LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Cinema and the New Media

K. Parameswaran, Ph.D.

Introduction

New Media or media convergence is a new term that denotes the modern media environment. New media basically connotes the coming together of media forms, the Internet and the newer techniques of communication technology. In simple terms, the convergence of these factors has led to a new discourse of art. Indian film and art criticism is yet to come into terms with the new media. Here text is still equated with literature and value judgment.

This article argues that both these view points are out dated and that a new valuation of art is required in the context of the new media.

The term media, in general, refers to the form in which a communication act takes place. Thus, there can be spoken, written or visual media. Here, media is spoken of as in opposition to the matter or the content of the communication. In other words, in general usage, media refers to the form of the communication where as the term message refers to the content of the communication.

Media, in this sense, is largely divisible into the aural or audio media and the visual media. In the aural media, the message takes the spoken form. Inter personal communication, radio and various traditional art forms like the harikatha kalakshepam of Tamilnadu, the paddhakam of Kerala etc are examples of aural media.

In the visual media, the message takes the form of written symbols. It may be letters, hieroglyphics, pictures, paintings, cartoons, graphs, photos, video clippings, full length feature films, documentaries, animations, graphics etc.

As far as visual media are concerned, the receiver of the message has to first decode the visual symbols and then only will they be able to understand the content. This, more often than not, may also involve translating these symbols to aural symbols like speech sounds. In the aural media, the step of translating symbols into another form does not usually occur. So it can be said that the aural media is more basic as far as human beings are concerned.

It is to be remembered that this position in Media Studies jells well with the position adopted by the structuralism school in Linguistics. It is their main contention that the spoken form of communication is more basic. It is because of this reason that linguistics relies more on spoken data. Even it's more modern types of study like Corpus Linguistics relies primarily on large samples of spoken language. Discourse and Conversation Analysis are newer branches of Linguistics that concentrate on specific types of spoken languages.

New Media

The New Media can be seen as a convergence of two technologies: the technology of media and the technology of computing. Computers which were primarily used for performing calculations and modern media technologies (like film, gramophone records etc) started to become inter-connected during the 20th century. By the end of the century, it can well be seen that these technologies were well on a path of convergence, mainly through the translation of existing media into binary information which could be stored digitally on computers.

Thus, new media can now be defined as graphics, moving images, sounds, shapes, spaces, and texts that have become computable; that is, all these have become recordable as computer data. In other words, all forms of old media involved an analog process were in data was transferred into physical media like gramophone records. At the same time, new media records data as numerical representation in binary code.

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Compounds in Tolkappiyam and Balavyakaranam - A Comparison | Automatic Nominal Morphological Recognizer and Analyzer for Sanskrit: Method and Implementation | A Critical Study of The Wasteland - Poetry as Metaphor | Communicative Language Teaching - An Overview | Cinema and the New Media | Culture and Second Language Learning and Teaching - An Exploration in Tamil | R. K. Narayan's Humour in Swami and Friends | Towards Meeting Global Challenge - Cyber Based Instruction in Foreign Language Teaching | Novel Technologies, Engines and Mobiles in Language Learning | Role of Language in Effective Managerial Communication | Pragmatic Analysis of Politeness Theory | The Varied Horizon of Multimedia & Web Tools for English Language Acquisition in the Information Age | Challenges and Problems in the Teaching of Grammar | Some Features of Tirukkural Telugu Translations | Issues of Social and Ideological Empowerment in Contemporary Indian Women Writing in English | Does Stress-Shift Lead to Word-Class Conversion in English? | Insight through Body Language and Non-verbal Communication References in Tirukkural | Think-Aloud Protocol -- Elicitation of Strategy Use and Solution to Learning Problem | Voice of the Voiceless: Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape and George Ryga's Indian - A Comparative Study | Inside the Haveli: A Study | HOME PAGE of February 2010 Issue | HOME PAGE | CONTACT EDITOR