Old Forms New Conventions

View from the Window at Le Gras, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce

To quote Hamlet on the Holodeck:

"...the inevitable process of moving away from the formats of older media and toward new conventions in order to satisfy the desires aroused by the digital environment."

How long does it take for people to start using the peculiarities of a new medium creatively?

Digital media is so new and moves so fast that we cannot even begin to recognize the difference with what has come before, because of the fact that digital media is itself an eternally shifting and morphing media.

When photography came into being all photographers could do to cope with such technology was to borrow from the portrait or landscape painting of their time. It took visionaries like Christian Schad, Man Ray, and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, almost a hundred years since Nicéphore Niépce captured the view from his attic in 1826 to break away from the convention of the borrowed and explore the potential of the medium, but alas, it was short lived because the masses demanded their likeness more than that which they could not understand.

Then came film, which borrowed the narrative of theater (I am simplifying of course) and continued with the tradition of recording "reality" (that word...) while in fact it was, and always has been a mere optical trick and a little more that is hidden from the viewer

So now, when digital media arrives, we seem to be unable to grasp the potential, and how could we, if we look to the past instead of the future? Why does SL or any other VR looks as pedestrian as a mall, a battlefield, an airport, a castle, a house? What is it that we need that prevents us to discover the new?

The capability of Machinima was unprecedented in the world of Media, until the advent of FPS games. In a way it is similar to the advent of 8mm and then Super8 in the 60's. Lot's of people started making movies and that led to some interesting careers since some of those people are now known filmmakers.

One problem, that can be seen as an advantage as well as a step backward is that precisely the fact that production can be made on the cheap (or "free) and that anybody can swing a "camera" around makes for very poor end product. Machinima, despite its potential as a cheap story-telling medium or prototyping tool, an animatic of sorts (and I am interested in those aspects myself I should say), is that it also misses the point and becomes comfortable with emulating the rich uncle. Understandable though, since it lives and has grown precisely in that protected environment where the fascination with the new becomes very quickly a reflection of the old.

There is the chance of being one of those pioneers who dared to see outside of the box, if only for a short window of opportunity before it fossilizes into the same old crap dominated by corporations and transnationals to keep you under their control.

I think it is very exciting possibility to be one of those pioneers.