“The numerical coding of media and the modular structure of a media object allow for the automation of many operations involved in media creation, manipulation, and access. Thus human intentionality can be removed from the creative process, at least in part.” (32)
The new media element of automation by Manovich struck me the most. It draws fear and offense from the idea of not needing human interaction to create art. Many people would criticize it, saying artificial intelligence is not (yet) capable of what humans can do, think, and manipulate, but I would disagree otherwise. As someone who has been exposed to technology and electronic forms of media for the majority of my life, I can see how the “human” can be taken out of the equation. For example, in photography’s earlier stages, settings would have to be manually adjusted according to the amount of light available. It was a constant process of test and trial. Nowadays, one can simply buy a point-and-shoot that eliminates the need to manually adjust altogether. The camera is preprogrammed to use what it sees as the optimal setting. Furthermore, many photo editing softwares including Photoshop have an “auto” feature where it will adjust things such as brightness and curves for you.
While I do acknowledge what is happening, I see automation more as a supplementary tool than a replacement. After all, it is us in the end who programmed these softwares to act in such ways because they were desirable to us at some point in time.