Ken Jordan
DEFINING MULTIMEDIA
(1 of 4)

[Note: This paper-in-progress was first presented at the Unforgiving Memory
conference at Banff last year. It grows out of my collaboration with Randall
Packer, Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality. Some people had
suggested that we expand on the definition of multimedia we used for the
anthology. This is an attempt to do so. Thanks to those who gave feedback to
previous drafts, including: Fred Jordan, Sylvere Lotringer, Lev Manovich,
Randall Packer, and Mark Tribe. Comments and criticisms are appreciated –
either on this list, or sent to me directly at ken@kenjordan.tv.]


1. Five Core Characteristics

Recently Randall Packer and I published an anthology of seminal texts from
the history of computer-based multimedia. The book, Multimedia: From Wagner
to Virtual Reality [1], attempts to highlight connections between the
medium's roots in the pre-digital era to its use in the arts today. The
book is supported by a website on ArtMuseum.net that includes additional
in-depth information.

The book and website are part of an ongoing project that is guided by two
underlying, interrelated objectives. The first is to offer a working
definition of interactive digital media that makes explicit the most
radical, and potentially transformative, aspects of the form. The second is
to suggest that contemporary new media practice should be grounded on an
appreciation of the historical interplay between the arts and sciences that
gave birth to this medium. The book presents the conceptual development of
interactive digital media through the writings of pioneering figures in both
the arts and sciences, dating back to Richard Wagner and the Futurists on
the arts side, and to Vannevar Bush and Norbert Wiener in the sciences. By
proposing a vocabulary and framework for critical discourse about digital
multimedia, and by basing this effort on the landmark achievements of
multimedia's pioneers, we hope to help digital media achieve its potential.

In the wake of post-modernist practice, computer-based media has resisted
definition – and for good reason: definitions are confining. They reduce
the range of potential in the object defined by drawing attention away from
what lies outside the wall of definition. This is a particular concern with
new media, because one of its attractions is its fluid, multifarious
character, its permeable walls. Digital media's peculiar nature challenges
traditional categories; this in itself is an aspect of its radical
character. But there is value in proposing and discussing alternative
definitions of digital media – even if these definitions are contingent,
bracketed by circumstances. In fact, it may be best to regard them as
contingent, because our experience with digital media is so fresh, and where
it leads so unclear. The definitions of today will inevitably be replaced
tomorrow, as new applications for digital media emerge over time.

Definitions are meant to establish a shared vocabulary that can focus
argument – and often, covertly, to achieve a politically motivated purpose.
The purpose of our project is overt: If, as Marshall McLuhan suggests, we
literally construct the world we inhabit through the design and deployment
of our media technologies – because they enable certain behaviors while
discouraging others – then the social and political ramifications of how we
define and address the emerging digital media are undeniable. By identifying
a subject's key characteristics, we begin to say what it is and what it is
not. For digital media this is particularly critical; if the digital arts
community does not lead the discussion about how to define digital
multimedia, and the types of behaviors it should or shouldn't encourage,
other interests, like governments and corporations, will force a definition
upon us.

The interests of for-profit entities often do not coincide with those of the
creative community. In the case of digital, the multinational media
corporations have made clear that their intent is to maintain the legacy
paradigms of 20th century media (which are hierarchical, broadcast-based,
and author-centered) rather than support the emergence of challenging new
media forms (which are, at their best, rhizomatic, peer-to-peer, and
interactive). It is in their interest to force compromises from the
technology that will protect their traditional businesses – compromises
that effectively gut the most democratic, and creatively engaging, aspects
of digital media. If it was up to these powerful companies, 21st century
media devices would likely do no more than act as delivery platforms for the
media formats of the last century.

Today's situation is much different from the way new media forms have
emerged in the past. In the days of Guttenberg, the success of moveable type
did not depend on the coordinated acceptance of printing standards across
medieval Europe. Rather, local innovations could emerge and take hold, and
get adopted independently. Regional ecosystems of media practice could
emerge over time; those that best suited the needs of society spread,
establishing forms for personal expression that improved through use.

The introduction of centralized, industrial forms of communication in the
19th century – like the telegraph, photography, telephones, audio
recording, and cinema – required more global efforts at standardization. If
a telegraph operator didn't know Morse code, then the telegraph became less
valuable. The drive to make Morse code a universal standard went hand in
glove with the expansion of the telegraph into increasingly remote regions.
Still, significantly, each media standard of the day was unique to itself.
Standards that emerged for photography paper had no influence on standards
that were set for the telephone. Each medium grew independently, and so
could find its way as a form of expression, before settling into a
relatively rigid system with its own set of rules.

Digital multimedia is a departure from this established model, because it
incorporates traditionally independent media forms into a single system. So
the standards set for digital communications will effect them all,
simultaneously.

Moreover, digital multimedia requires an unprecedented level of global
coordination, as well as a massive technical infrastructure and widespread
user base. In most cases, the infrastructure is expensive. It demands
standards agreed to by a broad community. Digital media calls for a far
greater level of planning and deliberate resource commitment than what we
are familiar with from the past.

For this reason, there is a need for a definition of digital media that
brings attention to its most radical characteristics. If a television
network trumpets the claim that click-to-buy TV shopping expresses digital
media's greatest potential, we need a clear way to say why that is not the
case.

