Lecture2

The lecture was about digital nature and our digital environment.
All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, physiological, moral, ethical and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the massage. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible with out a knowledge of the way media works as environments („The medium is the massage: An inventory of effects“, Marshall McLuhan & Quentin Fiore, 1967).
That means that media touches every aspect of our life and also frames how we see the world. If we want to understand the world, we have to understand the medium by which the message is send to us.

Print Media is seen as static, fixed, linear and unidirectional. While old media is reeking of ink and celluloid, new media is fast, clean and interactive („60. innovators shaping our creative future“, Bruce Sterling).
Therefore the new digital media is defined by the words
-Fluid (structure and meaning)
-Malleable (author and audience = collaboration)
-Simultaneous media (Foucault – visibility)
-Accessible (power)

In "The language of new media" Bruce sterling explains it that way: A new media object is not something that is fixed once and for all, but something that can exist in different, potential infinite versions.

In this workshop we were introduced to 3 different softwares:

GIMP (http://www.gimp.org): GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages
INSCAPE (https://inkscape.org/en/): Inkscape is an open-source vector graphics editor similar to Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, Freehand, or Xara X. What sets Inkscape apart is its use of Scalable Vector Graphics, an open XML-based W3C standard, as the native format.
SCRIBBUS (http://www.scribus.net).

First we watched a short film "Powers of ten" by Charles and Ray Eames. It was about scaling from the picture of a man at a picnic to the universe and then back again right into his hand. It was really impressive, cause in the end you were able to see the structures of the universe in the zoom of his hand! It had a nice message: We are the universe.
After that we downloaded the programs and started to work and experiment with them. I scaled one picture in GIMP and played with colors, brightness, shapes and contrast. It was amazing to see how you can transform a normal picture to an abstract artwork that has suddenly a completely new character.

I only worked with Photoshop, Indesign and Illustrator so far, so it was really interesting to use new programs that have similar features. The fact that they are all free and open source is a very user friendly and innovative concept!