New Media | Reading Response 1

After several attempts, I was successful in printing Lev Manovich's, The Language of New Media Prologue . The first paragraph gave me insight as to what it was going to take to read, and understand this article. A highlighter with margin notes.
The first word that i came across was Esperanto.
What?
Manovich used it to state how the "...computer fulfills the promise of cinema as a visual Esperanto..." The definition of this foreign word according to www.Dictionary.com is:
–noun
an artificial language invented in 1887 by L. L. Zamenhof (1859–1917), a Polish physician and philologist, and intended for international use. It is based on word roots common to the major European languages.

As for the actual prologue, I found it raised many interesting ideas about the nostalgic qualities of cinema compared to the ever-advancing computer technology. As for the "10 Key principles of New Media" I am not quite sure if I've nailed them directly on the head.

10 Key principles of New Media
1.In contrast to computer interface, Cinema is unique in that everyone can "understand it" but not everyone can "speak it" (It being the production of films.)

2.In contrast to viewing video through computers, directly viewing film is unique in that the point of view of the filmmaker is a key element/subject in creating the film.

3.Putting film on computers takes away from the possibilities of montage in the actual film reel. (What used to be manual labor in editing film, became a simple click of the mouse in creating effects.)

4. Film has the power to create false identities, whether it be in a person, place or object.

5. With the power of a mobile camera, the viewers are able to "obtain a close-up of any object..." [172]

6. Combining images in film allows us reject societies demand for a "universal equality of things".

7. Modernization allowed us to combine "different physical locations...within a single magazine spread of film newsreel; now they meet within a single electronic screen"[173-174] which is not necessarily negative because "Synthetic computer-generated imagery is not an inferior representation of our reality, but a realistic representation of a different reality."[202]

8.With New Media, "it is possible to turn "effects" into a meaningful artistic language." Which "new media designers and artists still have to learn-how to merge database and narrative into a new form." [243]

9. New media "aims to go beyond simple human navigation through physical space." [275-276]

10. "The loop gave birth not only to cinema but also to computer programming."

I found it really difficult to name just 10 Principles of New Media, but more or less found this prologue to be a tribute to film and cinema. It explained the beginning of film and how it has paved the way for computer technology in avant-garde film.

This article could be compared to Keith Hoyt's quote:
"You need to learn to walk before you can run"