Digital Studies

Introduction

( 2014-11-09)

Readings

  1. Jean, Patrick. “Pixels.” 2010. Web. Link (remote) →
  2. Madrigal, Alexis C. “How Netflix Reverse Engineered Hollywood.” The Atlantic (2014): n. pag. Web. Link (remote) →

Studies in genre

  1. “Internal” criterion: genre as form︎
    • A pattern or structure, perhaps including a dominant content element (theme)
    • Description of individual artifact
  2. External criterion: genre as metadata︎
    • A common pattern or structure
    • Grouping and classification
    • Using large teams of people specially trained to watch movies, Netflix deconstructed Hollywood. They paid people to watch films and tag them with all kinds of metadata. (Madrigal)
    • The Atlantic’s Netflix-Genre Generator

Digital studies

  • Study of genres of digital culture︎
  • Digital encoding as writing (inscription)
  • Linguistic history of computing
    • How writing systems we use with human language are represented in a digital medium
    • How the text we produce with them is represented in a digital medium

Digital “genres”

  1. Bit
    • Fundamental unit of representation in a digital medium
    • All representation is translated “up” or down to or from binary representation
  2. File
    • Representational grouping of bits into a digital object that we can manipulate
  3. Document
    • Digital representation of object of paper medium
  4. Program
    • Special kind of text
    • Both readable and executable
  5. Version
    • Temporal representation of change (editing) of files, documents, programs
  6. Domain
    • Representation of space
    • Hyperspace, cyberspace, virtual space, etc.
  7. Network
    • Representation of connections or relations in space
  8. Game
    • Domain of algorithmic play

Pixels by Patrick Jean

  • Genre of this artifact?
  • Genres it depicts?
  • Interpretation

Administrivia

  1. Review of course site
  2. Procedure for next meeting