The New Multimedia

What is Multimedia?

How many hours a day are we spending consuming multimedia? Why does it matter how much multimedia we are consuming? These two questions define the flow of information, especially digital information in our internet age, and control the ways in how we receive information. Thus, we attempt to answer: Why does multimedia matter?

First, we have to create a definition of multimedia. What is multimedia compared 'single-media'? I think that a comparison can be made be between silent films and talkies. In a silent film, the flow of information comes only through one of our senses, sight, and is therefore limited by the speed of processing through this single sense. If there is dialogue presented through text, we cannot process it at the same time as the action. Think of captioned videos too, reading the text and watching the action could be presented at the same time, but anyone who enjoys foreign films will know that processing the text and action are individual thoughts, not simultaneous. Now take a look at talkies, videos with both sound and sight. We use two senses to engage in information. Dialogue can happen at the same time as action, and we are able to process it simultaneously as we process anything in real life simultaneously; we are not limited by the technology of the singular media. 

In this definition then, we are expanding the traditional definition of multimedia from "many mediums", the literal definition of the word, to many mediums that can be processed by the brain simultaneously. In this case, a multimedia work must be able to deliver more information in the same amount of time as a singular media work.  

The New Multimedia

To answer our question about why multimedia matters, I must explain the reason of this post. Social media, through the consumption of short videos (reels, shorts, TikTok) is a completely new form of multimedia. Short videos are no longer a part of the same medium as social media is broadly. Short videos hold this intermedium space, where news, entertainment, education, combine together to form an odd conglomerate of needs that were previously held by multiple mediums. It is also a step forwards into a multimedia that uses a third sense: the sense of sped up time. 

Short videos, looked at individually, is just another form of talkies, a video with sound. Taking sound and video together, the use of two mediums of our senses, to deliver information far faster than just reading text or listening to audio. However, the third sense of short videos can be seen when short videos are taken into the context of their consumption. Short videos are to be consumed one after another, with various topics, and designed to be consumed in great quantity. 

Short videos are not singular pieces of media. Because they are designed to be consumed with other short videos on the conglomerate of topics, they fill many niches. The evening news has been replaced with short videos on news. Movie trailers have been replaced with short videos with movie clips. Opinion pieces and essays have been replaced with short videos on everything from world events to financial analysis. Academic topics, and I say this very broadly, pop-academic topics, have been replaced with short videos on quasi-academic topics. 

The third sense of the short video is the speed in which you can watch a clip of a movie trailer, and then watch a clip of Mormons evangelizing, and then watch a clip of half clothed ladies dancing, and then finally a clip of the newest analysis on politics. Within the span of seconds, and through multiple sense of sight and sound, you are able to consume information at a speed in which, even a couple of years ago, you would have needed multiple webpages, books, magazines, and a trip to the local library.

Thus, we are now consuming a new form of multimedia. No longer bounded by two mediums, I argue that the speed of topics constitutes a new medium, the medium of time. The New Multimedia then advances the speed of information, of sight and sound, through the immense flow content that we are able to consume. 

Adverse effects of the New Multimedia framework: Prosumption and Profit

Going back to our questions Why does multimedia matter? and How many hours a day are we consuming multimedia? I want to propose a new question: Why does the (over) consumption of the New Multimedia matter? 

The New Multimedia (short videos) through the rapid rate of topics presented at such short amount of time, sounds like it gives us the opportunity to become educated with the topics of the world in mere seconds, with relative ease through our devices. And I would agree. It's true that the New Multimedia through short videos can be used this way, however, with the current setup of short videos as entertainment (and ad revenue), it is not being used in this way at all. 

The devices and frameworks that the New Multimedia is being produced on and consumed on promotes two key modes of operation: prosumption and profit. 

The New Multimedia is designed to be produced and consumed by the same people, an endless cycle of new items to consume and the same people to produce them, and then with this cycle of prosumption, money to be made through adverts. The only piece of the New Multimedia puzzle that is not made through prosumption. 

I want to end this post by zooming out to look at a wider picture of mediums and the rate of the consumption of information. Physical mediums such as the printed word, moving on to books with diagrams, silent films, talkies, videos --- and now advancing to such a rate of information transfer that the very topic of information is being blurred. We need to remove the New Multimedia from this prosumptive framework, a framework for generating profits, and into a framework to harness this new rate of information. A framework that provides us with the information that we need to live our lives more effectively and interconnected with each other. The New Multimedia should not be feared as destroying our brains and attention spans. A new technology always has that fear, but instead as the tool that it is to most effectively connect information to our brains. We just need to use it properly. 

