Paik and Novak, Icons in the Multimedia World...

After the death of Nam June Paik, the father of multimedia, I realized how much he benifited the field of multimedia and as a multimedia student I should be thankful to him. He carried the concept of multimedia through his inventions through the decades to give new meanings and new functionalities to the field. His style is known for its dystopic vision to media that accompanied with the sense of humour and beauty. His work seems beautiful and objective, but a lot of criticism lies beneath for example in a lot of his work where he replaces the human with the machine. For example in his SYS Cop robots that look like traffic lights and replace the function of a human in that specific job. In Paik's work, there's a seductive element in the media that's why we have to have self concious and be aware of the capabilities of technology. He shows how each communication medium of each time period is affecting the consumer and the public views. Paik created things for the consumer that could have useful funcionality and make life easier. He made the Burn Calories Bike, Online Shopping, Web Catalogs, Magnet TV, Moon TV, and Buddha TV. The Buddha TV was very conteversial in the idea of suggsting how the media plays with our inner selves and makes us think how how it affects our inner selves in this digital world, that even the most sacred religious icon is affected by it. This concept is very similar to Novak's views of "self" and how the different concepts of the digital world makes us discover not only the space surrounding us, but also our inner selves. Also, Paik and Novak are similar in the idea that technology and multimedia will not only expand and advance, but it will also create different useful functions for the public to make their life easier. Paik dicussed media propoganda and the political issues in a humourous and funny approach. Also Novak emphasizes on concepts such as space, speed, and physical architecture. Novak offered a new perception to technology and the digital world similar to what Paik was doing all his life with the idea of liqiud architecture especially in his film "Electronic Super Highway" in the mid 90s. They both created different communities by joining different moving visuals. They both emphasized on the visuals vs text to convey a message they liked to reach their audience with. In conclusin, Paik's work is very ambigous. To me it seems very dadaist with all the humour and sarcasm that is joined with his futuristic style and thinking.

Related links:
http://www.paikstudios.com/
http://www.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/past_exhibitions/paik/paik_top.html
http://www.dashsys.com/products/paik.html
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://epublishingcorp.com/articlesRaichel/20thCentury%26contemp/NJProbotsm.jpg&imgrefurl=http://epublishingcorp.com/articlesRaichel/20thCentury%26contemp/NamJunePaik.htm&h=300&w=215&sz=25&tbnid=B1I5m1QqTqMJ:&tbnh=111&tbnw=79&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dnam%2Bjune%2Bpaik%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D&oi=imagesr&start=3

Marcos Novak's "Liquid Architectures"

Novak’s analyses and expectation about the technological changes in our digital world are very discrete and interesting to imagine happening. He introduces new ways of life with the aid of new digital characteristics that totally differ from what we have today. He describes the characteristics and the individual experience of the technologies that we have today and compare it to what we would be experiencing in the near future in terms of space, speed, and physical architecture. Novak offered a new perception to technology and the digital world. He offered the realization that technology is not only will expand and advance, but it will give new meanings to things that we have today and will redefine the concepts of time, space, and structure. Novak also emphasizes on the idea of "self" and how the different concepts of the digital world makes us discover not only the space surrounding us, but also our inner selves. By that we can know more about ourselves and start to appreciate all the effort that is being done to realize these digital concepts of space and time that will help our life to become easier. The idea of liquid architecture is really complicated and interesting to me, and with time and experience we will get used to it and will understand its functions and perceptions more thoroughly.

Related Links
http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/~marcos/Centrifuge_Site/MainFrameSet.html
http://www.artmuseum.net/w2vr/timeline/Novak.html
http://www.altx.com/interviews/marcos.novak.html

Char Davies, "Changing Space: Virtual Reality as an Arena of Embodied Being"

Char Davies explains thoroughly the concept of what people generally call “Virtual Reality.” He introduces the definition and the difference between virtual reality and the Telepresence. Although the general meaning seems to be the same between the two, they are actually different in their functions and their fields of importance. Virtual reality and Telepresence both involve humans interfering with the machine in a remote cyber space. In Davies piece Osmose, he makes the participants or what he calls the “immersants” to be in a 3D virtual reality and to make decisions and choices to discover their own selves and experience being alive in this cyber environment. After knowing about the Osmose, I look at virtual reality in a different way. Now I realized that Virtual reality is a whole field of artistic experimentation to make the individual discover their inner selves and existence. In Jeffery Shaw’s piece Configuring the Cave, the participant needs not just make choices in his/her mind, but it requires them to physically make decisions and changes in order for them to interact with the cyber environment. Immersants have to move a wooden body to be able to go forward with the experiment and to cause change. So, the concept of the Telepresence and Virtual Reality is present and almost the same in both experimentations, but the way each one performs and functions is different and that what makes multimedia a whole new field that’s open to adaptability and evolution, and makes it stands out depending on the distinct use of it by the operator or user.

Related Links
http://www.immersence.com/
http://collections.ic.gc.ca/waic/chdavi/chdavi_e.htm
http://cat.eciad.bc.ca/r_and_p/char_davies.html