Immediacy, Hypermediacy and Re-mediation

"Virtual reality is immersive, which means that it is a medium whose purpose is to disappear"(Bolter, 2000, PG. 22)

With this statement and the other text, I have gathered that this means that with users engaging in virtual reality, they have 'disappeared' from their daily lives and are now far more interacted with whatever virtual reality they have chosen. as each viewer of gamer has been given a 'identity' as such when playing as a character, they can become far more emerged in the game play. it gives me the understanding that virtual reality should come as close to real life as possible.

As far as being immersive goes, this story (http://kotaku.com/i-played-the-oculus-rift-for-five-hours-straight-987568701/999890560) tells of a man who was so immersed in reality game play that he had actually forgotten he was in his living room at the time. he said there was even a point when in the game, a character jumped into 'his' warms, he actually raised his arms to catch her. This gives me the impression that this virtual reality game play can be a far more endearing means of engaging yourself with game play.

"The transparent interface is one more manifestation of the need to deny the mediated character of digital technology altogether"(Bolter,2000,PG.24)

I understand that for many of these virtual reality gamers, they are using the computer as a way of surpassing other technologies to bring their view of the world into different realities. In the sense of computers graphics, they have came a long way , but also so has the graphics for Television and even photography. Are they saying that these computer generated graphics are going to surpass older technologies? Hopefully not, because these older technologies such as Television have certain gains with people to engage them with their own 'virtual reality'. people can be immersed with Television just as a gamer can be with the newest shoot-em-up game.



References - Bolter, 2000 -  Remediation: Understanding New Media 

The Language Of New Media : Transcoding.

 

Transcoding, "The most substantial consequence of media's computerization" (Manovich, 2002 : 63) described Manovich. Though, how does transcoding help us in defining New Media and what is Transcoding?

 

In The Language Of New Media by Manovich, he talks about what New media is by highlighting five different principles of new media. For me, it seemed that the most important principle was Transcoding.

Manovich explains in 'new media lingo', to "transcode something is to translate it into another format" (Manovich, 2002 : 64), such as the transformation from a text file into sound.

1/ This image demonstrates the process of transcoding.

Once an item or an object has been transcoded, it then becomes a different shape or object digitally even though it may appear the same visually to the user. In his book The language of New Media, Manovich suggests to divide/think about New Media in to two different layers, the 'culture layer' and the 'computer layer' (Manovich, 2002 : 63)

Manovich states:

"As hardware and software keep evolving and as the computer is used for new tasks and in new ways, this [computer] layer undergoes continuous transformation" (Manovich, 2002 : 64)

Manovich believes that both, the culture layer and the computer layer influence the development of one another. The way that the culture layer is organized is influenced by the organization of data in the computer layer. Culture layer is defined as the layer affecting "all cultural categories and concepts." The cultural layers are transcoded into a new form of new media and are processed through computers. The computer layer is the digital coding that the computer uses to translate into objects . Manovich uses the encyclopaedia as an example of cultural layer, which is something that the public is fairly familiar with and is often used. Other culture layers would include literary texts.

It is evident that the culture and computer layers work together/cohere to produce what we now call a 'computer culture' (Manovich, 2002 : 64) The culture layer is what the humans recognize and are familiar with whereas the computer layer is the digital coding used by the computer to translate it into objects or a language that we are familiar with.

 

 

2/ This diagram summarises the relationship

between culture layer and computer layer.

References:

• Manovich L. 2002, The Language Of New Media: What is New Media and The Principles Of New Media (43-66)

 

Images:

1. http://www.longtailvideo.com/support/bits-on-the-run/24279/understanding-our-transcoding/
2. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0953543811000749