Critical Response 1
Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001.
Problems with The Language of New Media:
Over-reliance on film by trying to state that new media draws directly from film without acknowledging many other important media and the interaction within all media. Manovich does not include references to comic books or television despite the critical significance that they merge image and text for reading/viewing ease for the general population.
"In answering these questions, I draw upon the histories of art, photography, video, telecommunication, design, and, last but not least, the key cultural form of the twentieth century - cinema" (Manovich 9).
Throughout the book, Manovich opposes the American and European ways of viewing new media, which is extremely odd when stating how new media draws directly from film, yet trying to state that the actual European narratives have somehow remained completely different from their American counterparts. Also, this quote seems to state that the journey epic is an American concept.
"The dominance of spatial exploration in games exemplifies the classical American mythology in which the individual discovers his identity and builds character by moving through space... From this perspective, most computer games follow the logic of American rather than European narratives. Their heroes are not developed and their psychology is not represented." (Manovich 271)
This quote, and throughout the book Manovich, ignores that the vast majority of console video games are made in Japan and the vast majority of computer video games are made in the United States. Japan can not be ignored regarding new media, especially in terms of video games because Japan has been so incredibly influential on video game design and on the use of digital imaging with the importance of revolutionary animation in Japan, like Ghost in the Shell and Akira.1
Notes
1. Like many animated films, Japanese anime like Lain and Perfect Blue feature solely Macintosh computers: those that exist and those that are promised with Lain featuring the computer of the future, the Navi.
A Rave Metaphor?
Manovich concludes chapter three, "The Operations," with a discussion of how selection, in terms of the cutting or sampling previous works, was present with older media, but how it was previously more difficult and far less common. Within this discussion, Manovich invokes the figure of the DJ for exemplifying the logic of new media and computer culture in terms of selection because the DJ's work is based on the "selection and combination of preexistent elements... The essence of the DJ's art is the ability to mix selected elements in rich and sophisticated ways" (135). DJs spin music; the metaphor of spinning relates directly to the DJ's control over the spinning of the records, but it also relates to the weaving of separated songs into new tapestries. Bits of music are taken out of their original context just as a thread could be taken from one fabric and woven into another, creating a new work entirely different from the old. Or, larger pieces of existing works can be woven into a whole such that the original is noticeable as itself, but now altered, complemented, or sublimated by the infusion of some new element. The weaving and spinning also emphasizes the importance of the whole - a cloth is defined by its unity, never its parts. The idea of the DJ as a new media figure relates directly to the programmability and the reuse and repurposing inherent with new media. While Manovich does not mention it, also useful for this discussion is the concept of the DJ spinning within a live performance setting, a Rave.
Raves are portrayed many ways, but the elements that define a Rave are: electronic music, generally spun by a DJ, and a large dancing audience all of which being contained within a large open area like a warehouse. Thus, we have a large open area with exterior dimensions, but no internal structure. The DJ may be on a stage or platform, but no inherently necessary hierarchy exists because each element (audience, DJ, music, and place) are necessary for the Rave to exist - like the elements of a video game - the parts are modular and can be separated, but the actual form is determined by the composition of all the individual pieces within the act of performance by the crowd in relation to the DJ. This mutual performance of the DJ, and thus the text most often focused on in an analysis of the Rave, with the audience, or users, is what links the Rave directly to new media objects like video games. Using the Rave as a metaphor for new media is more effective than using previous media like cinema and books because much of new media presupposes a user in the context of the work. While new media works like video games certainly do exist without users, they exist in an altogether different state. The metaphor of the Rave in terms of performance is useful in describing how video games and other new media works do exist without players/users, but not in the same manner; just as a Rave without an audience would not really be a Rave at all.