Much has been written about narrow aspects of the digital media experience.
However, little critical work has been done to show how these separate
aspects combine into a whole. We wondered if we could identify the core
principles that, when bound together, articulate the inherent capabilities
in digital media that lead toward new forms of personal expression. Our
intent is to draw a line between the mainstream media forms of the past, and
a possible future. Though the formal implementations of digital media are
still in development (and will continue to be, relentlessly, given the
freedom to do so), we set out to identify basic concepts that persist,
regardless of the technologies being used by an artist or engineer in a
specific situation. Could these concepts suggest a trajectory for future
development, and provide a way to measure if digital media is achieving what
it is capable of?

We focused on five characteristics of new media that, in aggregate, define
it as a medium distinct from all others. These concepts set the scope of the
form's capabilities for personal expression; they establish its full
potential:

* Integration: The combining of artistic forms and technology into a hybrid
form of expression.

* Interactivity: The ability of the user to manipulate and affect her
experience of media directly, and to communicate with others through media.

* Hypermedia: The linking of separate media elements to one another to
create a trail of personal association.

* Immersion: The experience of entering into the simulation or suggestion of
a three-dimensional environment.

* Narrativity: Esthetic and formal strategies that derive from the above
concepts, which result in nonlinear story forms and media presentation.

Together, these five concepts offer a definition of digital media that
pushes toward the technical and esthetic frontiers of the form.

Integration, of course, is the backbone of multimedia; the combining of
different media into a single work is intrinsic to multimedia practice.
While technology has always played a role in the development of forms of
expression (since all media are technologies in their own right), beginning
in the mid-twentieth century there was a deliberate effort to incorporate
technology as material, as a thing in itself, into artistic practice. This
work, championed most visibly by Bell Labs engineer Billy Kluver, made
technology an explicit aspect of the creation of art. This led, in turn, to
artists exploring the formal properties of electronic media and computers,
in order to make an art that is computer-specific. Because computer output
can mimic traditional media, it lends itself to artworks that blur the lines
between media and between disciplines, just as in consciousness the
distinctions between different media forms (image, text, sound, movement)
are less than absolute.

Interactivity is an overused word that is in danger of losing its meaning.
However, as originally conceived by Norbert Wiener, Douglas Engelbart, and
others, interactivity has extraordinary promise. The term needs to be
reclaimed from those who abuse it (by using it to describe home shopping TV
channels, for instance). By interactivity we specifically mean: the ability
of the user to alter media she comes in contact with, either alone or in
collaboration with others. Reading a text is not an interactive experience;
interactivity implies changing the words of the text in some way – adding
to them, reorganizing them, engaging with them in a way that effects their
appearance on the screen. Digital media is inherently dynamic, changeable.
Interactivity exploits this quality, and encourages a creative engagement by
the user that leaves its mark on the artwork. Just as a conversation is a
two-way experience that effects both parties, interactivity is an extension
of our instinct to communicate, and to shape our environment through
communication.

Hypermedia may prove to be the most profound contribution that the computer
has made to aesthetics. By making a persistent link between media objects,
the user can now easily share her private path through them. Never before
has it been so simple to make your own non-linear method of navigating
through ideas and information available to others. At the same time, using
hypermedia, all traditional media forms tend to have the same weight. By
writing links you decide how to place emphasis on one media object in
relationship to another; context determines relative importance. Text leads
to image leads to sound in just the way the mind works.

But while hypermedia is potent in and of itself, without interactivity
hypermedia would be limited to a way of browsing extant items, rather than
engaging directly with them. Interactivity is what empowers hypermedia,
making it more like the experience of consciousness encountering the world.
In life, one thought leads to another, which leads you to your notebook,
where you reread a line of text, then cross out one word and replace it with
a different one. Without interactivity, hypermedia would place you in a
state of continual passivity, frustrating your impulse to engage with what
you encounter.

Like hypermedia, immersion is a digitally enabled method for mimicking an
aspect of consciousness. The arts have long been concerned with accurately
reflecting private sensory perceptions. The history of each art form is
replete with movements that claim this as their objective; similarly,
integration has been led by the desire to combine art forms in a way that
reflects our sensual apprehension of the world. Digital technology allows us
to pursue this impulse further through the creation of fully realized
virtual environments. It is also true that, in cases when digital media does
not suggest a convincing three dimensional virtual space, it encourages the
use of spatial metaphors for the arrangement of information. One obvious
example is the Web, which lends itself to architectural or geographic
methods of "navigation," rather than adhering to linear forms of
organization.

The inter-reliance between these key characteristics culminates in the wide
range of non-linear narrative forms that digital media lends itself to. Our
methods for self expression grow out of an ongoing collaboration with the
tools we use to give that expression a recognizable shape. Working with
these tools, we find ways to capture nuances of personal experience so that
we can share them with others. Before digital technology, our tools led us
toward linear modes of expression. However, the dynamic nature of databases
and telecommunications networks open up possibilities for alternative
narrative structures that come closer to replicating the internal
associative tendencies of the mind. Artists like Lynn Hershmann, Roy Ascott,
and Bill Viola saw this potential early on, and have explored approaches to
narrativity that make full use of integration, interactivity, hypermedia,
and immersion in their digital artworks. The narrative forms pioneered by
these artists, and the many others who share their interests, are
effectively blueprints for digital communications in the coming century.


NOTES:

[1] Randall Packer and Ken Jordan, eds., Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual
Reality (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001)

[END, PART 1 OF 4]


————
Ken Jordan
ken@kenjordan.tv
212-741-6173

"Be as if." - Andrew Boyd