Generation Flash

"Generation Flash" by Lev Manovich left me in the dust midway through the first paragraph. I tried desperately to grasp the concepts he was writing about but continually found myself at a loss for their meaning. I will attempt to make some sense of what I read.

The article starts off by stating, "This generation no longer is interested in 'media critique' which preoccupied media artists of the last two decades; instead it is engaged in software critique. This generation writes its own software code to create their own cultural systems..." I can only assume that what he means is, instead of critiquing a website based on its AESTHETIC looks, we now critique it based on how it was written and coded (?) We no longer say, "I really like AOL because it looks nice and I like the colors" but we say, "I don't like the way it functions, whoever created this did a poor job". I could be WAY off in this analysis because I know NOTHING about software programming and was further unaware that it is considered an art form.

So, okay. I try and look past this initial wave of confusion and move onto the next point Manovich writes about. He begins talking about "loops" and I say, "yeah, loops...like in electronic music...I'm on board with this." Manovich uses the idea of 'loops' to emphasize the 'remix culture' that we live in. He says, "Flash animations, QuickTime movies, the characters in computer games loop endlessly - until the human user intervenes by clicking." Manovich says that looping is now the new default metho to 'critique' media culture -- and I have ABSOLUTELY no idea what that means. How do you critique a loop? "That was a really bad loop -- I didn't enjoy that?" wouldn't you instead say something like, "I didnt enjoy the IMAGES or TEXTS or SOUNDS used in that loop?" Those are my best guesses.

Manovich then goes on to talk about layering in media. Just as musicians layer sounds together (drums, guitar, bass, keyboard etc.) so too can artists layer images. But Manovich warns that we must be careful how many layers are used in imagery because, "when we start mixing arbitrary images together, we quickly destroy any meaning". In other words, we must carefully choose the images to be layered and avoid just making a bunch of noise. He says that, as a remix culture, does it still make sense to create whole works if these works will simply be taken apart and turned into samples?

People are constantly taking images and editing them or 'sampling' them to make them their own; just as musicians sample tracks from songs and make them their own. For example, 'Gym Class Heroes' sampled a 'Supertramp' song in 2006. Someone took a picture of Abraham Lincoln and digitally placed Marilyn Monroe into the picture with him. So, it seems art no longer stands on its own as it is, but is essentially "up for grabs" to be reinterpreted or "remixed" by other artists.

I *think* what Manovich was getting at is that, the definition of art has changed as media types change. Instead of looking at WHAT the art is we look at HOW it is put together. And that is about as far as a could get with my analysis of this article. I feel unsatisfied with this analysis but without knowledge of the programs he spoke of (Flash ActionScript, Director's Lingo, Perl, MAX, JavaScript, C ++) then I cannot make an appropriate and educated response to the article.