Public news network: digital sampling to create a hybrid media feed

Abstract

A software application called Public News Network (PNN) is created in this thesis, which functions to produce an aesthetic experience in the viewer. The application engenders this experience by presenting a three-dimensional virtual world that the viewer can navigate using the computer mouse and keyboard. As the viewer navigates the environment she sees irregularly shaped objects resting on an infinite ground plane, and hears an ethereal wind. As the viewer nears the objects, the sound transforms into the sound of television static and text is displayed which identifies this object as representative of an episode of the evening news. The viewer "touches" the episode and a "disembodied" transcript of the broadcast begins to scroll across the screen. With further interaction, video of the broadcast streams across the surfaces of the environment, distorted by the shapes upon which it flows. The viewer can further manipulate and repurpose the broadcast by searching for words contained within the transcript. The results of this search are reassembled into a new, re-contextualized display of video containing the search terms stripped from their original, pre-packaged context. It is this willful manipulation that completes the opportunity for true meaning to appear.