"Multimedia: from Wagner to Virtual Reality"
Randall Packer & Ken Jordan, Editors
New York: Norton, 2001

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Now that the tech boom of the 1990s has settled down, we can finally
look at the concept of multimedia in a context other than it being
shiny, sexy, and new. In fact, now might be a more ideal time (compared
to, say, 1997) to examine multimedia's evolution–an ambitious task that
co-editors Randall Packer (on faculty at the Maryland Institute, College
of Art) and Ken Jordan (a founder of SonicNet.com and creative director
of Icon New Media) attempt to accomplish in their just-released book,
Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality, which offers up what they
call "the untold history of the multimedia revolution."

Their volume, which accompanies a Web site containing much of the same
content launched in June 2000, is a compendium of original, mostly out-
of-print essays by pioneers in the field, including Vannevar Bush,
credited with inventing the concept of the hyperlink, and Tim Berners-
Lee, father of the World Wide Web. Indeed, Packer and Jordan's timing
might be ideal, for in the aftermath of the dot-com craze, we've sobered
up. As a result, one would imagine, we can really look at multimedia in
a more serious, scholarly manner and not be overwhemed or distracted by
the hyperbole and marketing ploys that seemed to surround the concept
half a decade ago. However, while Packer and Jordan's book is a
brilliantly organized anthology that sincerely tries to place multimedia
within a larger, historical continuum, it has its flaws.

Some are a bit glaring. The idea that nineteenth century opera composer
Richard Wagner is the father of multimedia is certainly a great hook.
But it's also a dubious one. Certainly, Wagner's concept of the
"Gesamtkunstwerk" (translation: "total artwork") was prescient: in 1849,
the German musician penned a treatise entitled "The Artwork of the
Future," in which he outlined how music, dance, and set design could be
integrated so "the spectator transplants himself upon the stage, by
means of all his visual and aural faculties." But reading Wagner's
essay, one can't help but ask whether this idea is more appropriately
applied to the history of theater than the history of multimedia. Anyone
who's sat through the Ring Cycle can see that Wagner practiced what he
preached–he created absorbing operas with high production values. And
anyone who's sat through "Cats" can also see that Wagner predicted the
future…of musical theater. "Cats," scarily enough, could arguably
qualify as a "gesamtkunstwerk," if we apply Wagner's prescription
literally: the cheesy, long-running Broadway hit, after all, had a
production replete with an in-the-round stage, smoke machines, and
actor/dancer/singers. It reflected Wagner's ideal more directly than an
interactive, multimedia Web site such as Mark Amerika's "Phon:e:me."

Plus, starting with Wagner seems rather arbitrary–and Packer and Jordan
make it clear that they believe Wagner's ideas were the seed of
multimedia, as they write on the first page of their introduction (or
"overture," as they call it in a nod to the composer), "beginning with
Wagner, subsequent generations of artists sought, and found, and
integrated forms and interdisciplinary strategies to exrpess their
concern with individual and social consciousness and extreme states of
subjective experience." Unfairly, the editors overlook Ada Lovelace, the
daughter of Lord Byron and lover of Charles Babbage (considered the
inventor of an early predecessor of the computer, who is mentioned in
Vannevar Bush's essay "As We May Think," included in this book).
Lovelace is widely considered the first computer programmer, and has
been documented as predicting that a computing machine could produce
music and images. And she is not obscure–in fact, Microsoft even used
her visage on its seal of authenticity on its programs.

Even without making a predictable, politically-correct complaint about
the omission of a female historical figure from the history of
multimedia, comparing the direct influence of Wagner to that of Lovelace
on today's multimedia projects–or even key projects in the past, such
as those of Bush or Berners-Lee–seems absurd. Perhaps Packer and Jordon
couldn't find writings by Lovelace to include, and the decision to omit
her was based on practical editorial reasons, although she certainly
could have been acknowledged, especially since they intend for the book
and the Web site to be used as an educational resource.

With what they decided to include, Packer and Jordan do an excellent job
of weaving together a timeline. In some ways, the book seems to jump
back and forth between rather techie entries (such as "Augmenting Human
Intellect: A Conceptual Framework," a 1962 essay by the engineer Douglas
Englebart, who invented the computer mouse and email), musings by
artists (including a playful duo of poetic writings by Nam June Paik on
"Cybernated Art" and "Satellite Art", respectively), and excerpts from
non-fiction prose by novelists (William Gibson's 1991 explanation of how
he coined the word "cyberspace" and William Burroughs's 1964 account of
his adapting the collage concept to fiction writing). The all-over-the-
place nature of the book nicely reflects how we understand multimedia–a
complex, non-linear means of acquiring and sharing information.

That's not to say that the book lacks continuity. Packer and Jordan do a
remarkable job of juxtaposing the essays. Not only do they group the
possibly disparate essays in categories ("Integration," "Interactivity,"
"Hypermedia," "Immersion," and "Narrativity"), but the editors set up
smooth thematic links. For example, they present a 1955 essay by
cinematographer Morton Heilig that predicts multisensory films; two
entries later, artist-engineer Scott Fisher's 1989 article "Virtual
Interface Environments" on multisensory interaction with cybernetic
devices references Heilig's work, and resonance is built.

Plus, Packer and Jordan–who have stated that the book and the Web site
are the result of a decade's worth of research–clearly know the work of
those they have included in their canon. The introductions that precede
each essay read like carefully drafted Cliffs Notes and, if read on
their own, provide a wonderfully concise timeline, with technical terms
or antiquated language paraphrased for the layperson.

Readers of the book should make time to log onto the duo's Web site of
the same name, found on the Intel-sponsored Web site artmuseum.net. The
site does what the book can't: present a history of multimedia
appropriately–that is, in actual multimedia. Online, Packer and Jordan
present videos of the artists and scientists included in their history,
and hypertext links allow thematic connections to be made more
efficiently.

Despite its flaws, Multimedia: from Wagner to Virtual Reality should be
on the physical bookselves and bookmarked on the browsers of Gen Xers
who believed that multimedia was something that came to be during the
1990s.

The early descriptions of technologies, such as windows or word
processing, that now exist, written in wide-eyed, idealist prose decades
before they became a reality, are wonderful to discover. The revelation
that multimedia is nothing new shouldn't be a buzz kill–it places
today's multimedia within a more profound context than just the hot new
thing.