Post here your thoughts on Remediation. Please also include which chapter(s) you read from the middle section so that I have a sense of what interests people.
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Post here your thoughts on Remediation. Please also include which chapter(s) you read from the middle section so that I have a sense of what interests people.
Again, I felt like there were two paths I could take — with the books message (the one I pulled out and interpreted, I guess that is a form of remediation?). One viewpoint I felt like I read seemed to sound like extinction almost or like a caterpillar it must die so the butterfly can be born. The book talked about thoughts of museums going away and libraries as everything can be handled through the “window” known as the computer. That seemed very barren and isolating to me, too extreme of a viewpoint that I would not want to walk down.
The other viewpoint seemed to talk about something I felt was like off spring or current state “mash-ups”, or software versioning. The “original” does not go away — the next version comes into play. Some of us still use older versions of software and the new and the old still exist. Some of us read books some of us read blogs and they both still exist. Online today people are taking one application “mashing it up” with another to create a different application and they all exist together and separate. The book walked through books, radio, TV, film photography, painting, the web, etc. All of these types of media still exist, yet all of these media borrow from one another, build on one another as well as stand on their own.
The path I choose is the remediation where things change but there is room for all versions and people still like going to the movies, the libraries and the museums for the emotional pleasure gained by the tactile experience and the social experience. It just sounds too isolationistic to choose the path that says me and my computer is all I will ever need.
You asked us to tell the two chapters we read so I read the two chapters on the WWW and Ubiquitous computing because they apply most to what I do on a day-to-day basis. Also the icon that looked like a play button communicated to me “movement forward”. However, its use meant forward and backward. I got confused by this usage in the book, it seems distracting and unnecessary. I got it was trying to be “hypertext” like, but it just didn’t work for me.
I read (or reread, thanks Derrida) this book last semester and after I reread it this time it made quite a bit more sense. It does seem odd how hypermediacy and immediacy tend to blend in to each other at times. In web development and game development as well I see both being used. For example some developers try to make interfaces that are completely transparent. Like the controller for the Wii. And, on the other hand you have developers making controllers that have a plethora of buttons on them.
What interests me most about Bolter and Grusin is their thinking behind remediation in that all media is just remedia. And, in particular how the effects of immediacy can be seen in MUD’s and chatrooms etc. It seems as though Bolter and Grusin are concerned with the immediacy that is becoming overwhelming in the space of the internet. However, I am under the impression that if all media is just remediated then any issues in the past will also solicit themselves in any new media. “…the question arose whether one could be raped in cybersex” (p260). It all depends on the definition of rape, doesn’t it? The immediacy in virtual spaces that comes about from pretending to be a different character does not make someone more probable of a person to commit a crime in real life … A crime that they might pretend to do in the virtual world. I won’t go on a rant here about government policies and censorship in video games, but for the sake of argument I will say the immediacy of the internet and gaming causes some people to be a little too paranoid.
The sections in part II that I read were on the World Wide Web and Computer Games.
(I read the mediated spaces and television sections of Part II.)
I want to preface this entry by saying that this was the first book we’ve read where I found myself shaking my head in agreement most of the way through the text.
This whole idea that new media is simply old media that has been “remediated” really makes perfect sense to me. All one has to do is look at any number of newspaper Web sites to see this in action. The Dallas Morning News is a perfect example. Though the site does include some Web only content, the site is primarily a repository for what has already appeared in the newspaper. Yes, the paper does put breaking news online, but even then, readers don’t get the full story until the paper comes out the next day. The site serves as another vehicle to get the same information out rather than its own independent entity.
Most Web sites for newspapers, television and radio stations work this way. Rather than provide original content, they repurpose the existing media and slap it on a Web site. There’s no additional reporting or legwork. It’s simply a way for those companies to reach an audience that may not read the actual printed newspaper or watch that particular news broadcast. So, rather than ignore that segment of the population, they take the exact same material and repurpose it for the Web.
One area where this differs is when it comes to breaking news. In this area, rather than copying “old media,” it’s pretty apparent that newspapers and TV stations alike are trying to play catch up with the “new media.” In the age where everybody wants to be first, most are turning to the digital world to provide readers/viewers with the immediacy that they supposedly crave. This used to be the realm of TV journalism, and before that print journalism, but both are cavemen compared to the speed and immediacy available online.
