what a long, strange trip it'll be

Check out this media stack: two songs were created with instruments many, many years ago. Then they were recorded on tape. Then they found their way to mp3 format. Then they were imported into a game, where interactive graphics were added. Then a digital DJ remixed them, creating yet another format. Then they were output into a YouTube video (mp4 format). Then they were uploaded to a blog. That's seven different media transformations (assuming that the original tapes didn't go to vinyl or CD before turning into mp3s).

Taking this a few steps further, it's not hard to see that I could easily turn the blog into a link and then into a shorter, Tweet-friendly link, then post it to Twitter so it could then become a Tweet. Which someone could then post to their Facebook account via an RSS feed like Twitfeed. Which someone could then email to a friend, who in turn could gmail it to another friend through their cellphone, who could then conceivably embed it into a Word file as part of a new media project.

Along its journey, this evolving media has probably lived on server hard drives, user hard drives, traveled along fiber optic cables and copper wire, and might've even been in outerspace via satellites and maybe undersea via those fiber optic cables.

And hell, here's the link to the YouTube channel.

I wonder what those musicians would've thought if they'd only known...

sending and receiving through tattoos

In thinking about tattoos as a medium, one thought keeps crossing my mind: the asymmetric aspect - tattoos are a one-way communication. A tattoo communicates a message to the viewer.Among other things, it may be one of class, humor,  artistry, sexiness, status or power.

In prison, for example, tattoos can represent status and power along with gang affiliation. Much of that status and power come from tattoos representing crimes committed, prison time served and more. Tattoos can be so powerful in these confined circumstances that inmates will often rip the skin off another inmate to remove the tattoo.

The Tlingit, a native people of the Northwest United States, also use tattoos as a status and tribal marker. Members are tattooed with crests that signify lineage; these crests take the form of animals such as bears, wolves and eagles, as well as
minerals and constellations. They tie clan members to original myths and locations and only a member of the Bear Clan, for example, can tell stories about the bear:

the crest, and the right to use it in stories, sets the group apart from other groups while defining its position with respect to other groups. Therefore, the ownership of a crest, the right to use the emblem, was more valuable than the possession of a particular physical object, an heirloom or crest object itself. Because crests were so closely linked to a group’s identity, and because other clans validated one’s own right to a crest, wars occasionally resulted from attempts by competing clans to gain status over the other: to become the highest ranking owners of the crest. 

Just as tattoos for the Tlingit joined the physical and conceptual, tattoos could also communicate beyond the physical plain and into a more metaphysical or religious one. Among the first recorded tattoos, after all, are the ones found at Egyptian religious sites from the time of the pharoahs: women were inscribed with tattoos on their thighs, bellies and even breasts and were for a long time these tattoos were thought to denote prostitution. Recent analysis, however, reveals that the tattoos were instead meant to communicate with Bes, the god who protected women during pregnancy and delivery.

In thinking about the transcendental nature of tattoos, I've come to realize that they are more than a one-way form of communication. They can communicate communal power, as with prison gangs or native Americans, for example, where each tattoo speaks to its fellow tattoos to create a greater power for all. Similarly, pregnant Egyptian royalty in effect were speaking to their gods and in granting the women protection during their period of vulnerability, the gods were communicating back through those tattoos. Such is the power of the tattoo.

media as communication

Media theorist Marshall McLuhan saw media as extensions of mankind (4), a view that was far ahead of its time when written and one that could also encompass the telecommunications revolution that would unfold in the three decades after his death and beyond. This definition, however, has a drawback – it is too too anthropomorphic. While Marshall was clever to view the highway system and driving as the media that extend humanity's feet, this type of analysis is too limiting. 

While pitching could be seen as a medium, with a baseball as possible content, one doesn't have to envision throwing as an extension of the arm to justify its communications potential. In the Domican Republic, for example, hurling a baseball could be a nationalist gesture just as hurling a rock or grenade could be a sign of defiance in Iraq or the Gaza Strip. While outerspace travel could be a medium, with the space shuttle as possible content, it adds nothing to this scenario to require flight to be seen as an extension of mankind's arms. Again, neo-Nazis can use shoelaces as a medium, with red laces as the Hitlerian content, but it adds to meaning or context to see this as an extension of one's feet. The context of the medium can accommodate the low-cost choice of using laces or whatever other meanings may arise out of this choice – and indeed they may see the feet as having some symbolism – but that would be their choice; there is no requirement to see the foot connection as relevant to gaining any more understanding.

Rather than seeing media as the extensions of mankind, one could more profitably define media as tools for communicating with others. In this way, a lightbulb could still be considered as a media as McLuhan desired (8) in that it sends a message to others, without viewing the bulb as some sort of extension of the eyes, if that is in fact how Marshall would have extended his metaphor. It can be a relatively low-resolution source of information, as a binary yes-no answer to the question of if a phone charger is plugged in, or it can have a little more information, such as in a neon sign's advertising for a beer brand. 

Either way, it communicates information – that is the pertinent fact. Likewise, this definition could include higher-resolution forms of communication, from tweets to paging to text messaging to faxes to emails to phone calls, videoconferencing, radio broadcasts, televising, blogging and beyond. In doing so, one could consider the implications of media in a more focused way, even when stretching the definition to include railways, airplanes and other McLuhanian actions (4) – all the while rejecting the body extension metaphor.

What then of the waltz? McLuhan would include this dance form as an extension of mankind (22), but does it fit our definition? Is it a tool for communicating with others? It certainly contains and communicates more information than the lightbulb – it communicates class cues as well as indications of rhythm and more, just as jazz communicates musical education, rhythmic choices, outsider status, state of industrialization (27) and more, depending on the context. Similarly, personality would satisfy both definitions, just as Calvin Coolidge's personality was defined as “cool” by newspapers during his presidency (29). That his personality conveyed information is what is important, not that it was an extension of his body.

Seeing media as encompassing all communication tools may not be revolutionary nor original, but it is valuable. It can be broad enough, for example, to count bookseller displays as a media. Walking by a bookstore that has books in the window criticizing president Obama and featuring Dick Armey's Tea Party Manifesto, for example, conveys information about the bookstore's values at the very least. Seeing this book display as a medium also allows for McLuhan's idea of multi-level meida - “The 'content' of any medium is always another medium” (8) in just the same way that the window display's content is the books whose content is the words and pictures within them. 

How many people, though, would pass this window without questioning the ideology behind the inclusion of these titles? No doubt a majority, for as Marshall also observes, “any medium has the power of imposing its own assumption on the unwary... but the greatest aid [to avoiding] this is simply in knowing that the spell can occur immediately upon contact” (15). While McLuhan is almost hauntingly perceptive about media, he just needs to let go of his anthropomorphism and instead just see media as tools for communication. While not clever, this definition is both accurate and a useful jumping off point for critiquing these communications.