Dead
Media | 0.01-02.0 | 02.1-04.0
| 04.1-06.0 | 06.1-08.0 |
08.1-10.0 | 10.1-12.0 |
Dead Media Working Notes 00.4
Dead medium: Children's Dead Media
From SeJ_AT_aol.com (Stefan Jones)
A lot of the Dead Media examples Bruce provided are from the
deep dark past. Here are some from a more recent epoch...
kid media from when I was growing up, now dead and forgotten.
Noninteractive Multimedia for Kids
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Film Loops
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A proto-VCR contraption, developed for schools. The media was a film
cartridge: An endless loop of super 8mm film in a sealed, asymmetrical
transparent plastic case. The player was about the size of a carousel-
type slide projector. Operation was marvelously simple; the operator
merely jammed the cart into a slot in the side of the projector and hit
play. I seem to remember a reverse and still frame setting.
There was no sound; running time was about five minutes.
My high school had a few dozen of these; the ones I remember involve
demonstrations of biological processes (cell division, metamorphosis,
reptile homeostasis). There was also one of "Galloping Girdy," the bridge
in Washington state that wiggled itself to death.
Major flaws: Bulbs burned out frequently; my teachers took about five
tries to get the cartridge inserted properly.
Kiddie Film Strip Projector
---------------------------
When I was a kid, a cousin got a swell visual storytelling gadget for
christmas. The projector was a TV-shaped box with a rear-projection
screen up front and a turntable up top.
The media was a 35mm film strip enclosed in a stiff plastic holder;
I seem to remember these "sticks" having gear teeth along one side.
Each stick was accompanied by a 45 RPM (?) record. There may have been
nine or ten slides per "show."
Operation was not quite foolproof. The stick was inserted in a
slot up top, and the corresponding record queued up; lots of leeway for
error and accidental breakage, there. Once inserted properly, the stick
descended into the machine, one frame height at a time; this in itself was
fun to see. I don't know what synchronized the sound and pictures, but it
worked quite well.
The stories were kid stuff: Raggedy Ann & Andy, etc. The one that
interested me most at the time was a quickie adaption of Doyle's
_The Lost World_. Very dramatic. The "production values" of the stories
were pretty good: Nice narration and music, plus brightly colored cartoon
artwork.
ViewMaster Knockoffs
--------------------
I was going to describe the Viewmaster here, but I recently
learned that the things are still in production! Indeed, gift shops at
historical landmarks and scenic wonders still carry Viewmaster reels for
touristas to bring home.
I find this really remarkable. Who would buy the things, in this age of
Game Boys and cynical, post-literate youngsters? Perhaps they've become
"old fashioned" enough to be acceptable to Amish families. (After all, the
classic Viewmaster ran on ambient light, and the reels were strictly
rated G.)
While the Viewmaster struggles on, its many variants and knockoffs have
passed on. Here are a few:
-- Viewmaster itself released a "talking" version when I was a kid; I think
it had small strips of magnetic tape next to each slide. The viewer was a
beast, from what I remember; it had to contain a tape player, batteries
and loudspeaker.
-- I remember a friend getting a knock-off of the viewmaster. The media
were rectangular cards, and inserted into the viewer vertically. Notches
along the edge allowed the advance mechanism to get a grip on the card.
This strikes me as a much saner scheme than the Viewmaster proper,
which had circular reels.
-- Another knockoff, which I remember being advertised on TV under the
name "Captain Stereo", also had rectangular cards. This variant had no
slides; the color pictures that formed the stereo pairs were simply
printed on the card! I imagine the viewer somehow projected light on the
front of the card.
Portable Film Viewers
---------------------
At least one company offered a kiddie film viewer when I was a youngster.
Light was provided by the sun or a handy light bulb; the film was advanced
by a hand crank.
The carts, each about the size of a had a minute or so's worth of 8mm
film. The only one I remember was an excerpt from a Mickey Mouse
cartoon.
I've asked some friends to think about Dead Media. I'm getting some
interesting feedback. Someone mentioned Teddy Ruxpin, the animatronic
story-telling bear (who had two chances at life before snuffing it, and
whose mechanism is still begging to be hacked and exploited for dadaist
purposes), and QXL, the quiz robot. Both of these casette droids are
_toast_, and these are just two of a growing legion of interactive dolls,
video-watching puppies, and space fighters that react to stuff on
cancelled TV shows. These things are _really_ dead; unlike, say, an orphan
computer platform, there's no audience of obsessed users willing to churn
out new software for these.
If this trend continues, we'll no doubt someday see semi-sapient robot
robot things, perhaps in the form of animals with pee and spit-up proof
plush shells, languishing unused in closets for lack of new programs. Or,
maybe, covered in green vinyl and reprogrammed to do yardwork.
***************
Somewhere between live media and dead media is ephemeral media,
something that might deserve a passing comment, if only to contrast it to
the really dead stuff. Example: I've been working for a multimedia
company. I get lots of trade junk mail. Every once in a while I get a thick
envelope with a folding cardboard and plastic filmstrip viewer . . . a really
nifty item. But after looking at the attached film strip once (I've seen 'em
advertise things like monitors, virus removers and data conversion
services) the thing's garbage. The thing's too simple to become "dead," but
its usefulness is pfft!
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Dead
Media | 0.01-02.0 | 02.1-04.0
| 04.1-06.0 | 06.1-08.0 |
08.1-10.0 | 10.1-12.0 |