My Current Favorite

In terms of meeting "really new media," few I've seen recently can top Nokia's effort it titles the "World's Biggest Signpost."

The installation is strategically very sharp, with the user involvement not simply a standard contest or game, but rather is directly contributing to delivering/enacting the key message. What's more, the monumental scale  underscores the power of a user's finger digitally enabled, while the sheer fun you can see on people's faces (rather than stress, as in many competitive games) sets this one quite a ways apart.

Finally, this project also demonstrates what to me is the next frontier in digital thinking: Namely, that digital isn't simply what happens virtually as opposed to in the "real world," but it's how the virtual becomes mapped onto the real.

And Now for Something Completely Different

(I've been looking for a chance to use that Monty Python line for a title...)

While the point of the blog is to highlight fully-realized examples of really new media, it's also a good idea to highlight those that aren't so fully realized, if for no other reason than they have a great potential as yet to be figured out or realized.

One is augmented reality using Bing maps. Blaise Aguera y Arcas (at this time, at Microsoft of all places, but who knows where he may be now) did a TED talk last year on this project. Imagine Google Maps and Google Earth integrated with video, and that almost captures what this is all about.

A second is laser tagging--as in, instead of using cans of spray paint and getting arrested for vandalism, using digital mapping and a pen laser to draw.  Our friends at the Graffiti Research lab have it all worked out.

When measured up against "really new media," these are, of course, incomplete. But that means they and others like them are ripe for thoughtful creative development.

Near Misses, Near Hits

Integrating this blog into my teaching has its plusses and minuses. While it encourages students to initiate their own search and investigation into new media (a plus), it also tends to be repetitious and ultimately safe (a minus), due to how the grading system encourages students to play it safe.

This helps explain the over-reliance in student postings on smartphone apps (easy to search in iTunes, other postings have apps so that seems to boost chances of acceptance) and on Facebook apps.

So, for next academic year, I won't accept any submissions of free-standing smartphone apps, and any pitches for Facebook-related things had better be good!

It also takes me away from posting things I encounter, as does the crazy Maymester teaching schedule. But, now that that's done, time to re-engage.