Multimedia History and Resources

We live, unquestionably, in a multimedia society. The advent of new multimedia technologies encompassing audio, moving video, the written word, traditional video imagery, widespread choice between media, and user interaction have over the past 100 years radically transformed social relations in industrialized and to a certain extent non-industrialized societies. In this students’ guide to multimedia, we examine some of the history of multimedia, and direct the interested party to web-based resources for further research.

History of Multimedia

Because the term “multimedia” lacks a widespread, accepted definition, it’s difficult to peg down a “birth” of multimedia. By some measures, the masques of 17th Century England, which combined lavish spectacle, music, and performances for and by the nobility, can be classed as multimedia. Traditional theater performances of any kind could even be classed as multimedia, incorporating both a visual and an audio element at the same time.

In the arts, some of the first multimedia performances that we might recognize as such would come about in the early years of the 20th Century, when new, electrified technologies would transform the avant-garde arts of Europe. Futurists, Dadaists, surrealists, and others took the emerging technologies of speed and light and applied them to art rather than science. Largely inspired by Richard Wagner’s concept of gesamtkunstwerk (total art), these avant-gardists incorporated elements of music, painting, film, dance, theater, puppetry, sculpture, and even cuisine into their performances in ways that are jarring even today. Fernand Léger and George Antheil’s Ballet Mécaniquewas composed of experimental silent film soundtracked with music partially generated by airplane propellers. The Italian futurists advocated a “futurist cooking” in which different courses would be accompanied by different music, scented air would be pumped into the room, and colored light was used to provide mood.

The term “multimedia” was first used in 1966 by the songwriter and artist Bob Goldstein to describe his “Lightworks” project, a combination of music and visuals being performed in Long Island. Throughout the ’60s and ’70s, the accompaniment of visuals (especially slideshows) to music became referred to as multimedia. These early multimedia presentations in many ways anticipated the boom in music video that would take place in the early ’80s.

With the advent of personal computing in the ’80s and early ’90s, multimedia increasingly became associated with computers. Software offered new capabilities for user interactivity. Certain multimedia art forms in the past had incorporated interactive features; on the avant-garde level, Fluxus performances and happenings would invite the audience to participate, and on the pop level, improv troupes would ask for audience suggestions. But with software, the user interacted with the medium without there necessarily being a performer. Computers enabled a new level of interactivity, and moreover interacted with the medium not the performer.

Another layer of multimedia has emerged with the rise of the Internet. A wider variety of interactive media are available now than ever before, juxtaposing media in a vast array of different ways with different degrees of person-to-person and person-to-machine interaction. New technologies at present have the potential to incorporate the senses of smell and touch into the user experience. Potential also exists to create immersive, 3-D environments for user interaction.

  • A timeline of media from the University of Calgary establishes a historical perspective.
  • Guide to multimedia history from Griffith University in Australia.
  • The University of Minnesota’s media history project is an ongoing attempt to study the history of all media.

 

Multimedia: Present Uses

We’ve included some examples of how multimedia is changing modern life beyond pop culture, video games, social networking, and other forms of entertainment.

–Science and Engineering

Scientists and engineers use multimedia technology to better visualize the often difficult three-dimensional structures of molecules or the structures of mechanical objects that have yet to be invented. Multimedia allows for the computer modeling of physical and chemical forces that otherwise would be determined with mathematical equations done by hand. The incorporation of interactive technologies allows the engineer to see what would happen if a certain part of a design were modified, and allows for hundreds of complex mathematical operations to be performed in a single second.

–Medicine

Medical doctors and researchers use multimedia for the same modeling capabilities as scientists and engineers. Virtual surgeries, modeling of disease in the human body, and epidemiological modeling allow for new advances in disease cure and prevention. Doctors also use multimedia to improve the patient experience. The term “telemedicine” has been invented to refer to medical practice such as examination and counseling over a long-distance medium like video chat.

–Journalism

Multimedia can improve the experience of both the journalist conducting research and the audience interpreting a piece of journalism. Multimedia applications allow journalists to interface with and interview a wide variety of people that, due to constraints of space and logistics, they otherwise might have difficulty having extensive, in-depth conversations with. And the widespread dissemination of journalism on the Internet has allowed for the news reader to choose between a wide variety of information sources and interpret them in a panoply of different multimedia environments.

–Education

The exponential growth of the Internet allowed for a vast number of educational resources to become available to a wide number of people. In addition to functioning as a massive “library” of available information and content, the Internet and multimedia have fostered any number of more direct, educational techniques. These include multimedia educational portals with interactive features that appeal to young learners, online education programs, and free video lectures from some of the top universities in the world.

  • A class site from the Cronkite School covering multimedia journalism, filled with resources and course work.
  • Science has assembled a page on multimedia and the sciences.
  • MERLOT is a compendium of multimedia educational tools available for students and teachers
  • The American Telemedicine Association is a professional organization promoting quality telemedicine.

Further Reading

Here are some online, academic sources pertaining to the world of media studies and questions of how multimedia is changing the world.

  • A major challenge for educators is how to help people navigate and “read” multimedia. New Media Literacies is a foundation promoting multimedia literacy.
  • The New Literacies Collective also promotes multimedia literacy.
  • A summary of Marshall McLuhan’s The Gutenberg Galaxy, a text that helped to define media studies and the new media.
  • McLuhan’s guide to the value of different media forms, known as the “tetrad” is a critical concept when encountering new media.
  • A guide to cross-media communication, the concept of information being distributed across multiple media platforms.
  • Doing Media Studies is an academic introduction to the field of media studies.
  • Grant Strudley of the University of Reading has published a paper that studies multimedia literacy in British primary school children.
  • Psychological Science discusses the world of media psychology in a 2008 article.

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons