The Impact of Semiotics

This image’s denotative content features an extreme close up of a person’s left eye. It is shown half-closed with a car design imprinted on the top lid and a motorcycle below the bottom. The colors are mainly neutral tones, containing pale beige skin, a brown eye, and brown hairs. The wrinkles in the skin are heavily pronounced around the drooping lid.

Firstly, the connotation suggested by the image is one of impact. One immediately feels the intensity of the image by seeing just part of a face; emphasis is placed on the eye. When looking at the picture, one can see that as the lid would continue to close, the space between the car design and the motorcycle design would close, suggesting an imminent collision. The image represents that an accident will occur as soon as the eye closes.

The linguistic message solidifies the meaning of the image. The words: “sleepiness is stronger than you.” is written in caps in the lower left hand corner and the “Thai Health” logo and name with the words: “Don’t Drive. Sleepy Project” displayed in the lower left.

Together, the three messages create a complete objective. The image is a metaphor for the consequences of falling asleep while driving.

Memes!

Memes are defined as “a form of communication within a culture.” This gives us a general idea, but hardly helps us narrow it down to anything we recognize in our daily lives. Today, memes are most commonly used on the internet, and they convey meanings understood by the general public. These messages are usually comedic, providing the reader with cultural quips.

My first meme shows Conspiracy Keanu, used as a template for paranoid, analytical questions that suggest potential scenarios or outcomes. I paired this template with a joke about Manovich’s text to emphasize his dry and extensive writing style. Crying Lady is used for overdramatized “hopeless” situations. I felt this template served well in communicating my attempts to complete the Assembling Digital Media assignment.

What is New Media?

Chapter One of Lev Manovich’s The Language of New Media answers the question: “What is New Media?” He begins by explaining that new media is not merely called such due to its method of distribution and exhibition; the computer is also a tool in the production of texts, images, and sounds. Likening the computer to the invention of the printing press, Manovich stresses the way new technology fundamentally changes cultural communication. In the case of the computer, all stages of communication as well as all types of media are affected. The convergence of media and computers creates what we call “new media.”

 

Manovich uses 5 principles to help define new media:

Numerical Representation refers to the concept that new media is made up of digital codes. Depending on the complexity of the media, the makeup consists of continuous and/or discrete data. Through sampling and quantization, continuous data is digitized.

The principle dealing with the “fractal structure of new media” is Modularity. The example Manovich uses talks of the various elements that compose a movie, which can then be made into a larger one and still be referred to as a “movie.” Independent parts are put together to form new media. This is different from old media because these elements may be deleted or substituted very easily, and are still functional.

The first two principles help make the third possible. Automation is the departure from dependence on human intelligence for operational purposes. At the “low level,” automation involves creating new media from templates or simple algorithms, while “high level” uses a computer to a much more complex degree, going even so far as artificial intelligence.

Variability means that media has come so far as to give us multiple versions of elements, working very similarly to automation in the sense that it is often handling computer-generated versions. Some examples include storage in media databases, the creation of multiple interfaces, and program customization based on user information.

Finally, Transcoding is defined as translating something into another format. The cultural impact of new media is best exemplified by this principle.

 

While some of the rules of new media can also be shared with traits found in old media, Manovich goes into detail about what new media is not. He details the workings of cinema, the ambiguity of digitalization, and the broad sense in which “interactivity” is used. These points build upon the principles stated earlier in the chapter– which is, essentially, that the computer is changing everything.