What is New Media?

"You open your ears and your influenced" - Bob Dylan

Music is something that surrounds our lives. We listen to it for personal pleasure and it is featured in the background of our daily routines. For instance in shops, in the work place and in restaurants. Music is becoming more accessible to society. Where we once had to carry around a bulky CD walkman and a selection of CDs (and even earlier than that, the cassette walkman) we can now carry around one compact MP3 player or iPod which allows us to store a ridiculous amount of songs on it. Now with even more technological advancement we can buy a mobile phone with integrated MP3 player and camera. The most recent and most talked about product of this type is the new iPhone...

The style in which we purchase music has changed due to the changes in technology. We can now buy music on the internet as a file download rather than a CD, cassette or record that we can physically touch. In 2007, the band Radiohead allowed their fans decide how much they thought that their new album "In Rainbows" was worth to download.

I found this story on the BBC website:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7037194.stm

Music downloading from the internet has been a huge threat to music superstores such as HMV and Virgin. It is far easier to buy an album, or even a single song straight from the internet. You can do this in the comfort of your own home rather than visiting a shop and having to look through hundreds of CDs in search of the one that you want. Although this is the case I personally would prefer to buy a CD (rather than downloading an album) as I like CDs and would prefer to spend my money on the finished album with the album art. This is not the first time that the music superstores have faced a threat in the past ten years. Supermarkets and online shops began selling CDs and DVDs at cheaper prices than they could match.

It is very difficult to listen to music objectively; you always have views and feelings attached to it. For instance a song may contribute to the soundtrack of your life, a song you heard at a certain notable part of your life, a song that had some sort of relevance to where you were or what you were doing. This can make you love or hate a song. A song may have cultural connotations; a genre of music may be associated with something you like or something that you don't.

A "DJ" is an abbreviation for the term "Disc-Jockey." A DJ can be found playing music in clubs, bars and parties using CD's, records and more recently MP3 players. A "VJ," "Visuals-Jockey" or "Video-Jockey," is more of a performance artist who specialises in combining music and visual art. It creates a clubbing experience for the MTV generation, providing both stimulation for the ears and the eyes.

Paul Miller, also known as DJ Spooky is a well known VJ. His stage name "The Subliminal Kid" was taken from a character in "Nova Express" by William Burroughs.

"While prolific and highly regarded as a writer and conceptual artist, Paul D. Miller is probably most well known under the moniker of his "constructed persona as "DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid". Miller has remixed and recorded with a panoply of artists ranging from Metallica to Steve Reich to Killah Priest, and has performed in a uniquely wide variety of situations throughout the world."
From DJ Spooky's Myspace page http://www.myspace.com/djspooky

Here is a clip of DJ Spooky:

Remixing two songs together seems to be very popular at the moment. Perhaps this is part of post-modern music, recycling old songs to create a new sound. You can download some examples of this type of remixing at:

http://electrosound.eu/

"First it controlled her mind, then it destroyed her body... Long live the new flesh!"

Videodrome was released in the UK in 1983, directed by David Cronenberg. This film crosses the boundaries between the virtual and reality. The main character "Max Renn" finds a show called Videodrome which shows explicit scenes of sex and torture, which he believes will be a huge hit on his cable network. After watching Videodrome, Max begins to suffer from hallucinations. He thinks that the reason that he is having these hallucinations is that watching Videodrome has given him a tumour in his head. He goes on to find that it is not a tumor but infact another organ controlled by a company called Spectacular Optical. Spectacular Optical is able to change what he experiences on a daily basis by controlling this organ in his head. He is therefore living in a virtual world.

The themes of media saturation and the idea of "the new flesh" are prominent in this film. The idea of the new flesh is related to being lazy, engaging in activities such as watching too much television and gaining excessive flesh.

It is interesting that Max thinks that Videodrome will be a hit with the public as a lot of soaps on television are based upon the themes of violence and sex, although they have storylines to make it acceptable for people to watch them.