The Modern Toronto Choral Sound: Concreamus' Sonoluminescence Concert

On February 17, I was fortunate enough to attend Concreamus' Sonoluminescence concert. Concreamus, a choir associated with the Modern Sound Collective, consists of forty singers between the ages of 18-30 performing works by young composers in the Toronto area. Their programmes usually feature a mixture of works by known composers (canonic) and new works, either commissioned by Concreamus, or written by members of the choir. 

However impressive Comcreamus' sound and technique are (most members are either professional musicians or very experienced singers), what enchants me the most is the quality of the compositions that they perform. The title piece, Sonoluminescence by Toronto-based composer Erik Kreem, wowed me both through its innovative compositional technique, but also through its defiance of the modern Toronto choral sound.

It's hard to describe the modern Toronto choral sound. With the geographic hyper-locality of certain compositions that embody the modern Toronto choral sound (now abbreviated as MTCS), there must be some sort of a combination of both compositional technique and 'heard-sound' phenomenon. When it comes to compositional technique, the biggest idea that shines through in the MTCS is repetitive parsimonious chromatic voice leading. These pieces often use techniques that spotlight long smooth phrases, often with the melody obscured in the middle voices or lacking a melody at all, and above all, very smooth and relaxing. However, 'heard-sound phenomenon', are the ideas that tie all of these works that embody the MTCS together. It is a set of philosophical ideals that these composers are unconsciously vying towards: the idea of being inoffensive. 

No gasps! The MTCS is writing inoffensive music. Pieces that are written this way? Perfectly fine, if not too fine to be completely indistinguishable from others in the same style. 

The conclusion being? Erik Kreem's work, Sonoluminescence did not fall into the trap of the MTCS style. Unafraid to be offensive, it stood out like Erik Kreem himself in a crowd: tall and bold. 

Music Theory Education and Public Perception: Lockhart's Lament

I just read an essay written by Paul Lockhart titled "The Mathematician's Lament", and after doing a little bit of research, found to be quite the famous and well-read text in the math community. Published online in 2002, it even got turned into a book a couple years later.

Lockhart's Lament, as most mathematicians lovingly call this essay, details a central philosophical question about math pedagogy: is math art or a set of instructions to follow? Lockhart argues that schools teach too much in the latter direction, eliminating the reason math exists in the first place: as a way to explain our curiosities about the world, rather than training students to become experts at assembling IKEA furniture, following a step-by-step guide to solve 'problems'. Lockhart further argues that math is being viewed in our culture as something 'rational thinkers' do, as opposed to what 'poetic dreamers' do. He pushes that people (and pedagogues) just don't understand what mathematicians do and therefore categorizes mathematics incorrectly into the 'rational thinkers' genre, when it really should be treated as an art.

Why do I bring his essay up? I think there are certain parallels to draw between his lament and the lament of many music theory pedagogues. Funny enough, there's a wonderful anecdote that Lockhart makes in the introduction of his paper, that compares mathematics to music! I will quote it below; I think it makes quite the compelling argument if we tweak it a little bit to encompass music theory more specifically. Read this with more of a sarcastic tone:

"Music class is where we take out our staff paper, our teacher puts some notes on the board, and we copy them or transpose them into a different key. We have to make sure to get the clefs and key signatures right, and our teacher is very picky about making sure we fill in our quarter-notes completely. One time we had a chromatic scale problem and I did it right, but the teacher gave me no credit because I had the stems pointing the wrong way."

Quite humorous, but is this not the way music theory is taught in schools? Do we not just learn skills that might apply to future forms of analysis and 'theorizing', but never do those activities from the beginning? As a personal anecdote, I have found that the public perception of music theory, and even the perception of music theory from other musicians is one of this 'skills-based, IKEA furniture' style of thinking. How do I spell a D augmented triad? What 'music-theory' do I need to learn to improve my guitar solos? What scale do I play over a Bb major seven chord? 

As much as these are valid questions, I would hardly categorize them as music theory questions. They are composition questions, performance questions, and more or less, opinion. Should music theory be taught for students to understand actual music theory that theorists are doing? 

Then again, I am not saying that these skills are useless! Of course, as mathematics needs students to understand basic arithmetic, so does music theory need students to understand how to spell chords and conduct roman numeral analysis. But it is the combination of these basic skills and ideas that should be introduced to students at a young age.

Ideas such as 'tonality', which I have found that students, even after studying roman numeral analysis, have no idea why they are providing these numerals to chords. That their tutors that robbed them of the joy and understanding that theorists have thought and defined certain chords having certain functions within a key, which is a key idea to understand all of the common practice!

Along with a knowledge of history, students possess skills, ideas, and facts, about this whole field of music theory! Why, then, do we still teach music theory like cooking class? Why do we take the joy of discovery, the joy of the art of music theory, out of the pedagogy? Teach ideas along with skills in theory class! So many ideas about music that students never get exposed to, ideas about music so prevalent, it's almost unethical for students not to learn about it! Put the music theory back in music theory class!