Reading Notes Ch2 Software Takes Command

ENIAC - first electronic general-purpose computer (1946)

The task of taking a problem and mapping it onto the machine was complex, and usually took weeks. After the program was figured out on paper, the process of getting the program "into" ENIAC by manipulating its switches and cables took additional days. This was followed by a period of verification and debugging...

Notes

Media after software

How does one go from a "calculator" (ENIAC) to a machine that simulates other media?
- "if contemporary computation media imitates other media, how did this become possible? There was nothing in the original theoretical formulations of digital computers by Turing or Von Neumann about computers imitating other media such as books, photography, or film."

Notes

Alan Kay's Dynabook.

Q: Compare the ENIAC to Alto

Alto @ Xerox PARC (1973)

Metamedium: content is a "wide range of already-existing and not-yet-invented media"

"Kay wanted to turn computers into a personal dynamic media which could be used for learning, discovery, and artistic creation."
Established a computer as an umbrella, a platform for all existing expressive artistic media and he called the computer metamedia

Computer:
- Book/Text
- Film
- Drawing
- Music/Sound
- Photography

Notes

Computers as Simulators

Simulation of a book (create a magical paper)

Q: What does it mean to simulate another medium on the computer? What are the effects?

Notes

Metamedia: Computers as Simulators

Computer metamedia contains two types of media:

Simulations of prior physical media extended with new properties
Electronic-paper, photography, film, music
New computational media that have no physical precedents
Hypertext, interactive navigatable 3D spaces, interactive multimedia

Notes

Building Blocks

Different types of media data
- Text, vector images, image sequences, 3D models, geo-spatial data, audio
Techniques for generating, modifying, and viewing this data
- Media-specific techniques: specific to particular types of data
  - blurring/sharpening images, interpolating key frames (creating in-between cells in cell animation)
- Media-independent techniques:
  - cut, copy, & paste
  - search (text, image, face, file)
  - find (location aware)
  - information visualization

Q: What happens to the distinctions between mediums if we can use the same techniques across different media types?

Notes

Theory

Framework 1

Techniques specific to particular types of data (eg. blur)
Techniques that can work with digital data in general (eg. copy & paste)

Framework 2

Simulations of prior physical media extended with new properties
- They require a user to control them manually
New computational media that have no physical precedents
- Offer higher-level automation

Notes

There is Only Software

...all the new qualities of digital media are not situated inside the media objects. Rather, they all exist outside - as commands and techniques of media viewers, authoring software, animation compositing, and editing software, game engine software, wiki software and all other software species (p149)

a tif file opened with Preview, Photoshop, or even a sound editor?

"Properties of media" comes from software used to create, edit, present, and access this content. Not from the media objects

"Media becomes software"

Notes

Photoshop

Filter-> Stylize->Wind
High-pass, median, reduce noise, sharpen, and equalize
Filter -> Distort -> Wave
Layers

- What used to be an indivisible whole becomes a composite of separate parts.
- Closely related to 20c visual media techniques such as cel animation, multiple exposure, background projection, mattes in film makeing, and video keying and music technology (tracks).

Notes

Photoshop

Source code for Photoshop 1.0.1

Notes

Time sharing -> Multitasking

Notes

Ivan Sutherland : Sketchpad (1963) Demo

Pioneered the way for human-computer interaction. Influenced by Vannevar Bush's 'As We May Think'.

Notes

Doug Engelbart's Augmentation of Human Intellect project @ SRI (1968)

"The Mother of All Demos" is a name given retrospectively to Douglas Engelbart's December 9, 1968, computer demonstration at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco. The live demonstration featured the introduction of a complete computer hardware and software system called the oN-Line System or more commonly, NLS. The 90-minute presentation essentially demonstrated almost all the fundamental elements of modern personal computing: windows, hypertext, graphics, efficient navigation and command input, video conferencing, the computer mouse, word processing, dynamic file linking, revision control, and a collaborative real-time editor (collaborative work).
From Wikipedia

Notes

Software Across Medium

The idea of "medium" is important in art.

Media-specificity

Clement Greenberg's doctrine of media purity - flatness in painting.

Across medium

"-isms" in Art: classicism, romanticism, naturalism, impressionism, socialist realism, suprematism, cubism, surrealism…etc
- Novels of Emile Zola and paintings by Manet were aligned in their uncompromising "naturalist" depiction of ordinary people
Media after software
- Cut & Paste across mediums (text, image, sound, video...etc)

What is the difference between such earlier artistic work on establishing media correspondences and the software techniques that work across different media? { p121 - Efforts by modern artists to create parallels between mediums (eg. naturalism) were prescriptive and speculative. - In contrast, software imposes common media "properties" on any media it is applied to. Software also shapes our understanding of what media is in general. - media software interprets any media it touches and its interpretations always include certain statements } SUMMARY: in contrast to modern artistic programs to create different media that share the same principles, software media-independent techniques are ubiquitous and universalist. (cut and paste are built into all media editing software)