In a way humans are beginning to cross boundaries into the virtual. For instance social networking websites such as "Facebook" and "Myspace," websites that allow you to add your own videos such as "YouTube" and blog website are allowing people to put themselves onto the internet in a variety of mediums, almost immortalising themselves in the virtual world. Ordinary people can become celebrities over night by exposing themselves to the global online community. The perfect example of this is "the star wars kid." A teenage boy put a short video of himself wielding a pretend Star Wars lightsaber onto the internet and it became one of the most popular viral (meaning passed on from user to user) videos viewed. It was then edited by someone who watched it and added special effects.

Our society is living in an age where humans are dependant on technology. For instance a pair of glasses are a simple piece of technology which many people rely on to be able to see clearly.

The mobile phone has become an item that people carry with them for the majority of the day. This type of technology has been designed to save us time and allows us to communicate with others at anytime. For example we can travel as we talk on the phone. Technology has allowed human beings to work more efficiently. There is also another side of this idea of creating a more perfect human being...the cosmetic side.

Cosmetic surgery is based upon the idea of using science and technology to alter the body and face of a human being. Its aim is to create what society considers "the body beautiful."

The French performance artist Orlan is most famous for her work where she used plastic surgery as a medium. When Orlan was having her plastic surgery she wanted to perform, as operating theatres were once a place that people could go to watch surgery, hence the name theatre. One of her most famous pieces of work was called "The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan." During this project she took 15 of the most famously beautiful images of women (including the Mona Lisa) and super imposed them to create a timeless beauty. She then got surgeons to transform her into this image. During the surgery Orlan recited French poetry. In other operations she has used her own blood to draw self portraits of herself.

Orlan went on to have her nose made as big as it could possibly be.
She experiments with her body as she wants to be considered as living art. When she dies she is donating herself to the Louvre art gallery in Paris.

ORLAN
Born: 30/5/1947
Nationality: French
Her most famous and controversial works include:
*Documentary Study: The Head of Medusa
*The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan
*This Is My Body, This Is My Software
*The Kiss of the Artist

Orlan's Official Website
www.orlan.net

Stelarc is an Australian performance artist who believes that we cannot keep up with machines so he has created technology that allows machines to take control of his body. He created himself a robotic third arm and considers himself to be a "Post-Human engineer."

"Bodies are both Zombies and Cyborgs. We have never had a mind of our own and we often perform involuntarily conditioned and externally prompted. Ever since we evolved as hominids and developed bipedal locomotion, two limbs became manipulators and we constructed artefacts, instruments and machines. In other words we have always been coupled with technology. We have always been prosthetic bodies. We fear the involuntary and we are becoming increasingly automated and extended. But we fear what we have always been and what we have already become - Zombies and Cyborgs."
From the Official Stelarc Website (www.stelarc.va.com.au/arcx.html)

STELARC (born Stelios Arcadiou)
Born: 19/6/1946
Nationality: Greek Cypriot, lives in Australia
His most famous and controversial works include:
*Hanging himself in flesh hook suspension
*Allowing his body to be controlled remotely by electronic muscle stimulators connected to the internet
*Getting a cell-cultivated ear implanted into his left arm
*Creating and performing with a robotic third arm

Stelarc's Official Website
www.stelarc.va.com.au

This blog is an introduction to the concept of new media. It is an important idea to consider as we are living in a world where technology is constantly advancing and we seem to be living in a digital age.
So to begin, I thought that it may be useful to explain the term new media...

There are many different forms of media, but their purposes remain the same - to pass on information. To call something "new" there must have been a predecessor, in this case old media. Old media is a term that describes technology that is seen to be out of date and has been replaced by something more technologically advanced. This means that if something is labelled as new media it does not necessarily mean that it will be new media forever as science and technology is always developing products to become more advanced. It is just recently produced and perhaps an updated version of a product that has been around for a long time, it is not necessarily unique. An example of this type of convergence from old to new media is from vinyl to cassette to c.d and perhaps most recently transferring music files straight from computer to Mp3 player.

Communication through the media can sometimes lead to misunderstandings, as certain forms of media are unable to show all cultural signals that people use to communicate. For instance speaking on a telephone does not allow the person to show their body language. With an updated version of the telephone, the video phone, they are able to communicate through both speech and body language.