Brief Introduction
Digital media, Electronic Media, Multimedia, hybrid media, convergent media and Interactive Media are terms commonly used in relation to new media. New Media as an “art term” became popular in the mid 1990′s with a proliferation of interactive educational and entertainment CD-ROMs. Around 1995 the term became far more widely used through the Internet and a proliferation of Internet or web based art has flourished ever since. It is really only in the last 12 years that the term has taken on an advanced meaning and new media today encompasses amongst other things Internet art, Interactive art, Installation art, video games and virtual worlds, multimedia CD-ROMs, software development, hacktivism, electronic kiosks, mobile devices, interactive television, blogs and podcasting, the art of the re-mix in music.
Tonight’s reader includes audio from a 2008 release titled SOUND UNBOUND – Audio companion excerpts and allegories from the sub rosa archives (see Sound Unbound – The MIT Press), edited by Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky, with an introduction by Steve Reich.
New media & sound can be defined in a basic sense as sounds that have become computable; that is, they comprise simply another set of computer data and are a fusion of audio communications technologies with digital computers. It can also be defined as “things that cannot be seen”, such as a Wi-Fi connection, like radio or electricity, no one can see the Wi-Fi waves in the air and the Wi-Fi concept can be considered new media.
New media sound can be concept-based, or refer to a solid object and has a distinction between old media ( radio, analog broadcasting, tape recorders), new media (old media using the digital platform for production, storage or reception) and “new new media” (media that did not exist in any substantial way before the digital process).
Some examples of “new new sound media” could include:
• Auditory interfaces using Pure Data, Max/MSP/ Jitter (see Cycling 74)
• Interactive digitally processed sound installations (as opposed to kinetic) using technologies such as the I-Cube X used for live performance of dance, music, theater and other interactive applications using embedded sensors,
• Virtual instruments performing in multi-user domains such as Second Life (see the Avatar Orchestra Metaverse) and
• Creative uses of Internet radio such as the Pandora Radio Music Genome Project in the USA.
Old sound media are for example vinyl record albums and eight-track magnetic tapes. These media involve analog processes – ones which directly sample a continuous recording onto a physical medium, as opposed to new media which sample media as a numerical representation in binary code.
The distinction between new media and old media is often indistinct due to the homogeneity of the term, which can conflate media where computers are the transmission medium and media where digitisation occurs to facilitate a new way of distributing a pre-existing medium. Whereas the Internet clearly marks a departure in terms of user experience and possibility, transferring a betamax tape onto DVD involves a far less dramatic change as the content of the media remains either identical, or slightly enhanced through digital manipulation of – for example – noise reduction.
Sound & New Media particularly via the Internet has become a significant element in people’s everyday lives. It allows them to communicate, share, download and listen to audio and as a communication medium overcomes the gap between people from different countries to exchange or share media, creative opinions and ideas and voices with one another.
New Media & Sound Resource Links:
I-Cube X – Infusion Systems sensor technology
Cycling 74 New tools for media – Max/MSP
NIME – New Interfaces for Musical Expression
IBVA – Interactive Brainwave Visual Analyzer
Sound Travellers – Contemporary sound takes a roadtrip
Australian Sound Design Project
Neural.it :: new media art, electronic music, hacktivism
ICAD – International Conference on Auditory Display
Artspace – Sydney Artspace
MIT – Massachusetts institute of technology
ANAT – Australian Network for Art and Technology (based in Adelaide)
Banff – Canadian new media Arts Centre
ARS ELECTRONICA – International new media festival
ISEA – Inter Society for the Electronic Arts