With that in mind, is it even possible to create anything that’s not remediated? Or is the future of journalism dependent on continuing to remediate the old forms to meet the needs and demands of society?
Great book, it is one of many books so far that I have been reading that captures my interest in the study of new media and the idea of how human behavior alters when utilizing the digital forms of media. I know that this book was printed about eight years ago but the ideaolgy still hasn’t changed. We are at a point where people has this need for immediacy and control and to go beyond the “self” as the book discussed. Second Life is one great example where users have greater control and have the ability to be indentified beyond what society deems acceptable. Even with network communications such as blogs, forums, and social networks users have greater freedom in controlling information beyond what television, newspaper and radio provides.
The idea of convergence is heavily emphasized, but how long will we have this existence where various forms of media exist alongside with one another? I mean I can understand that we will always maintain the high value of traditional art with digital art but what about how we communicate information? Will we always rely on newspaper or television? Already users get information not only on computers but cellphones as well. Youtube and Digg are a few sites where you can obtain information as well as transmit them. Also, semiotics is starting to play a key role in communication.
Already people communicate with one another via emoticons, avatars, video clips and sound clips; I think convergence of multimedia is occurring here.
At the present, I think convergence of the past and new media relate with one another very well but a couple years down the road, it could be that print media would be considered a novelty rather than a tool and video games will be a ever growing communications mainstay for trainig and education rather than a medium for entertainment.
I read Chapter 5, “Digital Photography” and Chapter 7, “Digital Art.” Originally, I was going to post on my thoughts on the hypermediated, hypertextual design and construction of the book itself but decided instead to focus my energies on digital photography and montage which pulls from both of the chapters I read in section two. There is a lot I would take issue with in these two chapters. I can see that digital photography is a bridge between or a hybrid of analog photography and computer graphics (esp. computer photorealism). I can also see that digital photography is “…an attempt to prevent computer graphic technology from overwhelming the older medium” (106). But I can only buy into this to a certain degree. I would argue that digital photography is a natural and logical “remediatory” technological step from analog photography and that it would exist even without any competition from computer graphic technology and photorealism. The idea of the inherent immediacy of analog photography is, in my opinion, an illusion based, if not a fallacy or untruth then at least a partial truth. And I would amend the notion that analog photography truthfully and accurately represents or reproduces “reality”— implied in the statement by Niepce, “the Daguerrotype is not merely an instrument which serves to draw Nature; on the contrary it is a chemical and physical process which gives her the power to reproduce herself” (qtd. 27)—to the idea that analog photography can truthfully and accurately represent or reproduce “reality.” Perhaps the only time the camera is faithful to “reality” as such was in the beginning of its use or when people simply send their film in to be developed by a mechanical, automated process. Both the analog and the digital camera have the feature of automaticity which yields or lends itself to the logic of immediacy. It is in the processing of the image, with chemicals and techniques for analog cameras and bytes, bits, and pixels for digital cameras that the photographer/developer/artist can either choose to be faithful to reality or (re)mediate reality. It is interesting that people are so disturbed that digital photographs can be altered when photographs have always been altered. How is it that simply knowing that it is possible that a photograph is or might be altered then disturbs or disrupts the immediacy or the transparency? Is it just that a slight psychological shift or rift—caused by doubt—doesn’t allow certain types of viewers the experience of immediacy? There is a very broad spectrum in digital photography that ranges from unaltered digital images that faithfully represent or replicate reality and provide immediacy, to seamlessly altered photographs that “appear” to represent reality, to hypermediated modernist digital photomontage that have little to do with reality. I would also argue for the notion that an altered photograph, just like a piece of fiction, can more closely capture or reproduce “reality” than can an unaltered photograph, or a work of non-fiction. The authors discuss this idea in their presentation of the work of Mexican digital photographer Pedro Meyer, “With his digital reworkings, Meyer remediates the traditional photograph into an image that is supposed to be more authentic…” (109).
