By Joseph Quackenbush, Chairperson, Communication Design Department
essay
Name: Joseph Quackenbush, Chairperson, Communication Design Department
1.
Fifteen years ago I shared a graduate studio with Karen, a lovely woman who spent most days painting color swatches with gouache, exploring the over-my-head world of color, design, and meaning. The process required a good deal of patience as the true color of the swatch was revealed only after the gouache dried completely. Karen’s process, her algorithm, if you will, allowed time for contemplation. She sometimes wondered aloud how that time would translate into the digital world, where a new color swatch was only a keystroke away. As her thesis title suggests, Waiting for the Gouache to Dry, her investigation ultimately became less about color, and more about the virtues of observation, reflection, and perspective in the creative process.
Perspective is a vexing problem for the dynamic media designer. Our tools work against us. Colors are changed with a keystroke, as are photos, videos, sounds, posts, tweets, profiles, blogs, pages, and applications. No drying necessary. Our tools favor action. Not reflection.
Our industry also works against us. A dizzying rate of innovation insures a permanently shifting landscape of themes, products, subjects, and characters. Consider, for example, the following subjective list of debuts since the inception of the Dynamic Media Institute: Wikipedia (2001), Apple iPod (2001), MySpace (2003), Apple iTunes (2003), Skype (2003), Facebook (2004), Blizzard World of Warcraft (2004), Flickr (2004), YouTube (2005), Twitter (2006), Nintendo Wii (2006), WikiLeaks (2006), Apple iPhone (2007), Google Android (2007), Amazon Kindle (2007), Harmonix Rock Band (2007), Apple iPhone App Store (2008), and Apple iPad (2010).
The furious pace of change leaves little room for contemplation. How do we distance ourselves from the foment enough to understand it? Can we be both a product of the rapid change and apart from it? Well, yes. In fact, it seems an apt job description.
2.
As in most disciplines, history can be an important lens for providing perspective. Without a better understanding of the forces at work in the field — their properties and origins — our own work can seem limited, disengaged from the issues the times bring.
Getting at the historical issues of dynamic media is a tricky business. There is no canon. Do we focus on the history of computing? Technology? Design? Communication? Yes. What about individual media forms like film, sound, and photography? Yes, those too. And what about when it all comes together? How do you parse a field that encompasses virtually all forms of human communication?
3.
Every Fall, incoming students enroll in Design Seminar I (DSGN611) a wide-ranging class that investigates key moments in communication, media, technology, computation, and interaction design. Our objective is to give students a solid intellectual and historical framework for thinking about the work they create.
Readings include: essential essays such as Vannevar Bush’s “As We May Think” first published in The Atlantic magazine (1945); J. C. R. Licklider’s “Man-Computer Symbiosis” (1960); Douglas Englebart’s “Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework” (1962); selections from Ted Nelson’s self-published masterwork Computer Lib/Dream Machines (1974) that imagines a utopian media platform; Marshal McLuhan and designer Quentin Fiore’s visual extravaganza, The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (1967); John Dewey’s chapter “Having an Experience” from his seminal book Art as Experience (1932), perhaps the most cogent analysis of the relationship between an artist and his audience; short stories by Jorge Luis Borges including “The Garden of Forking Paths” and “Funes the Memorious” that explore the nature of experience; selections from Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy which beautifully charts the demise of oral culture and the rise of visual culture; several chapters from Janet Murray’s superb Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (1998); selections from Neil Postman’s Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1993); and William Gibson’s cyber punk classic Neuromancer (1984). Lev Manovich’s excellent The Language of New Media (2002) anchors the course with a variety of essays on form, aesthetics, and history.
There’s always a variable — a new device, product, application, service — something that touches a collective nerve. Dynamic media history, after all, is unfolding before us. In 2005, we were discussing the havoc Apple’s iPod and iTunes was wreaking on the recording industry, and by extension, the consequences for any industry that could be digitized. In 2006, we examined the furious growth of blogs, which, naturally, led to lengthy discussions of authorship, audience, and editorial veracity. In 2009, we often spoke about how Google’s Earth, Maps, and Street View applications were changing our sense of and relationship to space. Early odds for 2010 seem to favor social networking: Twitter and Facebook, certainly, but also Blippy, “a community of people helping each other discover interesting things by reviewing and discussing almost everything we buy”; StumbleUpon, “you’ll only see content already filtered by like-minded users who share your passions and interests”; and the icky, but compelling Chatroulette, “one rule: obscene content is prohibited.” What next?
Students also complete a major research project, Digital Analogs, in which they are asked to map the transition of an object, activity, or industry from its analog form to its digital form. The transition from analog to digital can be jarring. As Lev Manovich suggests, digital algorithms bring unexpected consequences:
Substantially speeding up the execution of an algorithm by implementing this algorithm in software does not just leave things as they are. The basic point of dialectics is that a substantial change in quantity (i.e. in speed of execution in this case) leads to the emergence of qualitatively new phenomena.
— Lev Manovich, “New Media from Borges to HTML,” New Media Reader
Of course, Manovich is also describing the algorithm by which the history and future of dynamic media is made.
