[spectre] Review of Lev Manovich's The Language of New Media
Inke Arns
inke@snafu.de
Sun, 18 Aug 2002 20:03:41 +0200
[This is my review of Lev Manovich's book The Language of New Media
(2001) which was recently published in ArtMargins
<http://www.artmargins.com> and in an abridged version in Cream 10
<http://www.laudanum.net/cream>. Greetings, Inke]
Inke Arns
Metonymical Mov(i)es
Review of Lev Manovich: The Language of New Media. MIT Press:
Cambridge, Massachusetts / London, England 2001. $34.95, 7x9, 354
pages, ISBN 0-262-13374-1
Upon reading Lautr=E9amonts Chants de Maldoror (1869) surrealist king
pin Andr=E9 Breton took over the author's famous words "beautiful as the
unexpected meeting, on a dissection table, of a sewing machine and an
umbrella", thus coining the Surrealist aesthetic of jarring juxtapositions=
.
Almost as beautiful as Breton's observation was another unexpected
meeting taking place some years later, namely, the use of punched 35mm
movie film in order to control computer programs in the world's first
working digital computer built between 1936 and 1938 by German
engineer Konrad Zuse. This significant event which did not happen on a
Surrealist dissecting table but, interestingly, in the appartment of Zuse'=
s
parents in Berlin-Kreuzberg, further rapproached computing and media
technologies - and thus further advanced the gradual entwinement of these
two distinct historical trajectories. It was, metaphorically speaking, thi=
s
strange superimposition of 'binary' over 'iconic' code, that, according to=
Lev Manovich, anticipated the convergence of media and computer that
followed about 50 years later: "All existing media are translated into
numerical data accessible for the computer. The results: graphics, moving
images, sounds, shapes, spaces, and texts become computable, that is,
simply sets of computer data. In short media become new media."(1)
Manovich considers the historical merging of computer and media,
symbolized by the superimposition of 'binary' code over 'iconic' code, so
central an event for his argumentation that it also adorns the cover of Th=
e
Language of New Media (2001). Beautiful as this symbol may be, it also
represents the limitations of this valuable book: (analogue) media and new=
(digital) media are generally equated with visual media, in particular
cinema. Although photographic and moving images are but one element
of, resp. have, among other influences, contributed to the development of
a language of (new) media, in this publication they are made to represent
the whole of (new) media. To put it bluntly: Movies metonymically make
up the language of new media. This is what one has to bear in mind when
reading this insightful and valuable publication.
When asked in an interview about how long he had been writing the
book, Moscow-born Lev Manovich, today Associate Professor in the
Visual Arts Department at the University of California, San Diego, gives
three alternative answers: it's seven years since the first articles were
published in 1992, fifteen years since he began to work with computer
graphics around the mid-1980s (he came to New York in 1981), and
twenty-five years since be had been studying fine arts, architecture and
computer science in Moscow. His 1993 Ph.D. dissertation in Visual and
Cultural Studies, The Engineering of Vision from Contructivism to
Computers, traced the origins of computer media, relating it to the avant-
garde art of the 1920s.
His Language of New Media, which in many instances is connected to his
Ph.D. thesis, is structured according to the principles of a computer: the=
chapters gradually advance the reader from five very basic principles of
the underlying code via the interface, the operations and forms to surface=
phenomena, literally to the surface of the computer (screen). The meeting
of media and computer, and the computerization of culture as a whole
changes the identity of both media and the computer itself - whereby, as
Manovich asserts, "the identity of media has changed even more
dramatically than that of the computer." (p. 27) Therefore, the focus of
Manovich's book lies on answering the question of how the shift to
computer-based media redefines the nature of static and moving images.
In the first chapter of the book Manovich describes five principles of new=
media which summarize the differences between old (analogue) and new
(digital) media:
1. numerical representation,
2. modularity,
3. automation,
4. variability,
5. transcoding.
First, all new media objects are composed of digital code, they are
numerical representations. Two key consequences follow from that: new
media objects can be described formally, i.e. by using a mathematical
function, and they can be subjected to algorithmic manipulation. Media
thus become programmable. Second, all new media objects have a
modular structure, i.e. they consist of discrete elements which maintain
their independence even when combined into larger objects. A Word
document as well as the World Wide Web consist of discrete objects
which can always be accessed on their own. Modularity thus highlights the
"fundamentally [=85] honhierarchical organization" (p. 31) of all new medi=
a
objects (this actually holds true as long as you use the terms in a
metaphorical way as Manovich does with most of the terms throughout his
book. As soon as you employ them in a literal way, it becomes clear that
new media objects can, indeed, despite their principal modularity, be
organized in strictly non-hierarchical ways). The numerical coding of
media and the modular structure of a media object (i.e. the first two
principles) allow, according to Manovich, thirdly, "for the automation of
many operations involved in media creation, manipulation, and access."
