FMS 161 Project 1 - Christian Cieri

Here's a link to my first project:

https://soundcloud.com/christian-joseph-michael-cieri/fms-161-train-station-good-bye-ccieri2

Julia On Media response

What stood out most to me from GH Hovagimyan’s essay is the line in the final paragraph. Hovagimyan notes, “In generative art or music or theater, computer algorithms create or manifest the forms of art. In this way the art is ever changing.”  I want to consider this quote in relation to glitch art. Glitch art is when an artist alters the code on a image or sound bite, to create a distortion or abstraction of the original piece. Often times the artist has little control over how the glitch affects the piece art. I think glitch art could be classified under Hovagimyan’s term “generative art” because the content that is being created in glitch art is so randomized and reliant on the computer algorithms. We might also consider laptop orchestras as an example of generative music.  In which artists/musicians gather and generate music using just their laptop. The results are often random and based on the reliability of the devices used.  Both of these could fit into what Hovagimyan refers to as the “‘Post Media’ information environment” because the art is ever changing within these manifested forms the message is less communicative. Hovagimyan’s discussion of various media helped to establish what has preceded this Post Media age, but his failure to address examples of what he considers Post Media lessened his overall essay. 

On **** Media by G.H. Hovagimyan

 Personally, I found G.H. Hovagimyan’s article On **** Media to be undeveloped and lacking a well sort out thesis. Though he generated some good ideas and explanations on this shift into a “Post Media” era, I believe the point he was trying to convey was very vague and flat. His thoughts were not formulated properly and so they didn’t really convince me that the world we are living in today is shifting into “Post Media” times.

The thing that irritated me the most about Hovagimyan’s article and possibly the underlying reason as to why I found it to be undeveloped is the fact that in the second line of his article there is an error. A day before I read this article, I read a passage by W.J.T. Mitchell entitled Addressing Media that mentions Marshall McLuhan and his thesis, “The medium is in the message.” I had also written a two-page response paper on this idea and so upon reading the second line of Hovagimyan’s article, I immediately recognized it. However, by the time I finished reading the third line I realized something was wrong. I immediately pulled out my reading from my Introduction to Media Studies class and checked if my hypothesis was correct, and it was. G.H. Hovagimyan spelt McLuhan’s name incorrectly by adding an extra C to his name. Realizing this fact, I immediately lost faith that anything Hovagimyan would argue in the reminder of his paper would be correct or worth believing. Not only did he misspell the name one of the greatest contributors to Media Studies and gave his quote a random guy, but he was also deceiving his readers who were unaware of who McLuhan was.

However, despite the fact that Hovagimyan lost my trust I must admit that he did have some decent points. In the case of painting and photography it is true that there is a shift into the “Post Media” era with cameras now having the ability to capture images with such precision that it feels realistic. The act of capturing an image no longer requires great effort (sitting down for hours to get a portrait painted), but can be done in a matter of seconds. This makes the distribution of art easier and more accessible but as Hovagimyan mentions this is the reason why we are in a “Post Media” era. Machines are now capturing the art form that humans have been doing for years and there is no turning back from this advancement. Sooner or later in this “Post Media” era, the need for human interaction will be no longer necessary, for with the right programs and developments these technologies will be able to run on their own.

This comparison between painting and photography along with other good points forced us to think about the future and where technology will lead us. Nonetheless, as I mentioned before, if Hovagimyan expanded on his examples and demonstrated how they will impact this shift into the “Post Media”, his point would have been clearer and further developed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEzuWWmn9xI

-Danielle Rennalls

XR: Response to On Media

         Hovagimyan discusses the changing progress throughout 20^th century in the article, ans there is several points he brings up caught my attention. Hovagimyan writes, “mesaning has more to do with language and the evolving nature of linguistic forms” (117). The meaning of a piece of art work half depends on the the intention of the creator, half is interpreted by the people who look at it. Individual communicate with the creator, and then perceive the art in their own different ways. For example, when look at a war documentary photo, we first directly focus on explicit information, then we try to decode the symbolic language, searching for its implicit meaning, such as the light is dark, perhaps it promotes a gloomy atmospheric mood, or perhaps simply during the war, the air is polluted. Thus, art has been entitle with band new meaning when it is represented and shared to the public. Art is like a language, talk to and gain feedback from the audience. Therefore, I disagree with Benjamin’s opinion on art loses value when it is reproduced, instead, I believe its value multiplied when is presented to the crowds.          Hovagimyan further explores film language and I particularly feel connected to his statement of the relationship between image, film medium, photography and multimedia.  Film incorporates a series of media elements, such as image, sound, painting and so on, at the meanwhile, it has to deal with the time, how to construct a film plot within a limit of time, what to delete and what to keep, how to ensure that the audience could understand the filmic language. The film language is a process of extraction of images from the daily life. It forms the basis of a film, also it offers the secure base for further performing art forms, such as drama. 

