New media is a broad concept that includes so many genres that it seems almost impossible to agree upon a set of rules that applies to the field as a whole. However, one truth ranks supreme in any argument over what is important in new media, it has to look good. Aesthetics in new media are so important because as a compilation/synthesis of several genres of art and information delivery, new media texts can cause a sensory overload. I would like to look at this issue through an even finer scope and discuss the problems facing aesthetics in new media advertising and what Nike did to overcome those shortcomings.
In his essay, “Post-Media Aesthetics” Lev Manovich discusses the issue of aesthetics as a separation between art (i.e. limited production film) and mass media (i.e. television). He alleges the difference between the two is the inherent differences between their intended audience. He then discusses how the line between them blurred and diminished with the introduction of new technologies, most importantly the Internet. He says “… the Web has dissolved (at least in theory) the difference between mass distribution, previously associated with mass culture, and limited distribution previously reserved for small subcultures and the art system.” What does this mean for the common person? It means easier access to art that was reserved for people of different sociological subgroups. It has also opened the flood-gates for advertisers to inject “high art” into advertising.
Nike is a company known for integrating fashion and sporting goods, including both apparel and equipment. This is made (almost painfully) obvious by the number of people you will see walking around wearing Nike athletic shoes or by looking at the packaging of their various products. However, I would like to discuss their blending of art and advertising. The Nike “swing portrait” is a one minute and twenty second video of Tiger Woods’ swing captured in extreme slow motion by a military grade camera. What makes this video distinctly artistic is both the quasi-synchronized cello music that follows Woods’ swing, and the simplistic nature of the film. Woods is dressed in all black, on a black background, and the extremely slow nature of the film gives the impression at points of him being a statue, rather than a movie person. As an advertisement the video highlights Tiger’s equipment, which happens to be all Nike.
There are other elements that solidify this advertisement as a piece of New Media. There are several selectable camera angles that interchange seamlessly without stopping the video. Some focus on a more artistic angle (watching the swing from the launch direction) and ones that focus more on advertising (such as watching the golf ball for the entire clip). You can also click on Tiger’s equipment to receive further information regarding that specific item or you can select to disable the highlights all together. This interactivity, combined with the integration of sound, video, and text surely proves this text as being part of new media. However, how does one define the aesthetic?
In golf advertising, much of what you find are advertisements riddled with specifications, quotations from the famous professional golfers who use similar equipment from the same brand and a series of nonsensical and meaningless jargon and specifications. It could be most simply described as being “in your face.” However, most advertisements of this nature at the time appeared in print form in magazines, video forms on television, or silent, static banners on websites. This New Media text was, at its time, very unusual for golf advertising. There are no facts or figures shown unless that specific piece of equipment was clicked on. Even then, the advertisement is placed subtly on the side of the screen while the video is paused, as to no disrupt the film. If you so desired (which I did, repeatedly) you could watch the most perfect and beautiful swing in golf over and over again, free of advertising while soothing cello music played in the background. Nike and its advertising agency broke the mold for golf advertising at the time and created a new aesthetic that placed form and function on equal planes. This advertisement was released in 2006 and since then almost all golf companies have bought into the “Nike advertising aesthetic” of form & function both in new media, and non-new media advertising.
According to the article “Advertising and New Media” by Jules Marshall, people are ready to embrace this turn in art-vertising (personally coined phrase). He states that art has long since been a factor in European advertising, and the integration of art and advertising in the context of new media is going to do wonders for the world of advertising, and it will no longer be “seen as having little intrinsic merit, being ephemeral, trashy and inconsequential.” This step towards the artistic is something that society as a whole is going to embrace, and will change the face of both advertising and digital media. As digital media further embeds itself into advertising, it will simultaneously work its way into our lives in other ways, including education.
