The following text was originally published during the month of August, 2009 as part of Drain‘s Cold issue. The journal is a refereed online journal published bi-annually. The text is republished in full on Remix Theory with permission. Drain’s copyright agreement allows for 25% of the essay to be reblogged or reposted on other sites with proper citation and linkage to the journal at http://www.drainmag.com/. I ask that their agreement be respected by the online community.
In 1964 Marshal McLuhan published his essay “Media Hot and Cold,” in one of his most influential books, Understanding Media.[1] The essay considers the concepts of hot and cold as metaphors to define how people before and during the sixties related to the ongoing development of media, not only in Canada and the United States but also throughout the world.[2] Since the sixties, the terms hot and cold have become constant points of reference in media studies. However, these principles, as defined by McLuhan, have changed since he first introduced them. What follows is a reflection on such changes during the development of media in 2009.
McLuhan is quick to note that media is defined according to context. His essay begins with a citation of “The Rise of the Waltz” by Curt Sachsk, which he uses to explain the social construction behind hot and cold media. He argues that the Waltz during the eighteenth century was considered hot, and that this fact might be overlooked by people who lived in the century of Jazz (McLuhan’s own time period). Even though McLuhan does not follow up on this observation, his implicit statement is that how hot and cold are perceived in the twentieth century is different from the eighteenth. Because of this implication, his essay is best read historically. This interpretation makes the reader aware of how considering a particular medium as hot or cold is a social act, informed by the politics of culture. McLuhan’s first example demonstrates that, while media may become hot or cold, or be hot at one time and cold at another, according to context, the terms, themselves, are not questioned, but rather taken as monolithic points of reference. To make sense of this point, McLuhan’s concepts must be defined.
Detail of the exhibition “Diseñar a diario (Design Day to Day)” on view for the month of August, 2009 at Cultural Center of Spain’s Gallery. Design by local artists.
One of two workshops with participants of Premio Arte Joven, which took place at the Cultural Center of Spain during August 24-29, 2009.
In January of 2009 I wrote two brief entries, “On Content and Form: 2009 Forecast” and “Further Reflections on Content and Form in 2009,” which evaluated the difficulty that developers are encountering with the constant change of delivery devices. Since then, there appears to be more interest in having constant access to information than on the devices themselves. I also noted the possibility that consumers may develop fetishes for hybrid devices like the iPhone.
Yet, as we move on to the second half of 2009, the actual subject of analysis is becoming more apparent: the screen. It is the aesthetics of the screen, a vessel of simulation, of make believe, of simulacra proper that is turning out to be the recurring device in all media. From the early days of film on to television, and currently the computer and its supplementary devices, including GPS systems, text readers such as the kindle, portable DVD players, and of course the iPhone, the screen has played a defining role in the ongoing expansion of global communication.
The screen’s never-ending evolution, then, is what needs to be considered carefully in order to understand how media is changing with the growth of network culture. The challenge in this acknowledgment is that our familiar window for entertainment and communication, while always a comfortable rectangular format of malleable dimensions, has no actual stable material form; it keeps shifting at an ever increasing speed; and because of media’s dependency on the screen, developers need to change their approach to product development. This also means that content providers need to rethink their relation to media delivery, whether this be print, or online. (more…)
The pervasiveness of the screen in mobile media is pushing convergence development in two particular ways worth noting. The first, how image and text are increasingly treated the same by users, is actually a stepping stone to the second, which is how the convergence (combination) of all media is designed not only to provide the greatest access to as much information as possible, but also to negotiate which material is likely to be noticed first.
In relation to this, NPR recently released an iPhone widget that enables users to download a podcast or listen to live streaming. This particular widget is designed to complement multitasking, as NPR’s Digital SVP & GM Kinsey Wilson explains to Paid Content:
The small television in the kitchen comes to mind when reading Wilson’s explanation: people for the most part listen to the news while getting ready to leave for work in the early morning, or in the evening while preparing dinner. From time to time, when something of interest comes up, people are likely to look up and pay attention to the screen. In this case, the television is used as a radio with visual options. However, as it is obvious, the Television was not initially designed for this function.
Note: Here is an interesting list of resources for remixing already produced material for personal blogs and websites.
Nothing makes a blog post more eye-catching than a great header image, but not all publishers have artistic talent. And even accomplished digital creatives often crave some found material to start from or work with in a project. Luckily for all of the above, sources abound for finding a compelling photo to grab your readers’ eyes and draw them in, or to locate fresh multimedia to remix.
