Digital Media
Lecture 1: Basic Concepts
Georgia Gwinnett College
School of Science and Technology
Dr. Jim Rowan
Refer to Supplemental text:
Telling the Story; New Technology, New Opportunities
The scroll. the book, the webpage; Differing affordances
Wikis are wonderful; Thank you Ward Cunningham!
First: Stuff about the Mac
MacStuff for the PC user
– Making a PDF by printing
– Forcing a program to quit
– Using Grab for screenshots
command/shift/4
– Using Preview to change file formats
– Using PhotoBooth to take pictures
– Using TextEdit to create text
Second: Stuff about the Wiki
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Ward Cunningham
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About the wiki
– Parts of the wiki page…
• Differs slightly from
browser to browser
Now: Telling the story
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The media used affects the way
the story is told
– Live performance
– Audio capture
– Video capture
– Written as a book
– Paint a picture
– Perform on stage
– Build into a computer game
New technology…
New opportunities
Alfred Hitchcock
– The Birds (bodega bay, CA)
– Old school… long, continuous takes
– Storyboard planning
Quentin Tarantino
– Pulp Fiction
– The speed of the cuts increases
violence of the scene
TV series 24
– With HD you can now have 4 screens
New technology
New affordances!
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Don Norman
– Cognitive scientist
– Affordances come from ecological
psychology
– Adapted affordances to design
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_psychology
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Norman
Affordances of media
The scroll
– Only one rule needed to read this:
• End of line? Go to the beginning of the
next line
The bound book
– More rules than the scroll:
• Same rule as scroll plus…
• Bottom of left page?
– Go to top of right page
• Bottom of right page?
– Turn page, go to top of left page.
– Page numbers had to be invented
– TOC was invented to access middle
Affordances of media
The bound book
– History is kept as “editions”
The electronic document
– History can exist as versions
The web based document
– No history kept
• Go back and everything is changed
• Did it change? Are you at the wrong spot?
• http://www.archive.org/index.php
– But remember that a wiki does!
More: Affordances of media
The bound book
-Index and TOC only
+You know when you are finished
Electronic document (like pdf) & the
web-based document?
+You can search the contents
Web-based document?
-You don’t know when you are finished
New technology adoption…
problems arise
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ
New technology adoption…
Follows a predictable path
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New form tries to act like the old
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Before Alan Kay
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Newsreels “copied” newspapers
C:\ is all you got
Alan Kay at XEROX PARC
–
–
–
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The desktop metaphor
visible
Put things in the world not head
The best way to predict the future…
New technology adoption…
Follows a predictable path…
then develops it’s own vocabulary
Tell the story at the same point in
time but from several different
views
– The Thomas Crown Affair - 1968
• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063688/
– TV was around how long before they
had multiple screens like the TV
series 24?
Interaction?
Interactive?
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That’s Human Computer Interaction
– Intermingling of computers,
engineering, human perception,
– psychology, affordance and human
performance
– Taught here as ITEC 4130
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From my list of ancient cultural
references:
– Check box… yes.
– Radio button?
In this class this semester…
– We are interested in media forms
found on and transmitted across the
Internet, how they work and how to
manipulate them
– We will build them as projects
• Audio
• Still images
– Bitmapped
– vector graphics
– Moving images
• video camera
• 3D animation
The maturing Internet…
new affordances?
new vocabulary?
In the ‘90s it was a source
– You would “look something up”
– Businesses justified the expense this
way
Now it’s a transmission medium
What’s next?
– Go bravely forth!
• It’s still the wild wild west out there!
• http://www.dollarshaveclub.com/
In Summary
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Media is changing
Internet is changing
Affecting us socially
Giving us new capabilities
– Mosquito ring tones?
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Challenging our views of legality
– Copyrights?
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Challenging our views of appropriate behavior
– Spam
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Media provides opportunities for new
interactions and new ways to communicate
This class is about media and how it works