Forward
In my perspective, multimedia is defined as a culture and aesthetics communication based on the technological medium. It could be also regarded as a collaboration between artists and scientists. In the overture of this book, the author introduced the evolution of multimedia from World War II (the first computer produced) to twentieth century artists’ efforts (visual arts, performance and so on). In the previous generation, multimedia, this platform, provided a new opportunity to artists to develop their creations.
Additionally, the most impressive thing I got in this essay is when Wagner was seeking a idealized union of all arts, his idea was rapidly implemented after about 100 years. During 19th century, opera and cinema were the minor way to show what is so-called multimedia for these artists, but there is more possibility to create more art works for everyone after computer launched. This evolution not only illustrates the platform is always changing first(perhaps multimedia was not only integrated with computer in the future), but also presents that multimedia is not for artists anymore. Everyone all have a chance to produce their own effort with an image, a paragraph of text or sound track.
Multimedia and Meme
Before reading the overture, I assumed that the definition of multimedia must be combined with two or multiple media elements which should deliver aesthetics and make interaction only. The introduction of this book refreshes my understanding of this realm. Even an image or a paragraph of text, as long as it can spread the creator’s ideology or thought through technological way, they are all seem a kind of multimedia communication. For instance, in this era, there is a fad word call “Meme“. It is a virally-transmitted cultural symbol or social idea. The majority of memes are captioned photos or animation with a brief text that are intended to be funny, often as a way to publicly ridicule a culture or social issue.
Meme is a good example to represent what the perspective of modern people to think about multimedia. Unlike the 20th century which only a few artists had a chance to surf on the multimedia because of a high machine operation threshold. Due to the popularity and convenience of personal computers, contemporary people enable to learn this area, or even do their own creation easily. In my opinion, multimedia not only display aesthetics or personal work. Information delivery and social issue discussion play a more important role in this generation of multimedia.
