lev manovich
www.manovich.net

http://zkm.de/
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de - best online resource for media art
aec.at - Festival early september; permanent center; online archive with catalogs of all festivals and all competiton winners

user interface (UI) / human-computer interface (CHI):
multi-sensory / multi-modal interfaces - use of diffirent senses including touch, voice, the whole body /
iPhone (Apple)
"Khronos projector ars"
"hanahana" - plaxplax.com
Microsoft Surface - www.microsoft.com/surface/

http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimodal_interaction
http://www.interface.ufg.ac.at/interface/ic.html
http://www.interface.ufg.ac.at/interface/Ars2005/projects/blow.php

http://www.artcom.de - project "Mediales Bühnenbild" (2002)

theory: 
consumer electronics - thinking not only about content,  communication channels, software (also very new!) but also devices through which we interact with information, each other, and delegate parts of our memory, experience, etc.

theory: 
all and any consumer objects - results of complex and long histories, negotiations, compromises, meanings which were not fully formed, ideas which were not fully developed, etc.   

theory:
author - colloborative - multiple groups, distributed colloboration

Examples of digital aesthetics - 

architecture - Zaha Hadid
http://www.zaha-hadid.com/
Frank Gerhy

graphic cinema (motion graphics) - Ann Lislegaard
Common: Go video
Jeremy Blake
Anya Belkina

examples done Processing: 
http://processing.org

some basic principles of software - and consequently, of a digital representation/model 
-everything is modeled as a set of variables
-software can modify variables as it runs
- software can repeat a set of operations for as long as we want and it can change variables which control these operations at each step
- separation between data and algorithms
- a separation between the data and its appearance (same data can be rendered in many forms)
- computers control networks
- computers can control other devices in real-time

Cultural consequences  (techniques, aesthetics):
-from industrial and modernist grid/repetition (mass production) to a variable form, variable grid, the aesthetics of variability; also, desgns here the same form is repeatedly copied and every copy is modified (some of Zhaha Hadid's furniture)
- moving from the identical copies (mass production) towards mass customisation (today this is more developed in digital media than in physical objects)
-the aesthetics of transformation (re-mapping): taking input (data) and changing it into another form or media (interactive/reactive environments, information visualisation); taking some input to modulate/control another object(s) or (generative) structure (i.e., "interactive media") / cp. to industrial machines which transformed one source of energy into another
- aesthetics of continuos transformation (modulation): of a form changing as a whole rather than edits/montage/ separate parts (can be in film, architecture, design)  (from a "total" cut to a "localised cut" - i.e., when a layer starts or ends in AE)
- computer can create models/representations which have higher information density (because you can control the appearance of each piece of information)
- explicit representation of operations (transformations, filters, etc.) along with data (as in node interfaces of compositing software; or in Photoshop where we can now have both image layers and filter layers); operations and data acquire the same status (same operation can be applied to new data; a designer can always come back and modify operations done in the past; the temporal process of design is given spatial representation with all operations accessible at the same time)

Operations vs. higer level artistic techniques -
operations now manifest themselves in cultural objects more directly. 
For example, in painting, the tools (brushes, paints, canvas) by themselves do not encode artistic techniques (skills)- they are in the head of the atist. But wih Zaha Hadid's furniture [see the images in iPhoto], the furniture is a direct result of the "low-level" operations available in software (extrusion, copy, modification of a solid in 3D software).

In classical art, artistic techniques determine the aesthetics (since there are rules such as proportions, principles taught in art academies - for instance, compositional principles, stable genres such as portrait, historical painting, etc.). Operatons (for instance, mixing colors, usig glasing, brushsrokes, ways of rendending ligh, shapes, etc.) are subserviant to these techniques. 
Modern art refuses rules and genres and focuses on "exploring artistic media as such" (abstract painting, experimental cinema, etc) - making  "low-level techniques" into content of art - i.e., projecting these tecnniques into aesthetics (for instance, geometic primitives in Malevich or Mondrian; brushstrokes in expressionism, etc.). Although today, in software culture, designers, architects and artists do not explictly talk about exploring the languages of their media, they automatically continue operating in a modernist mode - that is, operations are projected into aesthetic plane [for example: see images of Zaha Hadid show in London Design museum in iPhoto; gallery @Processing site; Jeremy Blake early films which use basic operations of After Effects such as gradual change of shape's color, images on diffirent layers, camera pan].

