Experience, 2007) approaches the infoglut from more of a self-help angle, proposing an ambitious plan for getting things done and getting things organized in the digital deluge. It’s not quite the panacea it purports to be, but useful ideas abound. Finding signal in the noise — especially in the noise of your own email, photos, files, to-do lists – is what bit literacy is all about.
As bandwidth increases, Negroponte’s observation from over a decade ago is finally showing its impact. The distinction between bits and atoms is an important one, and perhaps more important than we previously realized, whether we’re trying to find something or just find something out.