Software Takes Command

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Software has replaced a diverse array of physical, mechanical, and electronic technologies used before 21st century to create, store, distribute and interact with cultural artifacts. It has become our interface to the world, to others, to our memory and our imagination - a universal language through which the world speaks, and a universal engine on which the world runs. What electricity and combustion engine were to the early 20th century, software is to the early 21st century. Offering the the first theoretical and historical account of software for media authoring and its effects on the practice and the very concept of 'media,' the author of The Language of New Media (2001) develops his own theory for this rapidly-growing, always-changing field. What was the thinking and motivations of people who in the 1960 and 1970s created concepts and practical techniques that underlie contemporary media software such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Maya, Final Cut and After Effects? How do their interfaces and tools shape the visual aesthetics of contemporary media and design? What happens to the idea of a 'medium' after previously media-specific tools have been simulated and extended in software? Is it still meaningful to talk about different mediums at all? Lev Manovich answers these questions and supports his theoretical arguments by detailed analysis of key media applications such as Photoshop and After Effects, popular web services such as Google Earth, and the projects in motion graphics, interactive environments, graphic design and architecture. Software Takes Command is a must for all practicing designers and media artists and scholars concerned with contemporary media

Software Takes Command

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Software has replaced a diverse array of physical, mechanical, and electronic technologies used before 21st century to create, store, distribute and interact with cultural artifacts. It has become our interface to the world, to others, to our memory and our imagination - a universal language through which the world speaks, and a universal engine on which the world runs. What electricity and combustion engine were to the early 20th century, software is to the early 21st century. Offering the the first theoretical and historical account of software for media authoring and its effects on the practice and the very concept of 'media,' the author of The Language of New Media (2001) develops his own theory for this rapidly-growing, always-changing field. What was the thinking and motivations of people who in the 1960 and 1970s created concepts and practical techniques that underlie contemporary media software such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Maya, Final Cut and After Effects? How do their interfaces and tools shape the visual aesthetics of contemporary media and design? What happens to the idea of a 'medium' after previously media-specific tools have been simulated and extended in software? Is it still meaningful to talk about different mediums at all? Lev Manovich answers these questions and supports his theoretical arguments by detailed analysis of key media applications such as Photoshop and After Effects, popular web services such as Google Earth, and the projects in motion graphics, interactive environments, graphic design and architecture. Software Takes Command is a must for all practicing designers and media artists and scholars concerned with contemporary media

The application of traditional abstract painting in new media environments

This thesis presents an investigation into the process of new fonns of installation art; an exploration of the shifting of artistic activities from conventional studios and fine artist practices to installation art practices. A combined approach was taken whilst undertaking research by studying literature within the field, engaging with other practicing artists and conducting practical analysis. There is also a discussion of new technology in the field of abstract expressionist painting and a dialogue on the differences between traditional and digital abstract painting with regard to their processes. The reflective and issue finding processes undertaken by the researcher in this investigation are discussed in relation to the changes in his practice. The artist's experimentation with materials and processes and the implications of this as regards the relationship between the artwork and the viewer are also discussed. The thesis is divided into seven chapters of text and images with an accompanying DVD including the main abstract new media installation. The first chapter includes an introduction to the research with the methodology . applied. The second chapter involves using the computer to produce abstract painting. The third chapter then focuses on the differences between digital .and traditional abstract painting. Moving on from this the fourth chapter covers multimedia installation and its associated processes. The fifth chapter deals with the reflections on the practice element of this investigation. The sixth chapter engages with the evaluation of and feedback from the field trip and with notes from artists with regard to practical production. The final chapter draws conclusions from this research with suggestions for further studies. This thesis will make the following contributions to knowledge: developing the process of animation from 2D abstract painting to a 3D environment with the inclusion of animation; using new technology as a creative tool to enable artists to gain new insights into creative art practices which provide audiences with new experiences of new and multimedia installation; advancing the creative process of new and multimedia artworks taking account ofnew techniques relating to the manipulation of viewpoints, picture planes and pigment surface as related to traditional methods of image creation and recording and their new media counterparts.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Aesthetic Animism: Digital Poetry as Ontological Probe

This thesis is about the poetic edge of language and technology. It inter-relates both computational creation and poetic reception by analysing typographic animation softwares and meditating (speculatively) on a future malleable language that possesses the quality of being (and is implicitly perceived as) alive. As such it is a composite document: a philosophical and practice-based exploration of how computers are transforming literature, an ontological meditation on life and language, and a contribution to software studies. Digital poetry introduces animation, dimensionality and metadata into literary discourse. This necessitates new terminology; an acronym for Textual Audio-Visual Interactivity is proposed: Tavit. Tavits (malleable digital text) are tactile and responsive in ways that emulate living entities. They can possess dimensionality, memory, flocking, kinematics, surface reflectivity, collision detection, and responsiveness to touch, etc…. Life-like tactile tavits involve information that is not only semantic or syntactic, but also audible, imagistic and interactive. Reading mediated language-art requires an expanded set of critical, practical and discourse tools, and an awareness of the historical continuum that anticipates this expansion. The ontological and temporal design implications of tavits are supported with case-studies of two commercial typographic-animation softwares and one custom software (Mr Softie created at OBX Labs, Concordia) used during a research-creation process

