1. Computation as a Medium
Week 1
LCC 2700: Intro to Computational Media

2. NMR Intro: Inventing the Medium
Engineers looking for a more coherent way of presenting massive information of postwar era
Engineers looking for tools to help people to think more efficiently
Engineers believe in the possibility of integrating our perceptions of the world
Late 20th Century humanists (writers, artists, philosophers) disgusted with intellect and integrative ideologies
Humanists fascinated with multiplicity of ways of seeing the same phenomena (Borges)
Divergent approaches twist together to co- invent the digital medium

3. A new medium! Happens rarely in human history
Writing ~3500 BC Printing Press Photography ~1850

4. Computation as a Medium like Print
Medium Format Genres
Print book novel, history
periodical newspaper, magazine
Computer html page website, blog
videogame shooter, rpg…
database payroll, archive

5. Computation as a Medium like Print
Medium Power of representation
Print Don Quixote Effect
Computer Eliza Effect

6. Other models of computation
Technology (like an engine in a car)
Tool (like a pencil or slide rule)
Appliance (information toaster)
Transmitter of other media (network of moving bits)
These are valid but more limited as an orientation for designer/inventors
Medium is a more inclusive framework

7. Advantages of the Media Model
For both design and understanding
Historical perspective, analogies to other periods of media transition
Rich design palette from legacy practices
Connects computation with other forms of cultural expression
Focuses us on coherent form

8. What is a medium?
Something in the physical world that contains an idea of a person, place, thing, event, or concept.

9. Media vs Technologies
A medium contains (communicates) ideas through conventions of representation.
A technology is a set of methods and materials for doing something, such as creating a media artifact.
The computer can be thought of as an evolving medium that rests on a set of changing technologies.

10. Converging Technologies/Converging Media
Digital television/videogame console hooked to internet
Telephone/camera/appointment book/music player
Actors merging with animations in movies
NY Times producing 1 minute videos on website
NBC producing text and still image articles on website
Google creating digital, searchable, networked library
Replacement of paper, film, audio tape, vinyl records, video tape with digital formats

11. A medium relies on Accessible Practices of Inscription
Fixed Practices of Transmission
Open Ended Practices of Representation
These practices are always cultural and may or may not be technological
Cultural = all shared behaviors , interpretations, and values beyond our biological endowment

12. Inscription = Intentional perceptible impression
Impression may be temporal or spatial
Impression may be auditory, visual, tactile
Impression requires malleable material to receive and (perhaps) preserve it
Impression requires a means of marking the material
What is a medium?: Inscription – Transmission - Representation

13. Examples of inscription
Sounds made by vocal tract, impressed in the form of sound waves
Cuneiform wedges on clay
Hieroglyphics on papyris
Roman letters on Trajan marble monument
Moving images on film or videotape
Electro-magnetic charges configured as bits
What is a medium?: Inscription – Transmission - Representation

14. Issues of Inscription Temporality (speech, film)
Spatiality: capacity, direction
Ease of marking
Persistence of marking (fired clay)
Faithfulness of marking, copying

15. Transmission
Impressions conveyed from a sender to a receiver, from a creator to a perceiver
Can be transmitted over time
(preserved)
Can be transmitted over distance
(relayed)
What is a medium?: Inscription – Transmission - Representation

16. Transmission Involves Coding
Telegraph model:
Message -> Coded -> Relayed –> Decoded
Examples of standardized transmission codes:
Facial expressions
Cries
Phonemes of spoken language
Alphabet
Ascii
What is a medium?: Inscription – Transmission - Representation

17. Issues of Transmission
Coding: how well does the code capture the message?
Alphabet with and without vowels
Binary vs analog codes
Noise: how accurately is the code transmitted?
Static on a radio signal
Interpretation by receiver
Does the receiver know how to decipher the code?
Does the code mean the same to the sender and the receiver?

18. Representation Assignment of meaning to the transmitted impressions
Based on shared experience, conventions of abstraction, conventions of symbolic coding
Always an act of interpretation from one consciousness to another (or same consciousness over time)
What is a medium?: Inscription – Transmission - Representation

19. Representation Based on an expanding set of meaningful conventions
Set of lines interpreted as house, person, tree
Alphabetic text interpreted as sounds, words, meanings
Interface icons interpreted as buttons connected to actions
What is a medium?: Inscription – Transmission - Representation

20. Mature media have established conventions
30 minute format with commercial breaks
Parents and kids
Foolish behavior
Loving/fighting

21. Established Media Conventions?

22. Established Media Conventions
Paragraphs
Lead paragraphs
Headlines
Mastheads
News photo
Byline
Column
Sentence
Inverted pyramid structure
Feature vs News vs Editorial

23. Established Media Conventions
Columns
Capitals and small letters
Spaces between words
Initial letters: chapter divisions
Page numbers
Tables of contents
Indexes
Title page
Handwriting styles
Typefaces

24. Established Media Conventions
Frame
Information encoded by subject matter
Color/B&W
Rule of Thirds

25. Convergence breaks down coherence

26. Birth of a medium
Arrival of the Train at Ciotat Station, 1895

27. How to invent a medium
Start with existing genres and import them to new formats
Understand unique affordances of new modes of inscription and transmission
Maximize these affordances for purposes of more powerful representation

28. Summary week 1 Computation as a Medium
Other models of computation
Advantages of media model
Medium: inscription, transmission, representation
Media conventions bring coherence
Convergence disrupts coherence
How to invent a medium
Next week: McLuhan, Nelson, HoH 3,