Hi Mark
The word infography (infographie), isn't really new. It's being used
almost since computer graphics have been invented. The word just tells
about graphics conceived by computers. The word is maybe originary from
France, where computing is translated by informatique. So info stands
for informatique and graphie from graphics. For example animators that
have done Toy Story, we just tell they are doing infography. So it's
natural that it really works for digital media :)
In this case, animators don't really work with images, they are
virtually working in sculpture, architecture, etc. Their goal is to
simulate the most perfectly the real world.
I just think that in the realm of digital, we never work in concrete
with anything we always work in virtual concepts of something real.
The layer of code is our structure like the film or the canvas. You
don't think about how film is made when you're shooting some scene or
how is the canvas been built. So, you also don't think about digital
bits when you're creating digital animation or digital images. And even
if you think, you'll do this, only because you know the background of
how a computer operates. If you think of someone without this knowledge,
he'll never question what is a bit or what a byte is. To him a bit, a
byte, a rock, a film or a canvas is really the same thing.
Nelson
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark O'Connell [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, May 09, 2003 7:11 PM
Subject: Re: terms
I ran across the word "infography" recently. It's not really a beautiful
word, but it seems to me to work well for digital media, digital moving
image sequences. It acknowledges a technological change, photography>
cinematography> infography. It also reveals an essential aspect of the
nature of this new medium, a medium that doesn't necessarily refer
directly
to the concrete, as film did, but to information regarding the concrete,
ie, when you work with digital images you don't really work with images,
but with mathmatical descriptions. This is a little fuzzy but I think
it's
an interesting point to be worked out. When working with digital media
there's a layer of interpretation/abstraction that exists between the
artist and subject, a layer of code, 0's and 1's. Has anyone thought
about
that?
Mark O'Connell
[log in to unmask]
www.markoconnell.org
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