introduction multimedia
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afterthoughts

The world of multimedia may be looked at in many ways. In fact, the phrase multimedia is too generic to be meaningful in any way. Nevertheless, multimedia has become a subject of interest for academia. This book has been written from an academic perspective. Let me clarify this perspective, to provide you with some context that might help you in understanding this book and use it more effectively in either education, research, or even your artistic endeavors.

As a starting point, let's look (again) at the media equation, quoted in section 2.3:

the media equation


We regularly exploit the media equation for enjoyment by the willing suspension of our critical faculties. Theatre is the projection of a story through the window of a stage, and typically the audience gets immersed in the story as if it was real.

This suspension of our critical faculties seems opposed to what we are used to in academic practice. And, indeed, there is an often noted conflict between the arts and the sciences, a conflict that the introduction of multimedia in the academic curriculum cannot resolve.

If we try to delineate the 'meaning' of multimedia more precisely, we might come up with pseudo-equation such as the following.

the multimedia equation(s)


multimedia = presentation + context

where presentation includes the sensory and aesthetic part and context everything else. Now, at the risk of getting too much involved in 'funny mathematics' we might define context by another series of pseudo-equations

where

  • convergence = data +platform + distribution
  • information = storage and retrieval
  • architecture = compression + components + connectivity
Clearly, and this is exactly what this exercise in funny mathematics intended to illustrate, this book is about the contextual aspects of multimedia. Contextual aspects that may be the subject of academic research.

Is there any hope to include the presentational or aesthetic aspects in the academic curriculum? Based on a thought experiment, that explored the possibility of algorithmic art and aesthetics,  [Art], I would say no. And as a matter of fact, I strongly disagree with a recipe-based approach to developing multimedia presentations, as seems to be popular in a number of the academic multimedia courses.

There is another shade of meaning that may be attributed to the notion of context, namely context of application. Evidently, multimedia has become a natural ingredient of almost any application you can think of. In 1998, I organized a course on multimedia for Ph.D. students, entitled Multimedia in Context. This course dealt with some of the issues in distributed multimedia and multimedia information retrieval, as well as applications in the publishing industry, travel advertisement and medical diagnosis. To announce the course, I used an image from medieval alchemy and a phrase characterizing 'perfect solutions'.

perfect solutions


Much more than the art of turning base metals into gold, alchemy is a system of cosmic symbolism. The alchemist learns how to create within a sealed vessel a Model of the Universe in which the opposing complementary forces of Male and Female, Earth and Air, Fire and Water attain the perfect synthesis of which gold is the emblem.

Risking obscurity at this point, I wish to equate multimedia with alchemy, to emphasize that the engineering of multimedia is an art that takes a lifetime to master. Repeating the quote from section 2.3:

multimedia engineering


"engineering is the art of moulding materials we do not wholly understand ... in such a way that the community at large has no reason to suspect the extent of our ignorance."

multimedia and culture

 This book was written for the new Multimedia and Culture curriculum at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. In particular, the book contains the course notes for the first year course

Multimedia and Culture


  • introduction multimedia
There are two follow-up courses:

  • Multimedia Authoring I -- Web3D/VRML
  • Multimedia Authoring II -- Virtual Environments
The first of these courses deals with the technology for creating 3D scenes and worlds (see appendix web3D), whereas the second is about providing intelligent services in virtual environments (as discussed in chapter 7 and appendix platform). These courses are also part of the master program multimedia, in which the focus is more on the technical aspects of multimedia.

In addition, Multimedia and Culture students are required to work on a multimedia casus to bring what they learned into practice, see appendix casus.

Apart from providing an introduction to a number of issues and research areas in the world of multimedia, this book also defines, in an implicit way, a research program that concerns the development and use of

virtual reality interfaces for multimedia information systems

All aspect covered in this book contribute, one way or another, to that (implicit) research program that may be classified under the heading of intelligent multimedia, of which a tentative definition is given in appendix platform. And, admittedly, there are many aspects that are not covered, in particular those that are related to more advanced virtual reality technology.

Now, you may ask what's Culture got to do with it? I wouldn't know. My focus is on multimedia, that is the scientific issues and the engineering of multimedia information systems.

A. Eliëns
[] readme preface 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 appendix checklist powerpoint resources director
eliens@cs.vu.nl

draft version 1 (16/5/2003)