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Emerging Tools & Techniques Of Digital Media: history log and multiple futures
Slavko Milekic , The University of the Arts, USASession: Evaluation
The introduction and acceptance of any new technology by the general public goes through a stage during which the capabilities of the new technology are tested and measured against traditional procedures. During this process the new technology is often used in a manner similar to and with the constraints characteristic of the traditional procedures, even if the new technology is not bound by them. It takes time and experimentation for the new technology to be adopted and exploited to its full potential. Today, we find ourselves in a similar situation in respect to the introduction of the digital medium. Initially, the interactions that took place in this medium mimicked the ones we were used to conducting in other media. Thus, the first electronic exchanges were conceptualized as "e-mail" although they differ from traditional mail in almost every respect: the exchange is almost instantaneous and is not affected by geographic distance, the "mail" can stay forever in one's "mail box" and now one can even use the same procedure to "mail" voice messages, pictures and movie clips. With increasing familiarity with the medium, the uses specific to the new medium emerge: tele-presence, e-commerce, digital paging, collaborative document creation, etc. In this paper I will use the example of documenting the art creation process to explore the implications of the history logging potential of the digital medium for creative processes in general.