Twitter Name: @Stansberry_DTCV
Hi class my name is Christopher Stansberry, I’m in my second semester as a Freshman here at WSUV and I plan on majoring the business major Management and Operations. I graduated from Heritage and did running start at Clark my senior year. I wish everyone the best in this course.
In the book “The Language of New Media” Lev Manovich sets specific guidelines he believes are the outline or definition of new media objects using five key aspects. These factors include the presence of numerical representation, modularity, automation, variability. and transcoding. Broken down, Manovich means all new media can be “composed of digital code” (27), as well as “assembled into larger-scale objects [while] continuing to maintain their separate identities” (30). Also new media has allowed for “human intentionality [to] be removed from the creative process” (32) in addition to the ability to “give rise to many different versions” (36). Since 2001 there have been several new media objects arise that are still subject to Manovich’s definition including the social networking site Instagram. Instagram, mainly used on mobile devices as a application, is a place where people can share pictures often with chosen editing filters taken from there devices for everyone to enjoy in a news feed format that allows users following you the ability to ‘favorite’ or ‘comment’ your pictures. The app is essentially software that has been created by programmers using a interpreting language which can be boiled down to binary code, portraying the new media object Instagram as being numerically represented. Modularity is also shown in this website since the collection of functions and programs combined to create the application can separately be edited to fix bugs, make improvements, or change small things such as the color of the favorite or like buttons. When you upload a picture to Instagram you have the option of editing the photo with a number of options such as preset filters, zooming, cropping, focusing, and even borders. This is an obvious example of automation. Automation is set in place to make it easier for the next user, and the editing features on Instagram make it so anyone can be a photographer. Variability is displayed because the application could exist in infinite forms. The code could be changed so many ways that there is ultimately a never ending possibility of ways the app could appear or be used. According to Manovich, “in new media lingo, to ‘transcode’ something is to translate it into another format” (47). Instagram has computerized photography and made it solely digital. Instead of having photos developed and scanned into a computer for others to enjoy online, you can now take the picture and share it instantly from Instagram, which has created a whole new culture and terminology. When users speak of Instagram you’ll often hear of how many favorites they got on their picture, or how there ‘feed’ is cluttered with pictures of this or that, in addition to terms like “photo map”, “profile pic” or “avi”. Instagram is one of many revolutionary new media objects that continue to shape the definition of new media.