5 Principles of New Media

Numerical Representation

                Due to all new media objects being composed of digital code, they are essentially numerical representations.  The key difference between old and new media is that new media is programmable.  ‘Materiality’ only comes by way of seeing the numbers and formulas that make up the new media.  In new media, the difference between visual and verbal is brought together by the fact that both are made up of sequences of code.  The text and images are both programmed and programmable.  An example of this would be the way the binary system works with 1’s and 0’s to create characters that we eventually are able to see on screen.

Modularity

                This element of new media is simply the way different aspects come together to create a full new media object.  For example, when you watch a clip on YouTube, you see different images, colors, sounds, texts that all come together to bring you a new media experience.  This film was brought together by combining a variety of layers and objects on screen to create the one ‘flat’ outcome that the viewer is presented with in the end.  Modularity is a fascinating concept of new media, essentially just summing up how all different pieces come together to make the puzzle a whole.

Automation

                Automation is the ability to interact with new media to create new things.  For example, when you are playing around on ‘Paint’ you have different tools that you can use to create countless different images.  It is this automation that makes us able to have so many different resources accessible today.  Within the program of paint, there are different tools that are made with templates and algorithms that the user can use to create different images and projects.  It is up to the user to develop skills with these different tools to create objects of their own, and based on their own personal skills and knowledge of the tools the user can create limitless quality with their work.

Variability

                New media brings a whole new twist on variability.  Because with old media, when something was be created exact copies would be made to distribute around.  Now with the new media, we can easily change and alter what has been created.  Because of this, new media can exist not only in the one version that it was originally created, but it can be altered and recreated to an indefinite number of new versions.  Another wonderful part of new media variability is the fact that their choices, which reflect their thoughts and desires come across as unique whereas old media would make it seem like the same thing was being duplicated without personalization and character.

Transcoding

                Not only is this the final of the five principles, but it is the most broad.  The easiest way to explain transcoding is the blend of computer and culture.  In the text it says transcoding is “traditional ways in which human culture modeled the world and the computer’s own means of representing it.”  The technical definition of transcoding is the translation of a new media object from one format to another.  An example of this would be from text to sound.  This can also be likened to the binary system.  The transformation of 1’s and 0’s transcode into countless different representations on screen.