Deformed Digital Evolution

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Deformed Digital Evolution

Modernist visual form has substantially influenced the digital world; however, the digital world of today has been more prominently influenced by the sequential technological growth and the ever-changing aesthetic tastes of our diverse society. These conditions can further be described as mankind’s drive for efficiency and the contrasting effects of people desiring to be different or to stand out. In this essay, an attempt is made to show how the accomplishments of the late Victorian era, regardless of how closely their lineages seem to be linked, are themselves simply steps in the timeline of progress and are really invalid to use as the true “producer” of the modern digital world.

The time period in and around the beginning of the twentieth century, according to Manovich, was the greatest time of pioneering and cultivating new techniques.

Looking retroactively on the 1920’s from the viewpoint of today we realize that the key artistic innovations of the 1920s were all done in relation to what was then the “new media”: photography, film, new architectural and new printing technologies

At the time, these were truly new media and groundbreaking techniques; additional terminology had to be developed in order to efficiently use and refer to them. The “new media” and its divisions were all obviously visually oriented. Manovich continues his discussion with referrals to the techniques and artful achievement that followed in the wake of the “new media” mentioned above. These “key modern visual communication techniques”1 included “photo and film montage, collage, classical film language, surrealism, the use of sex appeal in advertisements, modern graphic design, and modern typography.”1 ...

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...ld that be reasonable? Continuing on with the evolutional tracking of the computer, we can restate the fact that the keyboard was bred from the invention of the typewriter. The typewriter itself can even be traced back to its origin, the printing press.

In the end, almost every link in the evolutionary ladder of today’s digital world can be expressed as an adaptation or modification of the forerunning products. Though it is with reasonably considerable measures that Manovich makes all of his connections of the digital world as it applied to constructivist times, it is truly beyond anyone’s ability to figure out what the construction of the modern digital world is the product of. Far too many people have had their say in its creation. How many of those involved felt as though they were copying the Soviet Constructivist techniques and applying them to today?

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