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I choose the ontology perspective, which is concerned with the qualities of an existing medium. This subject seemed extremely relevant to the ideas proposed by the class. After looking up ‘ontology’ and finding out it meant ‘of being’, which I did not find exceedingly helpful, so I was left to make sense of the existing qualities of network and computer media as opposed to traditional mediums. The article stated, “symbol structure, from 0 to 1 (on/off) to complier languages to the programming language, makes up the complexity of the medium.”(p41) I found this concept much more helpful in understanding the aspects of computers that need to be evaluated to determine the difference between them and paper through the ontological perspective.

The article put forth that“…interactivity, multi- and intermediality, synaesthesia, ect., have their histories. But every medium imprints its signature into the code; consequently, every medium creates something new, even if it works with preexisting codes.”(p42)This reminded me strongly to a specific class discussion that we had. The question if animated literature could be truly innovative was put forth for groups to debate. This was in regard to concrete poetry but the answers the group I was in are highly applicable to the argument put forth in the article which went along the lines that, “…there is much in computer and net art that can be traced back to historical ideas, so that from an aesthetic point of view nothing really innovative results. Another viewpoint was that because of the materiality of the computer that it is able, fundamentally, to transform language and thus literature as well-links and programming can be used to transform a text into an ‘intelligent object’.”(42)

The conclusions from my own group were largely identical. New media draws upon older styles and mechanics so that nothing purely new can be made. But at the same time anything created differs from older objects and so embodies qualities that are new. At first I felt a little cheated when the views in the article were not wildly different from my own, eye opening, nirvana inspiring. But besides being worded much more nicely the ideas in the article, while being moderate in temperament, focus on how computers differ from, say, television.

Television can show words moving, shifting, changing, and emoting, but the computer and coding offers some properties that animation alone cannot duplicate. The network and link aspects of computer works add facets that are unique to this medium, allowing interactivity, personal navigation, and connective-ness. Another thing I was fascinated by was the emphasized computer-media quality of intelligence. The animations the class has been working on have been done in CSS flash which is good, because it is teachable in a semester. But I now realize that the most unique and groundbreaking pieces of computer poetry I have seen incorporate the properties of the symbols of computer media, coding. Animation can have flames move and dance but only computers can have that flame react in different was to different user actions or randomly to other properties.