After re-reading “Remediation,” I think I am more jaded in my view of the book. And I blame David P. 100%. There’s an overkill on terms and this time around, I felt that the thesis of the book was lost among the critique. Possibly because I already knew what I was reading that I didn’t feel as challenged to dig into the book to find the meaning, rather to pick it apart as much as possible (which turned into a negative perspective).
The sections I read were Computer Games and World Wide Web. I read Television and Film last year, and I still think Bolter and Grusin are full of crap on the Film section. The excerpt from Laura Mulvey is still completely off the mark (pg. 282).
Now I’m not saying that Bolter and Grusin are completely wrong. They introduce some good verbage, immediacy, hypermediacy, remediation, to the lexicon of New Media speak. Their train of thought on how we should look into the gemology and analyze the terms of New Media, analyze the discourse of the object, it follows a good path. Media has become more immersive, more interactive, and more realistic. Initially I read pieces of “Remediation” for a film theory class in 2005. Even now, what Bolter and Grusin have to say make sense.
Here’s my issue: overuse and misuse of terms. Particularly with hypermediacy and immediacy. You see these terms thrown around constantly, in contradiction of one another, and their definitions are switched. Page 84 is a good example (maybe 31 and 32, and 49). How can you link immediacy with hypermediacy after defining them as near polar opposites?
My second issue is that New Media tends to praise this book for coming up with a couple of terms for things we’ve been trying to explain for years. It’s a good book, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t take the thesis and theories all the way there. It follows the line of-here are the terms, here’s how to apply them, here’s how to apply them to self and out of the box thinking. They don’t bring anything new to the table to allow New Media to digest.
My flicker moment:
Jaded is the word for Remediation.
The mediated/remediated concept is very insightful. It seems it could function as a unifying theory of all media. This approach provides a logical construct from the spoken cosmological myths of antiquity to the present day celebrity mishaps in your favorite news website. It also seems in agreement with previous class discussions of cascading contexts from a technology perspective parallel to the political and social contexts around a text (and everything is a text.) Bolter and Grusin even tied in Wunderkammer as an example of furniture hypermediacy that today is a webpage.
I was thinking about this driving my car today – my car is a remediated model-T, a remediated stagecoach, a remediated donkey cart, which was a remediated walk with a backpack. The concept seems so obvious…now, like duh. “What remains strong in our culture today is the conviction that technology itself progresses through reform…” as remediation.
What I really like the Bolter and Grusin system is how it ties together all manner of media, and a great deal of human activity. It puts artistic expressions on a continuum in a most helpful way for understanding them. They gave the desire for experiencing these media the name of immediacy and described its relations to transparency and hypermediacy. A question perhaps beyond the book is why, why do we want this immediacy? Is it part of our nature to be explorers? Perhaps immediacy is a way we can share the exploration of others as most of us toil to keep the lights turned on.
I read the Games and Web chapters. I found the analysis of first person shooters as monitoring functions most interesting: “Ideologically, the player is asked to defend or reestablish the status quo, so that even though the violence of the games appears to be antisocial, the ultimate message is not.” Therefore, players of Quake are likely to be conservatives and republicans. (Maybe these games are dangerous after all
)
On Remediation.
(Chapters chosen: Digital Art and Film)
Remediation as an exchange, or a form of communication, that takes place between different media, is a simple and effective way to describe the manner by which these cultural entities manage to coexist and ultimately compete for attention while establishing themselves as legitimate in the face of the media that came before.
Furthermore, the text also seems to demonstrate that, in order to function, different media depend on each other to borrow concepts with which to justify their existence; after all, how would we pretend to make sense of them, and, more importantly, how would these new media be marketed and distributed without anything to relate them to, without any points of reference?
In addition to this, the text makes a very good case of showing how each media is just a natural progression, an elaboration or an enhancement of the media that came before (but if this is case, wouldn’t it be pointless to consider them as separate?) Finally, the logic behind, and examples of, the concepts of immediacy and hypermediacy are also very clear (surprisingly clear I should say, or is it suspiciously clear?).
One last thing, perhaps just a small detail, but still, one that I couldn’t get out of my mind. On the Digital Arts chapter, I was surprised to find that the authors completely ignored vector generated art and focused their attention entirely on raster images (bitmaps, or images represented through pixels) without any explanation on their part for this absence.
