Thursday we will be discussing Bolter & Grusin’s book Remediation. You should read Part 1, and Part 3 as it is in these two chapters that they lay out the central argument. In Part 2 they look at several different art form and apply their theoretical lens to said form. So, while you can read all of Part 2 you only need to read 2 chapters which most interest you. (For example if you work on digital games and virtual words you might want to read those to chapters.) Leave your comment below, and mention which chapters from Part 2 you decided to read.
Update: Sorry for the lateness, but anyway here is the TED Talk which I referenced in class.
Remediation, according to Bolter and Grusin, is a defining characteristic of digital media. In other words, without remediation, digital media would be something completely different. Because of this, digital media is tied to all the other, earlier forms of media in such a way that it cannot escape. There will be no breaking from the past, no transcendence.
As Steven Holtzman argues, “Repurposing is a transitional step that allows us to get a secure footing on unfamiliar terrain.” This is dismissed as “comfortable, modernistic rhetoric,” but surely this claim deserves at least a second look (49). It is easy, looking back across all of the different mediums of the past, to see how each one has affected the next. Surely, these are all affecting digital media to various degrees. But what of the essence of each media? It is not argued that the defining characteristic of each media, going backward in time, is remediation. Remediation had a part to play, but there were always other things about each media that became their defining characteristics.
What are we to say, then, about digital media, no in its infancy? It is certainly more reliant on previous media than any other ever has been, that is obvious. But each new medium necessarily draws with it certain characteristics from the mediums before it in order that we may make sense of it. Computers, for example, did not make sense to ordinary people until the “desktop,” but how arrogant would it be to say that there will always need to be a connection like that to something else (as opposed to the arrogance associated with the idea that same connection might ever be broken)? In 500 years, when there is no need for paper or desks, will there still be desktops, folders, and documents? Surely these things are probably just working as a shoehorn to adjust a culture coming from one set of mediums to a completely different set.
Just because we might not be able to imagine what forms digital media might take in the future without making reference to past media in our minds, does that necessarily mean there won’t be some break made–where remediation ceases to be a defining characteristic–in digital media?
When this book was first written, there still were many complications and limitations in computer’s processing power. Today however, it is a different story. Technology is developing at such a fast rate, I believe that we(our body) have almost exceeded our ability to recognize and appreciate these. Ever since the film directors started to fondle with the motion picture technology, they tried their best to immerse their audience in a virtual environment. Capturing them, and making them think that they were part of the story line. One of the very early film, which only consisted of few random shots of train station, made the first film goers believe that there were people acting behind the screen. When there was a shot of a train approaching the screen, many believed that the train was going to come out of the screen and run over them. It is not that these people were just old-school.. but we have been, for a very long time been capable of creating a sucessful virtual environment, to which one can completely immerse he or herself in to. Only today, we have become very immuned, and desensitized in these things.. even with state of the art technology, we are able to differenciate between what’s real and unreal. Except, if we are trying to create a virtual world to be real… what is the point of creating something that already exist? Why do we pursue something that is already all around us? Virtual golf.. virtual shopping mall.. all these things can be done in real life. Quite simply put, we are getting lazy. So lazy to the point that we are no longer even satisfied with even the most enjoyable activities.
I mentioned earlier that our body is approaching the limit to appreciate the technology that is so rapidly developing before us. For example, fighter jets can handle enormous amount of G’s, it is the human pilots that is bottle-necking the capabilities of the machine. Human eyes are only be able to recognize up to roughly 60 frames per second. and we can only recognize so many pixels cramped in a digital display. Yet, our technology is pushing the limits of our physiology.
As people get more and more creative with how the GUI should work, I think we are becoming closer than ever before in developing a GUI without GUI.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysEVYwa-vHM
Bolter and Grusin describe the journey of the user or participant through the phases of immediacy, hypermediacy, and remediation throughout several years of social, economic, and technological change. The authors describe how remediation occurs in several mediums. For example, one achieves remediation of film through the acquisition of the immediacy of television. While film may be a remediated form of television, the remediation sustains parts or translates parts of the television to the film.
