This entry was posted on 12/31/2007 11:43 PM and is filed under uncategorized.
December 2007
III of V. Mixing Mediums in Public (Lived) Space
In the commercial sector, mediums are mixing in physical lived space, though this may hardly be 'news' to anyone frequenting a local Starbucks or Borders. However, this recent phenomenon deserves mention, especially with the recent announcement by Borders' Chief Executive, George L. Jones, to install two 37-inch flat-screen televisions in every store, thus broadcasting "Borders TV" - original programming, advertisements, news, and weather (Lia Miller, "Borders Adds TV Watching to Its Bookstores' Entertainment," The New York Times, 12 November 2007). As if cafes, toys, games, movies, and music were not enough in a 'bookstore', the addition of television is all too telling as the logical 'next step' of cross-promotions to provide a 'full-service' atmosphere of entertainment and education.
The effect: mixing mediums while simultaneously delivering knowledge and entertainment...delivering mixed mediums in physical lived space (albeit in the name of cross-promotional marketing)...
In the performing arts sector, computers using Adobe's After Effects, Apple's Final Cut, and/or Apple's DVD Studio Pro, are being used to help recreate the past for stage productions in what is called:
"computer-assisted film and animation...[as] the scenic backdrop and supporting cast...for live performers" (Steven McElroy, "The Stage or the Screen? Both at Once," The New York Times, 30 December 2007).
The effect: the computer creation as a supporting actor performing in live space...
Internationally at-large, mediums are mixing to enable a new reality of free and anonymous exchange in a lived-out virtual treasure hunt worldwide. Ironically, through BookCrossing.com, the online world is enabling 'anti-internet' book lovers to combat the threat of replacing "good, old-fashioned books with soulless bits of downloadable information" (Michelle Slatalla, "Love That Book? Then Set It Free," The New York Times, 20 December 2007). In effect, BookCrossing.com is successfully allowing a global reality akin to a lived-out napster-kazaa-limewire-bearshare. In a way, the site is mediating an off-line database of free, anonymous, global exchange of books.
While this off-line 'catch-release' initiative to transform the world into "one big, free library" could only reach its present scale through the on-line network, the end effect is a successful partnering symbiosis of the virtual for the real thus creating a fecund sphere of in-between...
...a successful sphere of hyphenation...
...of sharing potentiality...
and this, this is just one of a myriad of our new (virtual-enhanced and mediated) realities...
In the (commercial) gaming sector, a duel is concluding between print and online in the form of gaming magazine and its ineractive, information-enhanced web site (Cate Doty, "Game News in a Duel of Print and Online," The New York Times, 12 November 2007). The answer to the challenge of retaining subscriptions while simultaneously enticing web traffic is to "bounce the reader back and forth between its magazines and its Web sites" (ibid).
Indeed, there is a balancing act as consumers weigh the portability of the magazine against the immediate streams of on-line news and information. The sphere of in-between print and on-line is where gaming marketers are bouncing/placing their consumers - creating a need to maintain, subscribe, and to 'participate' in both without exclusion to either.
Whether it be for marketing purposes or for a globally lived-out community of free and anonymous sharing, we are necessitating spheres of hyphenation.
Whether we appropriate them for ourselves or bounce around in the ones carved out for us by marketers, they do exist, in virtually-mediated presence...
the issue may very well turn to how we can maintain them for our own potentiality, or how long will it be before we fall between bounces...
