extreme media studies

ENTRY POINT

Welcome to Reading Beyond. Here,"No one knows everything, everyone knows something, all knowledge resides in humanity." - Pierre Lévy

New media have changed what counts as knowledge. “Expert” no longer means what it used to. Neither does “education” or “studying.” What it means “to know” about something will never be the same.

People are using media to read (not only books, but the world) differently, to sense their surroundings and experiences differently, and to share the knowledge they make differently. Media now enable us to read in ways far beyond the usual, and to create new ways to make sense of our lives.

It’s now possible for humans to make sense of the world collectively. And Pierre Levy says we have no choice but to do just that: “The knowledge of a thinking community is no longer a shared knowledge for it is now impossible for a single human being, or even a group of people, to master all knowledge, all skills. It is fundamentally collective knowledge, impossible to gather together into a single creature.” (Collective Intelligence: Mankind’s Emerging World in Cyberspace. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books, 1997, pp. 214-15).

Henry Jenkins takes up Levy’s insights: “Only certain things are known by all—the things the community needs to sustain its existence and fulfill its goals. Everything else is known by individuals who are on call to share what they know when the occasion arises” (Jenkins: Convergence Culture, p. 245).

“What we cannot know or do on our own, we may now be able to do collectively.”
-Henry Jenkins

In the IMAX documentary about the making of NASA'S Mars Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, we hear the voice of Engineering Integration and Test Manager Bob Manning: "There's no one person who can really get their arms around the whole thing and say, 'I understand everything about this vehicle.' It's now (stammers) burst the bounds of our brains."

Manning gives eloquent testimony to what it feels like to be part of a knowledge community.

The collaboration among 100 people that Manning describes would not be possible without an extreme media device developed for this project. Using a "collaborative computer" named the MERboard (Mars Exploration Rover Board), NASA engineers viewed what was happening among them on multiple touch screens, each connected to multiple personal computers. They captured and annotated data from touch screens, and created digital content on the MERBoard's whiteboard. One MERBoard displayed what was happening on another, making collaboration possible among people at multiple boards. Read more about MERBoards >>

At New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Jeff Han is experimenting with an "intuitive, 'interface-free'" computer display. Through "multi-touch sensing" it enables users to interact with a computer by using more than one finger at a time. And this makes it inherently able to accommodate multiple users simultaneously. Han's "invisble interface" invites us to imagine new ways to create, engage, and evaluate collective knowledge. Watch Jeff's demo >>

credit: NASA

EXPERIENCE CAPSULES

These experience capsules take you beyond what people have understood for decades as "reading"--into new, media-based ways of making sense of the world that humans are just now beginning to explore.

young_hae

As a warm-up for the capsules you're about to experience, we send you to Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries. This two-artist collective from Seoul, South Korea generates new relationships between words, sound, image, and the time-based unfolding of "reading." Experience it in their: "Artist's Statement No. 45,630,944: The Perfect Artistic Web Site."

READING DIFFERENTLY link to reading differently capsule>>

Reading no longer stops at decoding a particular text or use of language.
Reading has become "reading across" diverse texts and mediums.
We are now making and finding meaning in the very process of "reading across."

SHARING DIFFERENTLY link to sharing differently capsule>>

How we share knowledge within and across social groups is crucial to what we presume to know. And that has extreme consequences for who we think we are and how we act in relation to the world, and to others.

CAPSULE AT THE EDGE: SENSING DIFFERENTLY

canary belize

Artists are "assembling their bodies with media." “Moving with media" allows them to be in the world differently, and that allows them to make sense of it differently. Lived experiences bring new meanings into being when humans deliberately go out to make sense of the world as "assemblages of media and body".

Link to Capsule >>

credit: Janet Cardiff/Public Art Fund

CAPSULE AT THE EDGE: ADVOCATING DIFFERENTLY

clui quonset

Eve Mosher creates media that allow us to see, read, and respond to the otherwise invisible forces and dynamics that are affecting urban environments.

Experience two of her projects: "The High Water Line" and "Seeding the City"
by Eve S. Mosher

Link To Capsule >>

credit: Eve Mosher

RE-SCAN: READING ACROSS CULTURAL DIFFERENCE WITH DOTSUB.COM

"In case you can't hear the enthusiasm in my voice . . . the opportunity to understand more and more about the cultures of the world and help transcend economically imposed borders is truly awesome."

- Joanne Colan, Rocketboom

See what Joanne Colan's enthusiasm is all about, and then visit dotsub.com, where you can become part of a wiki-like process that makes media readable across borders and barriers of language.

Contribute your updates to the Re-Scan: READING BEYOND section of the EMS blog.