2. HISTORICAL DEFINITION #1:
MCLUHAN (1960S)
New Media = "extensions" of our
human senses, bodies and minds,
which will form large media
ecologies (McLuhan, 1964).
These ecologies would become
Mediated Public Spheres
enabled the public to become
actors of social change.
He believed that the wide
adoption of these new media McLuhan introduced a different way of
thinking about media design
would participate in major Traditional visual culture: media are
changes in how “man” viewed the objects that are consumed as cultural
world and would eventually lead artifacts
humans to find a new type of New Media Culture: media extends
spirituality based on a human activities far beyond creative
industries. New Media became about
technological collective facilitating mediated social and cultural
consciousness (Teall and innovations of makers, which included the
Carpenter, 2001). public.
3. POPULAR DEFINITION: 80’S AND 90’S
1980s: ”digital revolution” and the 90s “digital
convergence”: reshaping of contemporary
experiences through the mass introduction of
computers.
The digitization of mass media raised questions
about intellectual property, competition and
monopolies, which required new ways of
looking at mass media production.
The popular definition of “new media” became
synonymous to emerging digital mass media.
4. NEW MEDIA BECOMES AT THE CROSS ROADS
OF THREE DISTINCT INDUSTRIAL CONTEXTS
5. NM BECOMES A SPECIFIC MOMENT
IN A MEDIA LIFE CYCLE
6. NEW MEDIA IS UNDERSTOOD AS A
PERSPECTIVE
All media was once a new media
photography --> in relation to Painting
film --> photo and theater
video --> film
computing
Nm = a phase of evolution where an innovation
becomes a medium
nm practices= diverse contexts that all celebrate
experimenting with innovations.
7. EARLY 2000S
definition moves away from ICT to encompass
other technologies (robotics, biotech, etc)
new media art standard practice is “to take up the
products of the technology industries (...) and apply
them to its own diverse ends, in a cultural domain.
“ (Whitelaw, 2004)
13. NEW MEDIA CHARACTERISTICS
Technologies that
Facilitate Communication/Information
Amongst themselves
With humans
Amongst Humans
Extend/mediate human experiences via
hybrid (virtual/physical/mobile/biological)
spaces.
15. WHAT IS NEW MEDIA?
New media is a cultural and social
innovation framework that is technology
independent
100 years ago: film was new media
20 years ago: the Internet and digital processes
were new media
Today: Extension of life and experiences via
media ecologies
16. New Media Extend synthetic, human and hybrid social and cultural
life