The student responses to the assignment always surprise. Projects range from Kent Millard’s (MFA 2010) study of role-playing games (Dungeons and Dragons vs. The World of Warcraft) to Eun Kyoung Lee’s study (MFA 2010) of the garage sale (humble garage vs. Craigslist) to Audrey Fu’s study (MFA 2010) of the bulletin board (public walls vs. digital bulletin board in all their variations). Brian Moore (MFA 2009) explored the mores of analog dating and its modern corollary in online dating sites, revealing, among other things, a more than curious paradox: to get high rankings on many systems, rank being the equivalent of a digital pheromone, one needed to tend their profile carefully with frequent updates which deprived one of actual dating time — a Catch-22 for the new age.
The point of Digital Analogs? Not just to map the change from analog form to digital form, but to think deeply about what is lost in the transition. Loss and displacement are natural consequences of the digital age. The situation provokes a challenge for the dynamic media designer: how can we reclaim what is lost or reconsider it in our work.
It’s no accident that many DMI students are investigating physical objects as interface — a reaction to the demise of the tangible. True, a new generation of smart phones and tablets invite touch, but the devices themselves are clinically born: their texture, weight, and feel serve no specific experience, but rather the dreams of 80,000+ applications. Erich Doubek (MFA 2008) uses a simple cube in The Field to help direct and reshape our sense of space. Dan Johnston (MFA 2009) explored the communal object in Sound Machine, a multi-user musical instrument for exploring non-verbal communication between users. Kate Nazemi (MFA 2006) investigates objects, sound, and space in her exhibit InsideOut.
Nor is it an accident that so many students are exploring environments as interface — a reaction to the claustrophobic limitations of the screen. Evan Karatzas (MFA 2005) designed and built Proximity Lab, a large-scale physical platform on which users’ interactions with one another are mediated by visual and aural data. Audrey Fu (MFA 2010), an architect, built three-dimensional sculptures for Perceiving Interaction: Heartbeat, then used projected light to radically change the way we experience space. And Julia Griffey, (MFA 2005), continues her original thesis work through her company Animocation, where she builds interactive learning exhibits for zoos across the country.
4.
No project in dynamic media exists in a vacuum. Students are expected to have a deep understanding of the history of their particular subject, which more often than not, intersects with a host of other subjects.
In his thesis Synaesthesia as a Model for Dynamic Media, Colin Owens (MFA 2009) devotes an entire chapter to the history of synaesthetic media including visual music, video, music and color, motion and space, film music and sound, and computer sound. That history is richly expressed in his final thesis project, ShapeMix, a tablet-based audiovisual mixing board.
Carolin Horn (MFA 2007) traces the history of computer-aided data visualization in her thesis Natural Metaphors for Information Visualization, which features the acclaimed Anymails project, a dynamic interface to her e-mails using microbes as a metaphor.
Lauren Bessen (MFA 2006) meticulously analyzed over 100 major works of Paul Rand for her thesis project, RandStudio, an interactive laboratory for design students to explore principles of visual literacy.
An historical perspective allows students to place their work in a larger intellectual context, revealing new connections and new opportunities. They build upon what’s already been done, while becoming part of a continuum of thought.
5.
History, of course, also works on a personal level. DMI attracts a wide variety of students: industrial designers, engineers, architects, journalists, writers, graphic designers, photographers, teachers, and fine artists.
That students from so many walks of life see their future in dynamic media reveals something about its inherent potential. It also explains the kaleidoscopic variety of projects represented in this catalog. Our students work in virtually every area of the field: learning systems, physical interfaces, data visualizations, enhanced objects, social networks, smart environments, interactive narrative, and sound and motion design.
Each student brings their own experiences, their own personal history with technology, communication, and design. They are, at all turns, encouraged to align their history, their passions, to their work — to make it personal. Students quickly find that they have been working on their thesis all their lives.
The seeds of Agata Stadnik’s (MFA 2009) kinetic Motionary project were born, literally, with her younger sister:
An important moment in my development as an interaction designer happened when I was five years old. My long awaited sister was born. I adored her and created new activities and challenges for her. She responded happily to puppet shows and games I designed. Of course, I challenged her to participate actively, to move and even stretch her body. When she was only two years old, I “trained her” to do a split and other gymnastic feats. My passion for finding ways for people to move and stretch themselves while at the same time communicating began when I was young and it continues to this day.
Brian Moore’s (MFA 2009) touching Camp Ta-kum-ta project stems from his relationship as a volunteer at the cancer retreat: “My experience with this camp has had a profound effect on my own life’s perspective. The individual stories of triumph, loss, joy, and pain are inspiring, heartbreaking, and all very real. In my short time volunteering with camp, I have watched campers grow up, some get better, some get worse, and some return as different kids the following summer and some don’t return at all.”
Our students’ histories are best told in their own words. This catalog includes four biographical essays. Three, by Jason Bailey (MFA 2010), Dennis Ludvino (MFA 2010), and Scott Murray (MFA 2010), are responses to a writing assignment entitled “Why Dynamic Media.” The fourth, by Alison Kotin (MFA 2011), was a response to an assignment from Design Seminar I class which asked students to critique an experience with digital media using John Dewey’s “Having an Experience” from Art as Experience as a reference point. Alison’s essay is a beautiful meditation on identity, experience, and personal history.
6.
Writing is a significant part of the DMI experience — it forces perspective. This catalog reflects the perspective of DMI at an important moment in its history. But it is only one of many contributions DMI makes to the future history of dynamic media. Our faculty lectures widely, develops new curricula, and organizes industry events such as the Massaging Media series of conferences. Our alumni work in design agencies, studios, and companies around the world. They teach in leading universities and colleges. And our students continue to pursue original work with passion and rigor.