Both the Rave and video games can be divided into discrete, yet interdependent units. A video game can be divided into game engine, enemy AI, game controls, polygon count, and so on, but none of these parts makes the game. Rather the game is the sum of these parts, just as the internet is defined by its connectivity (this connectivity is described using different metaphors like the web, super-highway, and ocean, but all Internet metaphors rest on the idea of connection and space). Video games and the Rave are both defined in the mix and remix. Video games are made up of many units - visual display, game genre, game engine, and so on. All of these are mixed and remixed together by the programmers and game designers to create a unique game (Alice uses the Quake game engine, yet Alice is a completely different game). Just as the DJ takes existing beats and bits ands adds them together to create a particular type of music (trance, trip-hop, ambient, house, and such), the video game designers combine new and pre-existing elements to create a new whole. The Rave is more significant than the DJ mixing alone because the Rave incorporates visual elements along with the phenomenological elements. Raves incorporate various elements like smoke machines, computer projection systems, laser light displays, and multiple television displays to add to the experience of the Rave. With this, music for the Rave is understood to operate in conjunction with the mix of visual and experiential objects. This mix in itself is common to media in general, but the final element of the mix pivotally defines both the Rave and video games. Within the context of the mix of music or code and visual stimuli, the Rave and video games both require the user. Raves require an audience just as video games require a player. Yes, the Rave and the video game do exist without users, but they do not exist in the same form.
The mutually performing individual elements, the audience and the DJ, of a Rave are not hierarchically set. The lack of hierarchy is intrinsic to the aggregate nature of video games and to the Rave. For the subject to participate in the Rave and for the subject to participate in a video game, the subject must be in some relation to the text. Video games and the Rave both put the subject into a relationship with the text by making the subject a user; “new media, more often than not, turn the subject into user” (205). While video games do not always place the subject into a direct relationship with the text (as the myth of direct manipulation would have it), video games and the Rave do place the user into a relationship of use to the text and of mutual dependence. The relationship of use makes video games and the Rave analogous by both being aggregates that presuppose an included user. Video games do not have a hierarchy of elements within them because each element, including the user, is required for the work to function as it does. Video games may have hierarchical gameplay and game narratives, but the actual elements of a video game are not hierarchically structured, as a database would be. While the elements of a video game do require each other to operate properly, relating directly to Manovich’s principle of modularity which is often dependent on other modules, they do not exist in a systematized order of importance. The Rave does require each of its units interacting together, even though the units can be discretely quantified, but no one element or group of elements is given priority over the others. Even though the DJ at any particular Rave may be famous and even though the crowd may have paid to attend the Rave, the Rave elements are not organized in a hierarchy because no one element or group of elements is the defining point of the Rave. The Rave is defined precisely by the crowd interacting with the other elements, as a video game is defined by the player’s movement through the game. The actual immersion into the experience of the Rave defines it, so no systematized notion of the Rave can properly explain its essentially aggregate nature.
One interesting possibility for the application and further explication of the Rave metaphor is the game Rez, recently released on the Playstation 2. Rez plots the player on a predetermined path through the game where the player’s only control is rotating perspective (generally 270 degrees, but sometimes up to 360 degrees) and shooting at enemies. The game is drastically limited in its outer boundaries, no variation is allowed outside of the shots, powerups, and rotations. Yet, the freedom within this small Rave warehouse of movement is extreme. Each shot that the player fires makes a musical beat. Each player character form that the player progresses through makes a different style of beat from the other forms, as a different sound effect worked into the overall flow of the music. Depending on the sequence of shots, the beats also vary. Essentially, Rez is played by making shot-beat complementary music to the base line of the background music as the player moves through the game. While other games have had the player mixing beats and rapping to progress through the game stages, Rez is different because it does not make the music quantified and demarked sets, but rather makes the entirety of the game a spin set, through which the player shoots/plays as a musical movement. By making the entirety of the gameplay about actual flow, not flow in terms of immersion, but flow in terms of the musical movement of gameplay, the game becomes a progressive score, which opens the gameplay further to musical analogies and metaphors.
The metaphor of the Rave is clearly far from a perfect analogy for new media, but its significance as a metaphor is that it stresses the mix, with constant spinning and respinning, and the user’s willful engagement in the process as part of the process. The Rave metaphor is also useful because it emphasizes the nonhierarchical nature of new media without confusing the significance of the discrete and modular components. The Rave is a more complete metaphor than others for explaining how the user is one of the combinatorial elements in the composition of a video game text. While Manovich drastically downplays the significance of interactivity within a valid and useful questioning of the term itself, interactivity as understood at least as that level of activity in which the video game must be played and experienced must remain for a true understanding of video games and much of new media.
Second Critical Response: Alice