Generative Content Creation. Critical Review - Geoffrey Rockwell and Andrew Mactavish "A Companion to Digital Humanities", paragraph 10 - "Multimedia"

The paragraphs go through the definition of multimedia from different points of view in order to reach some kind of a conclusion what multimedia really is. As the conclusion defines, there are two ways of considering multimedia:

• to think about multimedia through definitions, histories, examples, and theoretical problems;
• to use multimedia to think and to communicate thought.

Multimedia is described by quite a lot of people who strive to get a clear definition for the term. Reading through various materials I understood that history has its critical part in forming different concepts, as well as different names were given for media generated for computers. Rockwell and Mactavish (2004) name some of the terms, such as new media, digital media, hypermedia, multimedia. Having known that such names exist, I had also wondered what the difference was between these terms, which brings us to definitions.
The authors explain that the term new media stresses works that are different from the existing forms of entertainment, or works that are not necessarily digital, but are new to the 20th century.
Hypermedia refers to the labyrinth of information that is accessible through hypertext, which links and makes a connection between different texts (but is not used within some types of games). All of the names refer to a different cluster of multimedia, but seems that the authors agree that the most important term integrating all the above-mentioned names is still multimedia.


The authors have taken several definitions from different sources, which they divide into different categories in order to analyze the term "multimedia":

1. Computer-based - a multimedia work is a digital work that is accessed or created through a computer;
2. Rhetorical artifact - multimedia work is a work of human expression, designed to convince, delight, or instruct the classical sense of rhetoric;
3. Multiple media - combnes different media and different traditions of production and distribution;
4. Integrated ... artistic whole - we treat multimedia as unified works that are intended by their creator to be experienced as a whole;
5. Interactive - interactivity becomes a defining feature that helps weave multiplicity into a whole.

Bolter and Grusin (1999) suggest that multimedia works are a new way of expression, but remediated forms of existing genres of expression. This is true, because quite a lot of information nowadays comes from the existing genres or works. Neveertheless, this fact is not crucial for multimedia production, because it is still in a new "package", presented differently from the old examples.

As it seems that the authors like classifying, the next one would be types of multimedia:

• Web hypermedia
• Computer games
• Digital art
• Multimedia encyclopedia

The last category came to me as a new one, because one would think that the latter included all multimedia elements: hypertext, (still) images, video, etc., but the authors explain that this is an extension of the print genre, but to my mind this is unsuitable for the classification, because it already includes some of the previously mentioned types.
They also browse the development of the term through different categories like:

• Numbers and text - the first IBM's "word processor" was launched in 1964, and by the end of 1970s personal computers already had primitive word processing programs that allowed printing and editing;
• Images - Apple Macintosh (released in 1984) was designed to handle graphics, that is why it came with programs such as "MacPaint", a mouse for painting, and a graphical user interface. These images soon had capabilities to be pasted into other documents, etc;
• Desktop publishing - together with printing and page making low-end publishing was made possible. These features evolved and soon Adobe PhotoShop enabled designers to publish more detailed publications. The authors say that this category is the precursor to multimedia;
• Authoring environments - having practised with desktop publishing tools, designers were already familiar with implementing these environments into their work. 1987 HyperCard was released by Apple, people were able to create simple animations with simple interactivity. This program based on hypertext, but also had a more difficult programming language which enabled to control other devices (audio-, CD-, videodisk players);
• Sound - during 1980s - 1990s simple sound capabilities were developed;
• Digital video - as it put a great stress on computers, some great works were still made, like the Aspen Movie Map (1978), which combined pictures in order to make the user to wonder through Aspen. The release of different video standards made it possible to manage video in digital form;
• Virtual space and beyond - In 1990s cyberspace was mentioned, which seemed as a new frontier for multimedia computing. This involved a person and technology through which it would have been possible to enter digital reality. 

These categories seem quite reasonable in order to browse through multimedia history, though are not quite thorough. There is much more history to multimedia, but other landmarks of history were greatly displayed in the other reading tasks given by the lecturer Rui Torres (e.g. Packer, Randall, and Ken Jordan. 2002. Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality, Manovich, Lev. 2001. The Language of New Media).

The last category researched by the authors is theoretical approaches considering multimedia, which involves best practices, game criticism and interactivity, and theories and histories of multimedia. The above-mentioned issues are  necessary to study the base for multimedia including other sciences in order to think about different concepts forming multimedia.

Finally the authors suggest that scholars of multimedia should take seriously the challenge of creating multimedia as a way of thinking about multimedia and attempt to create exemplary works of multimedia in the traditions.