What is media after software (from a designer and user POV)? Are there diffirent media? 
Metamedia concept: all diffirent techniques encoded as algorithms. While the techiques can be combined in one project and appear in a single image/frame, not every techiques can be applied to a particular data type (vector, raster, 3D space, text, sound, etc.).
We can  talk about "diffirent media" in a software environment because depending on the structure of the data you can apply some operations to it but not others.
Media: a data structure + algorithms  (operations)
Understood in this way, all "computer media" share some properties (theer are some operations which can be applied to all them) while other operations are unique to each.

Of course, we can also talk about diffirent media in a sense of media memory (for example, all the styles, artistic movements, traditions, important figures in photography), reception situations/interfaces/platforms (cinema; LCD screen; the web; white cube of a museum, etc.), institutions (museums, prof. organisations, industries - for instance, in photography). Also, as lots of historical work in diffirent media become available on the web, media means direct access to all these works - i.e. cinema also now means all clips of 20th films available online. I.e., cinema = all film clips on the web. Also, hybrid aesthetics (for instance, in motion graphics) relying on media memory, i.e. our familiarity with diffirent older media, their physical artifacs, artistic techniques, major figures and icons, etc.
 
Media vs. genre vs. "paltform" - for instance, a photogallery web site can be thought as a genre. Musuem white cube can be thought as a "exhibition platform" (rather than as "interface").

- software studies as the study of new techniques used throuhout the modern sociey (which are software based) - shared by multiple fields and yet not belonging to any single field (techniques of recording, info gathering, representation, working with information, distribution)

the new functioning of "media" - when we interact with "digital media" (anything from an image, a web page to an interactive environment) we actually interaction with software; media and tools can't be separated.

Information Visualization
visualcomplexity.com/
http://www.turbulence.org/Works/song

- social media, colloboration, group work, internet, etc. ("share," re-mix") - from networking

Social media - examples of Wiki 
any data about a document (a text, image, wiki page, blog entry, etc.) is called metadata
Professional software gives the user access to more metadata (similar to how in general professionals have access to more info than users in all areas)

"There is only software"
Proposal: properties of digial media are defined by particular software used to create and/or acess this media. 
The tools which the software provides determine what we can do with digital media  and how we understand it.

While with physical media, we can see the data directly (for instance, a photograph), with software we never access the data directly (i.e. numbers stored in computer memory - unless you do very low level programming) - you always access it from some software. Thus, a digital image is literally created by a viewer software from the stored data when you "open" it.

Evolution from physical media to software:
1) media in a sense of physical properties of a material (thus also properties of an cultural object inscribed in this material) -> 
2) physical material + machine for storing information or reading information (i.e. film camera+ film projector) -> 
3) software which we use to create and access a cultural objects - all "media properties" are now in software.

Thinking about architecture as software - http://www.oosterhuis.nl/

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HYBRID MEDIA - HYBRID AESTHETICS:

Digital media - its "content" is almost always some pre-digital media (text, images, films, architecture, music, etc). Also, a digital media program can combine multiple media. How do we combine diffirent media with new possibilities given to us by softaware to generate, display, change, interact with, share media? Can we create new cultural forms and new uses of media in social context?

art+com: Interactive Stage (2002)
art+com: Invisible Shape (1993-1997): 
www.artcom.de
remix cultures  - such as AMV (Anime Music Videos)
mash-ups on the web:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_%28web_application_hybrid%29
example: www.housingmaps.com/

Motion graphics / graphical cinema:
early example - titles for "Vertigo" - Saul Bass 1958:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz46qS38OgM

Kayle Cooper - title for "Seven" 1996:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yALjuJcfg90
Imaginary Forces: http://www.imaginaryforces.com/
the technical ability to combine diffirent media and of course control them and change using software leds to a new dominant aesthetics of moving image - the aesthetics of hybridity (or media remix)

slowly we see more hybrids feature films - for instance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_backlot

Anya Belkina "Crowded with Voices" 2007
Alain Escale "Voyage" 1998 (remarkable use of compositing)

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Next frontier of digital media - changing physical environment (buildings, surfaces, objects)
media skins 
example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graz_Art_Museum
http://www.realities-united.de/
fashion: http://www.husseinchalayan.com/past-collections.php?year=2007&id=66&page=1
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/009048.php
http://seamless.sigtronica.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wearable_computer/