Che Guevara got some attention at the beginning of 2009 with Steven Soderberg’s film Che, starring Benicio del Toro. More recently, Che is the subject of a book titled, Che’s Afterlife, by Michael Casey. The book is reviewed by the New York Times as a detailed account of Che’s famous image taken by Alberto Díaz Gutiérrez, known professionally as Korda. The story goes that Korda took the photograph during a funeral in Cuba. Korda’s creativity was not only in knowing when to take the photograph, which is for what most photographers are praised, but also in knowing how to crop it. To quote directly from the New York Times:
“By radically cropping the shot, snipping out a palm tree and the profile of another man, Korda gave the portrait an ageless quality, divorced from the specifics of time and place.”
This divorce is what Walter Benjamin noted in the first half of the twenty century in his well-known essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” An essay that many cultural critics have cited and will probably cite, because Benjamin foresaw many of the elements that today inform media culture in all areas of reproduction. (more…)
Robert Scoble spent the last week giving his new Amazon Kindle ebook reader a test drive, reading a couple of books and declaring the progeny of Jeff Bezos a failure. He thinks the usability and user interface suck and it lack features such as a touch screen, social networking and the capability to send electronic goods to others. He wants version 3.0 of the device.
David Pogue of the New York Times is far kinder to the Kindle.
So if the Kindle isn’t a home run, it’s at least an exciting triple. It gets the important things right: the reading experience, the ruggedness, the super-simple software setup. And that wireless instant download — wow.
Even though most people will prefer the feel, the cost and the simplicity of a paper book, the Kindle is by far the most successful stab yet at taking reading material into the digital age.
Amazon.com introduced its electronic book reader today at a packed event in New York. Unlike other products in this area, Amazon’s $399 Kindle is designed to be used without ever connecting to a computer. Instead it has a wireless Internet connection that lets users browse Amazon’s online store on the device and download a book in less than a minute.
Amazon is trying to do for books what Apple has done for music. It has linked its device tightly to its own online bookstore, just as the iTunes music store is tied into the iPod. Amazon has 90,000 titles for sale at launch, including books from all major publishers.
Best sellers and new releases will cost $9.99. That represents a substantial savings off of Amazon’s already discounted prices. Amazon is currently selling hardcover bestsellers for roughly $13 to $20 and trade paperbacks for $8 to $11.
From a short talk presented at the AIGA FutureHistory conference (Chicago, October 16-17, 2004).
If we were to take a snapshot of writing and thinking about graphic design in North America right now—and here I mean the kind of graphic design “criticism,†“journalism†or “history†that we find in a wealth of books, journals, magazines, edited collections, conference papers, discussions and weblogs—I think we would find that there are several recurrent themes that can, in some senses, be considered as characteristic (if not quite definitive) of this outpouring; this “discourse.†[1]
When designers and invested observers pause to reflect on the state of this profession—or “practice,†as some would have it—the kind of hand-wringing that ensues has much to do with an abiding sense that: (a) graphic design is important, goddamn it; (b) as hard as “they†try, “they†don’t understand who we are and what we do; and (c) if only our importance was recognized by the wider world—for the right reasons, of course—then everyone would somehow be better off. Alas, this insularity is not so much imposed as self-inflicted.
You wax faux-nostalgic about the heyday of early robo-Kraut-rock, your early signed pressing of Radio-Activity is rivaled only by your original Neu! Super / Neuschnee 7-inch, and you got a belly laugh at that one scene about the record the nihilists once cut in The Big Lebowski. Kraftwerk fans, today is your lucky day. The original one-of-a-kind prototype vocoder Kraftwerk pictured on the rear cover art of and used to record “Ananas Symphonie” and “Kristallo” on their 1973 release Ralf & Florian. As of the time of this writing it’s already up to five grand, so if you want yourself an extremely expensive piece of history for electronics and electronic music, you’d better get a move on, schnell.
Note: the above text was a comment on the following post from Music Thing:
26.6.06 by Tom Whitwell
Lots of people say things like ‘RARE legendary’ in eBay auctions for DX7s and Casio VL-Tones, but eBay item #300001522431 doesn’t go for hype, just saying “prototype VOCODER of german 70´s Electronic Pioneers”. What’s on offer is Ralf & Florian’s vocoder, built to order by a local electronics company, and later used on the intro to ‘Autobahn’. No bids so far at $3,800, with ten days to go. (Thanks, Kaden)
UPDATE: It went for $12,500!