VIRTUAL MUSEUMS FOR LANDSCAPE VALORIZATION AND COMMUNICATION

Research in the domain of landscape virtual reconstructions has been mainly focused on digitization and recording inside GIS systems, or real time visualization, paying a minor attention to the development of a methodological approach for the landscape narration, combing different registers, conceptual, emotional incitements and, thus, able to arouse in the public a feeling of emotional “sensing” and self- identification. The landscape reflects also the human activities in the territory and the communities’ cultural patterns, their sense of “belonging”. In a virtual museum of landscapes, the multidisciplinary approach, the multiplication of perspectives and voices, storytelling, acquire primary importance. A Virtual Museum of landscapes should integrate both holistic and delimited visions. The holistic vision requires a diachronic approach, including both present and past phases of life. On the other side, delimited, or “monographic”, representations are useful to go deeper into specific and exemplar stories, regarding specific groups of people. Beside, the emergence of new social media enhancing cultural interactions among people induce the creation of specific social platforms for Cultural Heritage for the active participation of a large number of stakeholders. Co-creation scenarios and tools can be particularly promising. Aton is an example of front-end VR social platform in the web end, for the efficient streaming of medium/large landscape, their exploration and characterization. The Tiber Valley Virtual Museum is an example of sensorial cultural landscape. Starting from the acquisition of topographical data through integrated technologies, several multi-sensory scenarios have been created, inside which visitors can feel embodied and involved

Drawing from motion capture : developing visual languages of animation

The work presented in this thesis aims to explore novel approaches of combining motion capture with drawing and 3D animation. As the art form of animation matures, possibilities of hybrid techniques become more feasible, and crosses between traditional and digital media provide new opportunities for artistic expression. 3D computer animation is used for its keyframing and rendering advancements, that result in complex pipelines where different areas of technical and artistic specialists contribute to the end result. Motion capture is mostly used for realistic animation, more often than not for live-action filmmaking, as a visual effect. Realistic animated films depend on retargeting techniques, designed to preserve actors performances with a high degree of accuracy. In this thesis, we investigate alternative production methods that do not depend on retargeting, and provide animators with greater options for experimentation and expressivity. As motion capture data is a great source for naturalistic movements, we aim to combine it with interactive methods such as digital sculpting and 3D drawing. As drawing is predominately used in preproduction, in both the case of realistic animation and visual effects, we embed it instead to alternative production methods, where artists can benefit from improvisation and expression, while emerging in a three-dimensional environment. Additionally, we apply these alternative methods for the visual development of animation, where they become relevant for the creation of specific visual languages that can be used to articulate concrete ideas for storytelling in animation

The Translocal Event and the Polyrhythmic Diagram

This thesis identifies and analyses the key creative protocols in translocal performance practice, and ends with suggestions for new forms of transversal live and mediated performance practice, informed by theory. It argues that ontologies of emergence in dynamic systems nourish contemporary practice in the digital arts. Feedback in self-organised, recursive systems and organisms elicit change, and change transforms. The arguments trace concepts from chaos and complexity theory to virtual multiplicity, relationality, intuition and individuation (in the work of Bergson, Deleuze, Guattari, Simondon, Massumi, and other process theorists). It then examines the intersection of methodologies in philosophy, science and art and the radical contingencies implicit in the technicity of real-time, collaborative composition. Simultaneous forces or tendencies such as perception/memory, content/ expression and instinct/intellect produce composites (experience, meaning, and intuition- respectively) that affect the sensation of interplay. The translocal event is itself a diagram - an interstice between the forces of the local and the global, between the tendencies of the individual and the collective. The translocal is a point of reference for exploring the distribution of affect, parameters of control and emergent aesthetics. Translocal interplay, enabled by digital technologies and network protocols, is ontogenetic and autopoietic; diagrammatic and synaesthetic; intuitive and transductive. KeyWorx is a software application developed for realtime, distributed, multimodal media processing. As a technological tool created by artists, KeyWorx supports this intuitive type of creative experience: a real-time, translocal “jamming” that transduces the lived experience of a “biogram,” a synaesthetic hinge-dimension. The emerging aesthetics are processual – intuitive, diagrammatic and transversal

The Virtual Worlds of Cinema Visual Effects, Simulation, and the Aesthetics of Cinematic Immersion

This thesis develops a phenomenology of immersive cinematic spectatorship. During an immersive experience in the cinema, the images, sounds, events, emotions, and characters that form a fictional diegesis become so compelling that our conscious experience of the real world is displaced by a virtual world. Theorists and audiences have long recognized cinema’s ability to momentarily substitute for the lived experience of reality, but it remains an under-theorized aspect of cinematic spectatorship. The first aim of this thesis is therefore to examine these immersive responses to cinema from three perspectives – the formal, the technological, and the neuroscientific – to describe the exact mechanisms through which a spectator’s immersion in a cinematic world is achieved. A second aim is to examine the historical development of the technologies of visual simulation that are used to create these immersive diegetic worlds. My analysis shows a consistent increase in the vividness and transparency of simulative technologies, two factors that are crucial determinants in a spectator’s immersion. In contrast to the cultural anxiety that often surrounds immersive responses to simulative technologies, I examine immersive spectatorship as an aesthetic phenomenon that is central to our engagement with cinema. The ubiquity of narrative – written, verbal, cinematic – shows that the ability to achieve immersion is a fundamental property of the human mind found in cultures diverse in both time and place. This thesis is thus an attempt to illuminate this unique human ability and examine the technologies that allow it to flourish

Film, Video, and Digitality: An Analysis of Cultural Form in Time-based Media

This thesis examines the material properties of time-based image media, in particular live video. The project is practice-based with a theoretical underpinning drawn from the debates on form and meaning associated with Walter Benjamin