Thus, "human intentionality can be removed from the creative process, at
least in part." (p. 32) Examples for automation can be found in image
editing, chat bots, computer games, search engines, software agents, etc.
The fourth principle of new media, deduced from the more basic
principles - numerical representation and modularity of information - is
variability. New media objects are not "something fixed once and for all,
but something that can exist in different, potentially infinite versions."=
(p.
36) Film, for example, whose order of elements is determined once and
for all, is diametrically opposed to new media whose order of elements is
essentially variable (or, 'mutable' and 'liquid'). Examples for variabilit=
y
would be customization and scalability. The fifth principle, and the "most=
substantial consequence of the computerization of media" (p. 45), is
transcoding. Transcoding basically means translating something into
another format. However, the most important aspect is that the structure
of computerized media (which, on the surface still may look like media)
"now follows the established conventions of the computer's organization of=
data." (p. 45) Structure-wise, new media objects are compatible to, and
transcodable into other computer files. On a more general ("cultural")
level, the logic of a computer "can be expected to significantly influence=
the traditional cultural logic of media" (p. 46); that is, we can expect t=
he
"computer layer" to affect the "cultural layer". In the main chapters of t=
he
book Manovich discusses some of these changes (esp. the database as
the "new symbolic form"). In the very insightful and entertaining "What
New Media is Not" he scrutinizes some of the popularly held notions
about new media, discussing the historical (dis)continuities between old
and new media. The Cultural Interfaces chapter analyzes how three
cultural forms of printed word, cinema, and a general human-computer
interface (HCI) contributed to shaping "cultural interfaces" during the
1990s. Manovich uses the term 'cultural interface' to describe a "human-
computer-culture interface - the ways in which computers present and
allow us to interact with cultural data." (p. 70) Now, according to
Manovich's main thesis, "[r]ather than being merely one cultural language
among others, cinema is now becoming the cultural interface [=85]" (p. 86)=
.
Cinematic ways "of seeing the world, of structuring time, of narrating a
story, of linking one experience to the next, have become the basic means
by which computer users access and interact with all cultural data." (p.
78f.). Here, one starts wondering which computer users he is talking
about: definitely not about computer users in general. What we are
confronted with here is another of Manovich's metonymical moves:
without much notice, Manovich deduces from very special forms of new
media, in this case computer games and Virtual Reality (VR), a whole
general language of new media. While one can say that cinematographic
approaches to interfacing "cultural data" were typical for the whole VR
industry's discourse in the beginning of the 1990s, cinema can by no
means be called "the cultural interface". Cinema is just one of the possib=
le
interfaces to datascapes, among many others.
In the following chapters Manovich meticulously analyses how the shift to
computer- based media redefines the nature of static and moving images:
"New media may look like media, but this is only the surface." (p. 48) He
analyses the operations, illusions and forms of new media. According to
Manovich, the main operations of new media are selection, compositing,
and teleaction. Digital compositing refers to the process of "assembling
together a number of elements to create a single seamless object." (p.
136) This is what makes it radically different to montage of the 1920s up
to the 1980s: it is essentially "anti-montage" (p. 143). While montage
"aims to create visual, stylistic, semantic, and emotional dissonance
between different elements", compositing aims to "blend them into a
seamless whole, a single gestalt." (p. 144). Teleaction, as the third
operation of new media, enables to see and act at a distance. Manovich
prefers the notion of "teleaction" to "telepresence" exactly because one i=
s
not present in the distant location, but one acts at a distance. Teleactio=
n
allows the user - given that information can be transmitted in real time -=
"to
manipulate reality through representations" (p. 165), through so-called
"image-instruments" which allow the user "not only to represent reality bu=
t
also to control it" (p. 167). Here, Manovich includes a great passage on
distance and aura, namely, on Benjamin and Virilio, concluding that for
both of them, "distance guaranteed by vision preserves the aura of an
object [=85] while the desire 'to bring things closer' destroys objects'
relations to each other, ultimately obliterating the material order altoge=
ther
and rendering the notions of distance and space meaningless. [=85] The
potential aggressiveness of looking turns out to be rather more innocent
than the actual aggression of electronically enabled touch." (p. 175)
In the "Illusions of new media" chapter Manovich entertains the reader
with some very enlightening remarks on the partiality and unevenness of
synthetic realism generated by VR engines. An animator using a particular
software can, for instance, "easily create the shape of a human face, but
not hair; materials such as plastic or metal, but not cloth or leather; th=
e
flight of a bird but not the jumps of a frog." (p. 193) This unevenness of=
synthetic realism not only reflects the range of problem addressed and
solved, but als bears witness to the fact that the research of particular
problems was "determined by the need of the early sponsors of this
research - the Pentagon and Hollywood." (p. 193) In addition to this
sponsor-induced focus on certain areas in research, it is also the
researchers themselves who "privilege particular subjects that culturally
connote the mastery of illusionistic representation" (p. 195). Examples fo=
r
these "icons of mimesis", or privileged signs of realism, would be, e.g.,
animations of smoke, fire, sea waves, and moving grass. Also highly
amusing is Manovich's witty comparison between Jurassic Park and
Socialist Realism. His thesis is that both can be understood as synthetic
images or constructs pointing to a future event which, in order to be
understood by their contemporaries, have to be disguised in 'sub-optimal'
aesthetics. While the synthetic film images in Jurassic Park are the "resu=
lt
of a different, more perfect than human, vision", "the vision of a compute=
r,
a cyborg, an automatic missile" (whose images were too perfect and thus
for the film had to be degraded quality-wise), it is also, according to
Manovich, "a realistic representation of human vision in the future when i=
t
will be augmented by computer graphics and cleansed of noise" (p. 202).
