Interface
I’m still working through thoughts about the relationship between visual art and narrative, but I want to record some observations about the present and future of interfaces, music, and paintings occasioned by Brian Eno’s 77 Million Paintings (now in its second edition) and an Edward Hopper retrospective at the National Gallery of Art. Oddly enough, both involve music—and unusual interfaces. But the central concerns of these two exhibitions are different, as is the web presence used to market them. I’ve written briefly about Eno before, but the Hopper thing is relatively new to me.
To begin, Brian Eno is alive. He can speak for himself, and does so on YouTube, in galleries, and even in Second Life. Hopper’s dead. He won’t be getting any more paychecks from his work. Eno’s monetization scheme is pretty traditional, i.e. limited editions:
My copy came from the first edition (just barely, from the numbers on the case). The normal concept of a “limited” edition is that the price is driven by scarcity—but Eno does not use any sort of DRM to keep you from installing the software on multiple computers. The success of the concept (into a second edition) allows him to improve or alter the software for newer machines, to expand the book (I can’t tell for sure, but the Amazon page suggests that the second edition is better than the first) and generally to surpass the original. Not to mention the fact that the software is meant to generate a nearly unlimited number of original works of art (hence the title, of course). Why the heck is the software’s package attached to the ploy of a “limited” edition? Seems absolutely the conceptual opposite of the package’s contents.
Op-ed:
For the hearing-impaired, web’s multimedia revolution represents an old battle that shouldn’t have to be fought again
. . .Why does this matter? Ideally, it wouldn’t if web media were merely a new platform for distributing the same content found elsewhere. However, more and more of this audio and video is being provided as web-only content: “webisodes” of popular programs, exclusive webcasts of news broadcasts and reports, even traditional newspapers are getting into the multi-media game on-line. There is also new media and citizen journalism sites such as The Daily Mole, TheUpTake, and even YouTube, which promise to cover stories and perspectives that have been neglected or ignored by traditional media outlets in the past.
While the frustration of not being provided similar options to participate in and enjoy the same entertainment and cultural opportunities is significant, it is the potential lack of accessibility to the expanding news and information sources that concerns me the most, as that impacts the ability of the deaf and hard of hearing to be informed citizens on an equal footing with others. This a problem that I fear will only get worse if, as often predicted, we are in the midst of a paradigm shift away from traditional print and broadcast to the internet.
David Galitz
*It is shameful that the hearing impaired are denied the pleasure of the Daily Mole's weatherman:
Becoming Authority
When I first taught first year writing in Arkansas, I took a cue from my literature background and required the students to write a bibliographic essay in order to establish the distinction between research and opinion. I expressly forbade offering excessive opinion about their sources; I wanted them to place the sources into some relationship with one another. The results were mixed. I got a lot of opinions.
I changed my approach just a bit this time. One of my grad instructors in Minnesota last year required an annotated bibliography and I was confused—I wrote a bibliographic essay instead, and was forced to revise it to fit the alternate form. It dawned on me that an annotated bibliography is a completely different animal that is noticeably easier to write than a bibliographic essay. No relationships are required; an annotated bibliography is simply a string of summaries. When we organize things, opinions seem to be the requisite glue to hold things together. I could more easily eliminate the opinions by eliminating the creative possibilities inherent in structure.
