Angry Robot

montaged and confused

“If something is so real that it can’t be distinguished from the reality, then it’s no longer art,” Worth1000’s Muchnick said.

Ninja please. This Wired article about montage and computers, that could have been written at any time over the last 10 years, is so full of misguided punditry that I don’t know where to begin. It’s too bad Lev Manovich is so wrong, as he’s the only one I know of who has at least tried to define the language of “new media”. But to say compositing is about seamlessness and continuity: have you watched MuchMusic lately? Their graphics are intended to rattle the brain, much more so than traditional continuity editing, so to set up such an opposition (traditional montage=dischord; computer montage=harmony) is so simplistic and outdated as to make me discount anything he tries to say in his book.

I’d go on at further length, but I can actually hear my readers falling asleep.

5 comments on "montaged and confused"

  1. K says:

    On top of that, she neglects to mention that Photoshop was actually developed for Wired magazine.

    someone wasn’t doing their homework.

  2. D says:

    Is that true? I’d like to hear that story.

  3. Anonymous says:

    Thanks for calling me a ninja! w00t!

  4. D says:

    you da ninja?? Are you Avi Muchnick? If so, hi, and am I wrong in my assessment of this article? I thought you maybe had some cool stuff to say, that might have been at least mildly miscontextualized. But what do I know.

    What’s going on with the spacing on this page?

  5. Anonymous says:

    Yes, I’m Avi. I found this link doing a google search on my name. I was sort of misquoted in that article. But hey, I expected that to happen.

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