Likewise, also Socialist Realism "had to retain enough of then-everyday
reality while showing how that reality would look in the future when
everybody's body would be healthly and muscular, every street modern,
every face transformed ba the spirituality of communist ideology." (p. 203=
)
Socialist Realism never depicted this future directly: "The idea was not t=
o
make the workers dream about the perfect future while closing their eyes
to imperfect reality, but rather to make them see the signs of this future=
in
the reality around them." (p. 203) It is here that Manovich makes the
connection between the Hollywood movie and Socialist Realism: Just "as
Socialist Realist paintings blended the perfect future with the imperfect
reality, Jurassic Park blends future supervision of computer graphics with=
the familiar vision of the film image." (p. 204)
The most important forms of new media are, according to Manovich,
database and navigable space. Self-confidently, Manovich states in the
beginning: "After the novel, and subsequently cinema, privileged narrative=
as the key form of cultural expression of the modern age, the computer
age introduces its correlate - the database." (p. 218). Databases which
Manovich calls the "new symbolic form of the computer age" (p. 219),
appear as "collections of items on which the user can perform various
operations - view, navigate, search. The user's experience of such
computerized collections is, therefore, quite distinct from reading a
narrative or watching a film [=85]" (p. 219). The database (a term which
Manovich uses metaphorically, i.e. not only strictly for databases, but in=
a
more general sense) presents the world as a list of items which it refuses=
to order. In contrast, narrative "creates a cause-and-effect trajectory of=
seemingly unordered items (events)." (p. 225) While database and
narrative seem to be diametrically opposed in the beginning of the chapter=
,
it increasingly becomes clear in the course of Manovich's argument that
linear narrative is just one method of accessing data among many other
possible trajectories. Manovich redefines the concept of narrative: "The
'user' of a narrative is traversing a database, following links between it=
s
records as established by the database's creator. An interactive narrative=
(which can be also called a hypernarrative in an analogy with hypertext)
can then be understood as the sum of multiple trajectories through a
database." (p. 227) Here, Manovich observes a very interesting change
concerning the database logic: In old media, as outlined, e.g. by Roman
Jakobson,(2) the database of choices from which narrative is constructed
is implicit (the paradigm); while the actual narrative is explicit (the
syntagm). New media completely reverse this relationship: "Database (the
paradigm) is given material existence, while narrative (the syntagm) is
dematerialised. Paradigm is privileged, syntagm is downplayed. Paradigm
is real; syntagm virtual." (p. 231) As historical predecessors Manovich
mentions two "database filmmakers" who reconcile database and narrative
form: Dziga Vertov and Peter Greenaway. Vertov's Man with a Movie
Camera literally projects the paradigm onto the syntagm. Therefore,
Manovich concludes, Man with a Movie Camera cannot simply be
labeled "avant-garde", exactly because it never arrives at anything like a=
well-defined language (like all avant-garde films), but, rather, "it propo=
ses
an untamed, and apparently endless, unwinding of techniques, or, to use
contemporary language, 'effects', as cinema's new way of speaking" (p.
242). Man with a Movie Camera is a "database of film techniques, and a
database of new operations of visual epistemology, but also a database of
new interface operations that together aim to go beyond simple human
navigation through physical space." (p. 276) As Manovich argues, while
interactive interfaces foreground the paradigmatic dimension, they are yet=
still organized along the syntagmatic dimension: "Although the user is
making choices at each new screen, the end result is a linear sequence of
screens that she follows." (p. 232). Why do new media insist on the
sequential form, why this persistence on a linear order? Manovich's
hypothesis is that new media follow "the dominant semiological order of
the twentieth century - that of cinema" (p. 232):
"[C]inema replaced all other modes of narration with sequential narrative,=
an assembly line of shots that appear on the screen one at a time. For
centuries, a spatialized narrative in which all images appear simultaneous=
ly
dominated European visual culture; in the twentieth century it was
relegated to 'minor' cultural forms such as comics or technical illustrati=
ons.