I read a few of the chapters in the middle, but by far, the most interesting was film. Bolter & Grusin define the “Hollywood Style” as “in which the point of view moves back and forth according to the narrative rhythm of the scene.” As a film and television editor myself, I can tell you that this style is collectively called “narrative.” It’s the style of most dramatic films, not necessarily the sole domain of Hollywood.
I think B&G shot themselves (or each other) in the foot when they failed to mention the immediacy and hypermediacy of cinema verite. In fact, the film chapter is so North American-Disney-Hitchcock-centric that it doesn’t take advantage of the other film styles beyond (what the film industry calls) narrative— including cinema verite, experimental, French new wave (particularly Truffaut and Varda) or avant garde styles of film (although avant garde and experimental are mentioned briefly). But at least they mentioned the Salvador Dali sequences in Spellbound.
The cinema of attractions section was interesting in how it relates today. I’m not convinced that narrative film superceded the cinema of attractions (p156) insomuch that television literally took the cinema of attractions away from film. Ernie Kovacs, Candid Camera, Milton Berle, Your Show of Shows, all of the programs of early television remediated the old cinema of attractions. And we see it today on the web with YouTube.
Lastly, a word about “realistic characters.” I have yet to see a realistic character come out of a computer. I saw Jurassic Park and bought into the dinosaur thing just as much as when I saw the T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. If you’re recreating a crowd scene (Gladiator) I can pretend that the tiny characters in the background are real. But describing Toy Story as “visually convincing?” Ugh, I’m hypermediating all over the place…
It’s hard to pick a single point in this text on which to write. After reading the Web and Convergence chapters, I find the theory more compelling. (Surprise!!) When the writers bring the discussion around to Derrida and say there is no mediation, only remediation, my world shifts a bit. I mean, “a medium is that which remediates” (65), but if there is no first mediation how can anything remediate? I’m not lost on the remediating reality, just a bit confused on how such a blanket definition can work.
By the medium definition, paint is only a medium when it creates images, right? Not when it covers a wall in lieu of wallpaper? Since it doesn’t replace or otherwise change the use of the wall, it’s just paint. But the human body is a medium because we can put things on and in it to change the way it looks. Actually, to bring it back to a more (and false) natural look? It seems that the silicone, collagen and Botox should comprise the media, since they are changing things, while the body acts more as the canvas. Or is the plastic surgery the medium and all the rest just paint?
If the Internet remediates books and film, and books and film remediate reality then plastic surgery should remediate the reality of being 18 to 20 years old. The body IS the reality, so I’m having trouble coming to terms with the body as medium rather than canvas or text. Unless we consider the natural processes of growing and aging remediation, but the authors spoke specifically to weight lifting, cosmetic surgery and gender reassignment surgery, not to anything that happens without technological help. So if the only thing the body remediates is itself, and the authors accept natural processes as remediation, we’re good. But if they are saying that the human body remediates plastic surgery rather than plastic surgery remediating the body, I’m confused.
Perhaps this isn’t as relevant to the broad discussion of the book as some comments, but I something struck me when I read the passage that I quote below. I had to come back to it and read it again to put my finger on just what it was that was so odd about it in the first place, however, because it was so subtle. On reading Remediation, it is necessary to take note of the year in which it was published: 1999. This is, of course, clear upon reading many of the passages about the internet, which, consequently is probably the medium I am most interested in discussing. The internet has had ten years to grow and mature in our culture, and has arguably matured more than any other medium discussed in the book.
That said, I do agree that “media have the same claim to reality as more tangible artifacts.” By “more tangible artifacts” I assume the author means something like the broken pottery dug up at many archeological sites. Our media will certainly be what future cultures judge us by. But the author doesn’t site pottery specifically, even though that might capture a similar meaning. The “more tangible artifacts” in question are “airplanes and buildings,” which, in isolation of other references, will remind almost any American of 9/11. This is incredibly prophetic (for lack of a better word), especially given the role of the media in 9/11. In hindsight, the meaning of this statement takes on a whole new light. Now, instead of being just gigantic objects, we have an horrific event in our minds as we read this. What is essentially being said is: “photographs, films, books, newscasts, etc. are as real as 9/11.”
