Stories in Digital Media (SIDM) was a blog run by a few students and the professor Frieder Nake, part of the former Digital Media programme in the state of Bremen, Germany. By the end of the first decade of the millennium, the web and digital technology were advancing at an unprecedented pace in the social and artistic sphere. Developments were exciting, and we kept a log of some events and took time to reflect.

What you see here is a rendition of the content as it was back then, in a different, static archival representation. Enjoy this glimpse into a hopeful and exciting past.

Stuff that may be relevant for the Digital Media programme in Bremen.

And then?

· Katja Langeland · in Internals Rant
This morning a friend of mine asked me the following questions:
What is it, that you are studying?
For what is it for?
What can you do with it after your graduation?
Honestly, I did not really know how to answer these questions efficiently let alone satisfyingly. I mean, of course I have a personal plan, but this is not digital media as a pure thing - as digital media is a mixture of different disciplines and backgrounds. There is not one intended final use case or scenario for what we are studying. There is no job called "Digital Media Guy or Girl". Anyhow, I struggled to give at least a small hint about what digital media is and for what it can or could be used for as I simply did not know where to start explaining. Most people just want to get a very short answer. Maybe it would be better to avoid these questions after all or to make up some fake job description. How do you deal with these kind of encounters?

7 Comments

  1. valderama
    from a deductive point of view i propose that we all can be seen as creators of stories in digital media. when you create a video, an audio piece or a graphical work i would think that you can call that "a story in digital media". as well as a meaningful website or the designed interaction with an application can be seen as a story. our tools are different to the tools old designers had. but our goals are the same, we create stories for the (digitized) world.
  2. effzehn
    nicely said, walter.
  3. drnn1076
    I'm not sure about the idea of "story", as a way to define DM. It would mean that media are a narrative medium and it would immediately mean that any meaning express in DM is literary or at least representational. Even though I find this term very nice, I might assert "content" as a more general and inclusive companion for DM. Indeed once you study "Media", you get involved with tools or devices that carry out information in a communication system, now this information is a story? if yes, then anything that is not a story, as content, is out in this definition. So abstract-thematics and platforms-tools will be out of the scope for DM. The digital word there brings new ways in distribution, context, consumption and exhibition in/for media that should be analysed in more detail, specially our responsibility as Authors (thinking in pyramidal control structures) and borders between Authorship and consumption (Topological control). Now definitions are always complicated specially when a new field is open. It takes time to be accepted and recognised by the community. Nowadays it seems to me more complicated due to the politics of speed that dominates culture. But this is a discussion for another post. To sum-up, I would answer simply that DM is aimed at working in digital platforms for "Content" distribution, then I would explain with digital platforms I'm working on and which sort of contents I'm creating on these platforms. Basically following Goethe: What, How and Why.
  4. admin
    Well, I understood the term "stories" completely different. We create stories means we change, alter and renew the digital medium. We rethink, contribute, criticise and create. This process of working with(in) this area can be regarded as a story. It is a rather poetic point of view. What I do not like to be reduced to is just a bare content creator for we are also engineers and create platforms, not only content. Actually, connected to my this profession I am not a content creator at all, maybe more on a meta-level. This Blog is recently the only content-platform I am contributing to. And I just asked myself, if I, as a designer as well, am a content creator while designing? Do I just design frameworks? Where does content start?
  5. klangeland
    We are discussing now form and content. I believe both is equally important in our field. Frieder once said, Digital Media was also a way of thinking. It is not "just" a tool for storytelling. Its pure nature causes my confusion. When I was still working "in the arts", form and content were always important, sometimes my works lacked one of them more than the other. Within my studies now, I discovered (due to the distance i gained to the arts, for example) the growing importance of both factors. We deal with digitalized matters, signs, immaterial stuff, so to speak. And still we have to create meaning. We have to be more precise to code and design our messages. We are not just writers, programmers, artists, designers, whatever, we are more than that. Our way of thinking should be open and upwards compatible - in whatever way. And this is so hard for me to convey to "outsiders".
  6. valderama
    without being able to express it like that, i thought about a story in the way andre described it.(nicely said) and i would also add that we (as DM-people) create and induce meaning to whatever we work on. i agree to katja on that point. concerning the importance of form/content, i strongly believe in the 'form follows function' dogma, rather then weighting both of them equally.
  7. hvorange
    I do like the idea of story. Wether the right word was used is not so important. It brings the sence of a meaninfullness to our being here. It is like taking us to next level - thoughtful application of all that you accumulated. I mean you dont just study technical or art sides of media by fragments like on Bac level, but you actually put those various emelents to create a useful and complex piece. Don't we don't we? and that question that your friend posed to you is a hot question to all of us. Show me someone who did not get it.

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