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Issue 6. Medium Theory

Digital Marx: Manovich's New Language of Media

Author: Jan Van Looy
Published: February 2003

Abstract (E): review of Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2001.

The Language of New Media is a milestone in the history of digital studies. In 333 dense pages Lev Manovich casts his eye on digital film, new media, and computer culture at the end of the second millennium. Without restricting himself to one specific point of view, he manages to draw a clear line through a currently all but coherent field of research. In this review I will first have a look at Manovich's starting point and method. Next, I will sketch a number of interesting discussions in the book, and finally, I will develop two points of criticism.

Digital materialism

As a starting point Manovich makes an analysis of the nature of new media by identifying five so-called "principles of new media": numerical presentation, modularity, automation, variability and transcoding. Although they are all characteristics of a medium and therefore of a technology, they are by no means technical categories. The terms may have a root in technology and their referent may be technical, but with Manovich they have become cultural categories. Discrete numerical presentation is compared to semiotics and Henry Ford's factory logic. Modularity—or how new media objects have the same structure at different levels—is clarified by referring to the Web and desktop publishing software. The computer's power to automate tasks is divided in low and high-level automation. Low level automation involves the computation of simple repetitive tasks like applying a filter to an image or using a template for writing a report. High-level computation is what is often referred to as artificial intelligence and artificial life of which the most successful implementation thus far can probably be found in computer games. Variability is a somewhat obscurer principle designating the fact that a new media object can exist in different versions. Why this is so innovative is less clear. Finally, transcoding—or how information and media take the shape of the computer's internal organization—is seen as "the most substantial consequence of the computerization of media" (45).

Manovich nominates his overall method "digital materialism." He wants to start from the basics, i.e. the five principles sketched above and move upward "[r]ather than imposing some a priori theory from above" (10). He wants to build a theory of the present state of affairs as opposed to most writings on new media which are "full of speculation about the future" (10, see for example Landow 1997). Moreover, Manovich aims at providing a record of the first decades of new media production. Tracing new media back to what he considers its roots—i.e. computing and cinema (nominator for the sum of all available techniques for coding visual information)—he provides a genealogy of its technology. Furthermore, by speaking of a "language" of new media, Manovich does not refer to a particular theoretical framework. Rather he uses the term as an "umbrella" for "various conventions used by designers of new media objects to organize data and structure the user's experience" (7). But the most important methodological innovation is the manner in which technological matters and the humanities are reconciled. For the first time in the (albeit brief) history of new media theory Manovich succeeds in bridging the gap between the exact sciences and the arts.

A flat rectangular surface

Manovich approaches new media from the perspective of visual arts in general and cinema in particular. Not unexpectedly, his views on digital cinema are most refreshing. For example, he analyzes recent digital special effects not as a jump into the unknown, but as a return to an earlier stage in the history of the moving image, to the "pro-cinematic practices of the nineteenth century, when images were hand-painted and hand-animated" (295). The fact that cinema has become a recording medium was no accident, but no necessity either. In the twentieth century cinema delegated its manual techniques to animation and devoted itself to recording reality; it became an indexical medium. In the digital age these older techniques reclaimed their lost terrain. "Consequently, cinema can no longer be clearly distinguished from animation. It is no longer an indexical media technology but, rather, a subgenre of painting" (295). At certain points in the book, Manovich makes surprisingly concrete and bold claims. For example, the next generation of digital cinema (broadband or macrocinema) will add multiple windows to its language. Spatiality, which was suppressed in the twentieth century, will return in the twenty-first (324).

One important aspect of visual culture is the status of the screen creating two realities instead of one, two different spaces divided by a frame. This is the 'classical screen.' "It is a flat, rectangular surface. It is intended for frontal viewing—as opposed to a panorama for instance. It exists in our normal space, the space of our body, and acts as a window into another space. This other space, the space of representation, typically has a scale different from the scale of our normal space" (95). The 'dynamic screen' appeared around one hundred years ago when for the first time moving images could be displayed. This brings with it a certain 'viewing regime,' a relationship between the viewer and the screen whereby the image "strives for complete illusion and visual plenitude, while the viewer is asked to suspend disbelief and to identify with the image" (96). Finally, with radar technology, the third type of screen made its appearance: the 'screen of real time.' The image is still representational (classical) and changing over time (dynamic), but the screen can also adapt its image in real time and thus reflect changes in a referent. This is the screen we find in the video monitor, the computer screen, and the instrument display (99).

Drawing on theorists like Bazin, Bordwell, and Comolli, Manovich transposes and adapts cinema theory on realism to new media. In his account he distinguishes between technology and style. When speaking of technological development, the history of realism is one of addition (cf. Bolter & Grusin 1999). "Each new technological development (sound, panchromatic stock, color) points out to viewers just how "unrealistic" the previous image was and also reminds them that the present image, even though more realistic, will also be superseded in the future—thus constantly sustaining the state of disavowal" (186). In other words, the history of visual technology is asymptotic, an infinite progression towards a goal that can never be reached: reality itself. In terms of style, however, the history of realism is one of substitution. Different stylistic techniques, visual features, and cultural conventions come and go. There is no linear progression towards clarity and detail, although viewers may experience it that way. "So theorized, realistic effect in the cinema appears as a constant sum in an equation with a few variables that change historically and have equal weight" (187).

Dimensional representation

Another interesting discussion is that on the conception and status of space in new media. For this Manovich turns to art history, more specifically to painting, where a distinction can be found between a simulational and a representational tradition. Frescoes and mosaics—typical representatives of the simulational tradition—create an illusionary space often continuing the real bodily space like a large mirror or a frameless window. Thus they are inseparable from architecture. Renaissance painting, on the other hand, is prototypically representational. It is a typical instance of the screen (cf. supra) representing a different reality protected and separated from the bodily reality by a frame. Paintings are essentially mobile; they are separate from the wall and can be transported anywhere (which Manovich connects to capitalism). "[I]f in the simulation tradition, the spectator exists in a single coherent space—the physical space and the virtual space that continues it—in the representational tradition, the spectator has a double identity. She simultaneously exists in physical space and in the space of representation. This split of the subject is the tradeoff for the new mobility of the image as well as for the newly available possibility to represent any arbitrary space, rather than having to simulate the physical space where an image is located" (113). Belonging to these traditions are virtual reality and computer graphics respectively, the first trying to build a single space around the user and the second depicting a separate reality on a different scale.

Like screen, Manovich redefines the technical concept of database from a cultural perspective, which he identifies as a new cultural paradigm. "The novel, and subsequently cinema, privileged narrative as the key form of cultural expression of the modern age, the computer age introduces its correlate—the database" (218). Instead of sequentially ordering meaningful events, databases collect large amounts of data in a more or less structured fashion and in this structure each item assumes a position of equal significance as any other. Narrative is an instance of algorithm, which together with database constitutes the ontology of computerized representation. "The more complex the data structure of a computer program, the simpler the algorithm needs to be, and vice versa" (223). The database uses unordered enumeration, juxtaposition of items to represent the world. In contrast, a narrative creates a cause-and-effect path eliding the insignificant. "[D]atabase and narrative do not have the same status in computer culture. In the database/narrative pair, database is the unmarked term" (228).

Interactology

Finally, there are two points of criticism on The Language of New Media that require mentioning: one dealing with the scope of the book and the other with interactivity. The first and foremost problem is the fact that the scope of the book is simply too broad. Manovich wants to cover too much terrain in one book sometimes causing cognitive overhead for the reader and lack of depth for the academic. Many ideas are merely launched devoid of thorough development or scholarly accuracy. Theories and explanations of phenomena are presented next to one another without explaining their interrelationships or motivating their application in certain contexts or other. In order to be able to cover this broad a field, Manovich is forced to use terms as elusive as "new media", "object" and "digital cinema" to refer to his study material. He draws eclectically (Mark Tribe in the foreword xii) on theories as diverse as cinema studies, computer science, art history, literary theory, anthropology, sociology, and psychology. Finally, Manovich seems to have failed to choose between writing a book on cinema and one on new media. He decided to do both at once.

The second point of criticism is not on abundance, but on scarcity. Interactivity (see for example Ryan 2001) and cybertextuality (Espen Aarseth 1997), probably the most important characteristics of new media are hardly dealt with. The Language of New Media is grafted upon cinema and visual theory and it fails to describe interactivity without letting go these to a large extent inadequate theoretical frameworks. Interactivity is chiefly described as active viewing and interactive elements as image instruments (168). Cybertextuality  is designated using the notion of automation (the third principle of new media, cf. supra) which somehow does not satisfy. Ample consideration is devoted to computer games like Doom and Myst, but it is mainly their visual qualities and information structure that are discussed and not their interactivity or gameplay. In section four interactivity is discussed together with narrative and illusion. Although interesting, Manovich's discussion on the oscillation between states when viewing/using a new media object does not lay bare the basics of its being. "In contrast to interactive narratives, such as Wing Commander, Myst, Riven, or Bad Day on the Midway, that are based on temporal oscillation between two distinct states—noninteractive movie-like sequences and interactive game play—first-person shooters are based on the coexistence of the two states—which are also two states of the subject (perception and action) and two states of a screen (transparent and opaque)" (210). But perhaps this lack could be considered an invitation and a challenge for future research.

To conclude, I would like to refer to Mark Tribe's foreword again. On page four he describes The Language of New Media as "the first detailed and encompassing analysis of the visual aesthetics of new media." Despite the criticism in the previous paragraphs I would like to subscribe to this viewpoint. For the first time we have a realistic and theoretically sound description of the state of affairs in computer culture which may and should form the basis of a promising new field.

References

Aarseth, Espen J. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore, London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Bolter, Jay David & Grusin, Richard. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1999.

Landow, George P. Hypertext 2.0: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1997.

Ryan, Marie-Laure. Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media. Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 2001.

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