I forgot to reference my quote: page 18.
(I read the digital photography and digital art sections)
The first thing I would like to comment on is the format of the book. I thought the layout was complimentary to the subject matter, and the way “links” were worked in made this an example of the types of texts we are focusing on for this class, as well as an informative critical text. The reading was very clear, and I didn’t struggle with their use of language.
Secondly, I had some issues with the way photography was discussed. As a photographer and someone who has researched much in the way of visual truth in photography, I struggled with the argument that photography “conceals both the process and the artisit” (p 25) and “overcame subjectivity in a way painting could not do” (p 26) and even the further argument that photography “removed the artist as an agent who stood between the viewer and the reality of the image” (p26). Photography is still a very subjective medium. The photographer chooses what to represent, and his bias comes through as a result. The “reality of the image” does not truly exist, in most cases, as compositions are changed to create a more dramatic image, and there are instances throughout the history of photography that involve deception, trickery, and bias on the part of the photography to achieve an intended perception from the viewer. For example, when Edward S. Curtis depicted images of Native American tribes grinding corn in traditional “native” attire, he wasn’t really telling the truth about these tribes, as most of the images involved props that he brought along with him, and often the props he used were from a different tribe. The images were fueled by nostalgia, as most of these cultures were already assimilated at the time the images were made. It is difficult to say that his bias and subjectivity did not come into play. This is only one example of how photography has been used to achieve a certain emotion from the viewer. I could go on about this subject for ages, with many more examples, but I will end my discussion here!
I’d like to comment about the Digital Art chapter in Section 2. I felt confused at first, but have later resolved myself to accept their distinction between digital art and electronic art. Bolter and Grusin make a fine-line distinction between digital art and electronic art. The define digital art as pixel plus application (rather than a more traditional medium such as oil). Not unlike digital art, they define electronic art using digital art as just one type of medium that might be in an electronic art installation. More simply, that electronic art may consist of video, audio, still images and virtual reality pieces.
My initial question was, “Are the lines between the two (digital art vs. electronic art) blurring as the use of graphic-types of WYSIWYG applications rises?” However, upon further review, the take-away I got from the chapter was that electronic art contains some higher level of interaction. While both digital art and electronic art might be featured in a gallery or mediated space, the authors claim that electronic art requires some extra effort from the viewer in order to capture its full essence or intention.
I’m curious to see what the differences are between digital art and electronic art when we move them in to a hypermediated space like a virtual environment.
“The Representation of one medium in another is Remediation.”
I read that and thought to myself “isn’t the representation of one medium in another “representation”? Obviously the goal of Remediation is to show that objects are recycled, and then used in other media objects. Remediation would just be another word, a synonym of representation. Now, do I believe “there is nothing new under the sun”? Yes, however, in explaining that I would have to explain that all materials and all experiences have been had, but, not necessarily by everyone, and definitely in the same way that everyone else has experienced it. Many times at the site digg.com, I will see a story and go to the Digg page for it. Inevitably, someone will post a comment and a link that the story is old and had been submitted before. To retort that, there is always someone that will say “I have not read this story, so it is new to me.” To me that would be a closer explanation of remediation, that is, when media is used again to represent itself, not another media.
“Convergence is Remediation under another name, and the Remediation is mutual: the Internet refashions television even as the television refashions the internet.”
If, by the definition given by the author that Remediation is the “usage of one media by another” then it cannot be convergence. Wired and Wall Street Journal were talking about two different issues. Wired was talking about the demise of the browser, and Wall Street Journal was addressing the monetizing of the internet. The author believed that Wired believed in hypermediacy. Hypermediacy as described by the author earlier has no beginning, middle or end. Wired was talking about “the end” of the browser. That would be an end. If the convergence of telephone, television and the computer is remediation, that would mean that those three would become transparent in each other and that something new would be created. Those three cannot be remediated into each other, by mere definition of remediation, they would cease being telephone, television and the computer, and become x, x and x. They would converge into something new, not ride parallel next to each other as remediation would define.
Convergence and Remediation are not the same. Convergence is the linking up of two technologies, such as gmail and gtalk being accessible in the same browser window. Remediation would be am IM client being built into my Gmail page.