Understanding Hypermedia
by Bob Cotton and Richard Oliver Phaidon Press Ltd, London, 1993

This information is sourced from the introductory pages of Understanding Hypermedia by Bob Cotton and Richard Oliver. It is a valuable reference for those interested in this area, exploring the history of hyper media, applications, issues and aesthetics, the role and function of each media component, design and production of multimedia applications and many examples.

Multimedia is a new type of media experience resulting from the combination of television and computer technologies. Its essential ingredients are image, sound, text, animation and video. A major feature of interactive multimedia is the ability to access a piece at any point, with no predetermined beginning or end. It is a medium that is expected to dominate mass culture in the not too distant future.

Like a video system, a multimedia system has some form of display. This can be a television, a high resolution monitor and speakers, or a headset with a stereoscopic viewer and binaural headphones to provide a "world" of virtual reality.

As with video tape, a storage medium is required and this may be a computer disc, a CD and in the future, a fibre optic network which accesses massive information banks.

Finally, a multimedia system requires a means of interacting with and determining the material displayed, such as a remote control, a computer mouse, a touchscreen, or a body suit covered with sensors that allow the user to act in a computer generated virtual world.

History

What is known as interactive multimedia grew out of a wide range of parallel developments in the fields of art, film, television, telecommunications, digital optical storage, psychology and computer science. Key elements were the development in the nineteenth century of the telegraph and telephone networks and cinematography, in the twentieth century, the invention of television in the 1930s, the digital computer in the 40s and 50s and the emergence of the personal computer in the 70s. It was the convergence of these technologies in the late 70s and 80s that provided the framework for interactive multimedia.

Telegraph and telephone

The development of the electronic telegraph in the 1830s represents the beginning of a "cyberspace" infrastructure. Networks of telegraph wires spread throughout the world. Telegraphy initiated the era of electronic communications. However, the telegraph was a form of "distance writing" not "distance speaking". The invention of the telephone provided live voice communications (a virtual reality).

Cinematography

Early filmmaking recorded the theatrical experience to make it available to an audience much broader than that of the theatre. Film was the first audio-visual that involved "storage and delivery". By storing the theatrical experience, it was extended beyond the physical boundary of the stage. Film could convey experiences that live theatre could not, allowing film stories to take their audiences to the moon, or back in time to past events. In the 20s, due to the enormous popularity of radio, movies incorporated a soundtrack - multiple media.

Television

The development of television meant that sound and pictures could be electronically broadcast into people's homes, television sets could be turned off and on and there was a selection of channels. Television integrated radio, film, theatre, magazine, advertising, comic strip and newspaper providing a multiple media magazine of all these forms.

Computers

The development of digital computer technologies has allowed the fusion of media technologies. The earliest personal computers were available in the early 70s and only ten years later commercial soft ware for multimedia was available.

© Experimenta Media Arts. MESH #2 Summer 1993. MESH film/video/media/art is published by Experimenta Media Arts