        Author mentions the cross media and hybrid media, which is very familiar to me. I took Early Cinema in my freshman year, and it is a determining point for me to learn film media. During every class, professor Carli provided us a screening of silent film, and professor himself played the background music on a piano. This experience is memorable, that for the first time, I feel the history of the film reappears in front of me. And the incredible cross media, extends from the two dimensional screen. During the screening, audience combine the information comes from two sources and establish communication with both of them. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dha7ggBu_Jo

Christian Cieri - On ***** Media

Hovagimyan’s article entitled “On ***** Media” brings up some rather interesting points on what exactly Digital and New Media are, by highlighting trends in media history, both recent and older. The first point made reflects on paintings versus photography, and what occurred to painting as photography developed. According to the article, as photography came to the forefront of visually documenting events in history, painting turned to become more abstract, and thus more “art” then documenting. This makes sense, as photographs can capture a realistic image that the human hand will just never be able to successfully reproduce on a canvas, or at least not with the ease that cameras can. So naturally painting became more of a leisurely pastime, and focused more on art then trying to be realistic.

In the end, Hovagimyan mentions that society is entering into an era of generative art, where computer algorithms create art so that it is always changing and never the same, thus avoiding copies and duplicates from occurring. But I don’t agree with this statement; our society is one that is so focused on documenting and remembering the past, and this is seen within media itself. Though paintings and photographs are “art” forms, they also document as they visually capture a specific moment of history and are easily duplicated. In fact, there is not art medium that cannot be somehow duplicated in one form or another. I do not believe that society will ever create medium that cannot be duplicated; there will always be a master copy somewhere, and if people are willing to buy replicas, they will be sold.

While reading the article, I found the section on randomly creating digital art most impressive, as I had a difficult time wrapping my head around art that is not reproduced on a mass scale. The video I am sharing is from YouTube and is about a random art generator program that produces a set image, revealing certain parts in random. While this is not exactly what Hovagumyan is describing, I think it is an interesting bridge between the reproduced (the image) and the non reproduced (the patterns).

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PSU3qNXe-Y

On Media Response

I’m going to deconstruct Hovagimyan’s argument for my own sake. It seems as if he agrees with McCluhan’s concept that “The Medium is the Message” historically, but believes that art no longer relies on its medium to gain meaning or to portray information. In other words, “Post Media” has to do with the idea that—due perhaps to technology—medium has become an irrelevant aspect of an art piece when it comes to the message it is trying to express. Hovagimyan uses the introduction of photography as an example, stating that when distribution of war photographs began, artists stopped painting war scenes. Following the logic of the argument, it appears that this might be because the medium of photography did a better job of conveying the message and “truth” of war than the medium of painting, rendering painting relatively useless for war information distribution.

Another clue that I used to identify Hovagimyan’s main point is the fact that he says in his concluding paragraph that “computer algorithms create or manifest the forms of art.” The key word here is “forms.” I’m not entirely sure where this concept of computer algorithms came from and why he felt it appropriate to just throw a term like that in an article about art in his last paragraph without an sufficient explanation. But anyways, back to the significance of using the word form: by stating that computers are generating the forms of art, not just the art work itself, he is further suggesting that the form in which a piece of art takes is irrelevant and merely computer generated. Put simply, we no longer rely on medium to receive information. 

I’m not sure any of this made sense. If this is actually what he is arguing, then I find this very compelling. However, Hovagimyan’s article was so scattered that I struggled to really identify a cohesive argument at all.

On Media Yukun Liu

The statement that Hovagimya gave is “at the start of the 20^th century mechanical recording and reproduction media were beginning to change the way in which societies communicated and formed their tribal mythos.” I disagree with him. I would say media is more like a system and an environment. Media doesn’t change us more than we change media. For example, the example Hovagimya gave us, “painting moved increasingly towards abstraction upon the arrival of the photographic process” is not that convincing. With the arrival of new technologies, it’s a common thing that people start using new things and throw away old things. I don’t consider it as what media change us, it’s more like we find an easier way to do something and start using the easier way. Mechanical recording and reproduction media can’t replace painting even in non-abstraction area at all because certain people are still using painting as a medium to show their ideas. It’s not a simple thing to just replace an important media with new technologies. For example, people are still using films even if digital is a better media for most of us.

The other thing caught my eyes is the post media part in the conclusion. “In generative art or music or theater, computer algorithms create or manifest the forms of art.” I agree with him. Computer algorithms can produce things that people can’t produce and they can understand things people can’t understand. These make post media unique and important. As he mentioned in the end, “in this way the art is ever changing. There is no master and subsequent copies. There is only dynamic iterations of form.” These are the features of post media. Moreover, these make post media as an independent media, which we are moving into now.

This is the video I found:

http://ubumexico.centro.org.mx/video/Murata_Takeshi_Silver_2006.mp4