'Real' culture of the twentieth century came to speak in linear chains,
aligning itself with the assembly line of the industrial society [=85]. Ne=
w
media continue this mode, giving the user information one screen at a time=
.
At least this is the case when it tries to become 'real' culture (interact=
ive
narratives, games); when it simply functions as an interface to informatio=
n,
it is not ashamed to present much more information on the screen at once,
whether in the form of tables, normal or pull-down menues, or lists." (p.
232)
While it would be really interesting and necessary to critically discuss
Manovich's notion of "real culture" and of the "cultural interface" (when
exactly does an interface become 'cultural'? Should not the computer itsel=
f
be included in the notion of 'culture'?), he introduces many other notions=
that would be likewise worth discussing, like "cinegratography", and the
"loop as narrative engine". Let's stop here and try to summarize. Lev
Manovich's The Language of New Media is a very well written book
(which can also be used as a database) which guides the reader through
its rich contents by always providing short summaries of the chapter s/he
just read or s/he is about to read. The author illustrates his arguments v=
ery
well, not by providing images (apart from some stills from Man with a
Movie Camera there are no illustrations whatsoever), but by always giving
a broad range of examples from his own practical working with these new
media technologies. Moreover, many examples he uses to illustrate his
arguments are net or media art projects and not Hollywood movies, thus
giving a new context to these projects, but also implicitely underlining t=
he
avant-garde role of art in the digital realm.
While reading the book I wondered why I could not recognize the world
Manovich is describing. I would claim that one can experience new media
without ever being so massively confronted with visuals or cinematic code
as Manovich suggests. Manovich writes that "the visual culture of a
computer age is cinematographic in its appearance" (p. 180). If you talk
about computer games, or about VR discourses developed over the last
ten to twenty years, yes, it is cinematographic plus some other elements.
Hollywood's and Silicon Valley's language of new media is indeed
massively cinematographic. But, for example, if you talk about net culture=
,
or media art, fields I have been involved in over the last ten years, or e=
ven
if you talk about practices like chatting or SMS culture, then you just
cannot claim that we have to deal with a visual culture which is
predominantly cinematographic. The reader also has to bear in mind that
when Manovich speaks about 'computer culture' he essentially talks about
computer game culture, VR development, and, partly, also about what
others have at times called the "Californian Ideology".(3) Similarly, when=
he speaks about new media, he essentially means those visual cultures that=
predominantly work with filmic or cinematographic codes. Generally, any
attempt to define a field as broad as the "language of new media" has to
be welcomed quite enthusiastically. If one cannot expect an author of such=
a study to include several historical trajectories (there are, as I would
claim, at least two important ones: the trajectory of photography, film, a=
nd
television, and the trajectory of telegraphy, radio and the Internet, with=
television and Internet converging at present), then one should at least
expect that the author makes clear that, while writing about the "language=
of new media" s/he is focussing only on one trajectory. However, by
describing in detail, e.g., navigable space, database, and "image-
instruments", he already points to the fact that new media are not indebte=
d
to the filmic paradigm only. Still, Manovich repeatedly comes back to
implicitely using the notion of visual media as a metonymy for media.
Perhaps, thus, in order to avoid misunderstandings, the book should have
been called "The Language of New Visual Media".
In short: Manovich's precise observations of operations and forms of new
media that can be found throughout the whole book come from his
practical experience and make the book a very valuable, sometimes funny
and even entertaining source of information on new media. This is a
wonderful example of the fact that whoever writes on new media should
also be in the state of using them actively. If one takes into account the=
points I have mentioned, i.e. Manovich's focus on the visual, on games
and VR and cinema, then reading The Language of New Media is really
rewarding.
Inke Arns, Berlin, June 2002
Notes:
1 Manovich, Lev: The Language of New Media. MIT Press: Cambridge,
Massachusetts / London, England 2001. 25.
2 C.f. Jakobson, Roman: Linguistik und Poetik [1960]. In: Ders.:
Ausgew=E4hlte Aufs=E4tze 1921 - 1971. Frankfurt/Main 1993. 83-121.
Jakobson, Roman: Der Doppelcharakter der Sprache und die Polarit=E4t
zwischen Metaphorik und Metonymik [1960]. In: Theorie der Metapher.
Hg. v. A. Haverkamp. Darmstadt, 1996. 163-174.
3 Barbrook, Richard / Cameron, Andy: The Californian Ideology. In:
Nettime 1995.
Inke Arns
http://www.v2.nl/~arns