Defining Digital Multimedia

by Ken Jordan

Definitions are meant to establish a shared vocabulary that can focus argument -- and often, covertly, to achieve a politically motivated purpose. Our purpose is overt: If, as Marshall McLuhan suggests, we literally construct the world we inhabit through the design and deployment of our media technologies -- because they enable certain behaviors while discouraging others -- then the social and political ramifications of how we define and address the emerging digital media are undeniable. By identifying a subject's key characteristics, we begin to say what it is and what it is not. For digital media this is particularly critical; if the digital arts community does not lead the discussion about how to define digital multimedia, and the types of behaviors it should or shouldn't encourage, other interests, like governments and corporations, will force a definition on us.

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We identified five characteristics of new media that, in aggregate, define it as a medium distinct from all others. These concepts set the scope of the form's capabilities for personal expression; they establish its full potential:

* Integration: The combining of artistic forms and technology into a hybrid form of expression.

* Interactivity: The ability of the user to manipulate and affect her experience of media directly, and to communicate with others through media.

* Hypermedia: The linking of separate media elements to one another to create a trail of personal association.

* Immersion: The experience of entering into the simulation or suggestion of a three-dimensional environment.

* Narrativity: Esthetic and formal strategies that derive from the above concepts, which result in nonlinear story forms and media presentation.

Together, these five concepts offer a definition of digital media that pushes toward the technical and esthetic frontiers of the form.
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