“Vocabulary terms of transparency, immediacy, hypermediacy and remediation” (Convergence) can be applied to the popular magazine Wired Magazine. Bolter and Grusin describes how the layout of Wired Magazine displays the characteristics of hypermediacy and the magazine’s the editors “evoke digital technology itself as the agent of change and are not concerned with exploring media as social, cultural, technical hybrids”.
Ubiquitous computing is described as remediation with transparency in the essence of “telepresence”. Unlike virtual reality, ubiquitous computing is the remediation of the desktop because everything object interacts fluidly with the user and this is a constant state of hypermediacy. Although Bolter and Grusin describe the ubiquitous transparency as a social state of constant monitoring or close circuit television as remediation, some distributive remediation could be considered specifically in microeconomics and social change.
In the book Remediation, the authors state “In order to create a sense of presence, virtual reality should come as close as possible to our daily visual experience.” The authors talk about the slowness of computers and less than perfect graphics that give us less of a sense of realness in the virtual world. Since this book has been written, computers are much faster and can render virtual worlds much closer to the real world. Aren’t we now in a place where virtual worlds are becoming so real that we can focus on being creative and making them less real? The goal of a virtual world was originally to make the virtual world as much like the human world as possible. Now that making virtual worlds nearly perfect like our real world has been accomplished, shouldn’t we now break away from reality and inject more creativity in virtual worlds? Can’t a virtual world be completely unlike the human world? Recent movies using the best computer technology have shown that virtual worlds don’t have to look too much like the real world. The key is the advancement of computer technology making for instance, a virtual monster appear different from anything we have seen in real life but the character becomes completely real with its human gestures and personality.
Irony is an evident theme in Bolster and Grusin’s “Remediation”. I found much of this book’s content, from the definitions/goals of immediacy and hypermedia to examples of remediation, to be paradoxical. Immediacy and hypermedia have the same goal: to achieve the “real”. However, the two applications attempt to achieve the real by contradictory means. Immediacy attempts to achieve the real by denying mediation, while hypermedia gets to the real by amplifying media to create a feeling a “fullness” which characterizes reality. Transparent media and hypermedia are in fact “opposite manifestations of the same desire” (53).
A second irony demonstrated in this book has to do with what we perceive as reality. While the goal of remediation is to create an experience that is closer to reality, what we perceive as “real” has nothing to do with reality. I drew an example of this from a guest lecture by Dr. Frank Dufour (ATEC Sound Design professor) in my Aesthetics of Interactive Arts class tonight. We listen to the radio and purchase mp3 players to get a real sense of music; we can listen to music our homes as if we are in a concert hall or at a live show. However, when music is recorded in analog, the intensity is distorted so that the loudness cannot be distinguished; you cannot differentiate what was meant to be played in pianissimo vs. fortissimo. We think we are experiencing real unmediated music, when if fact what we hear has nothing to do with reality. As. Dr. Dufour joked, “We will never be able to fit a full orchestra in our bedrooms”.
One thing I’d like to discuss more in Thursday’s class is remediation of the gendered gaze (page 79). While this is unclear to me, it strikes me as profoundly interesting. I read the chapters on Digital Photography and Virtual Reality in Part II.
Art references art; media remediates media (old or new). Just as we use commonplace words to describe new technologies, we use media to reference known media, thus legitimizing the new form faster than might have been otherwise. On that topic, words to reference common objects may seem almost insulting (like we had to use terms associated with office supplies so that stupid, slow humans could understand the computer), but very they are functional as a means to an end, and the “new” meaning takes on more weight than the old if the new technology is successfully assimilated.
I found the chapter on Mediated Spaces very interesting on its outlook (on places – and nonplaces – in general) and its clear examples on how media remediates media. The mall (a media space) replicates watching TV, Snow White remediates Hollywood action film, etc.
Interesting connection to Derrida’s ideas on mimesis (noted on p. 53) when it is stated that Disney films offer “not the transparency of a plausible story, but the transparency of and authenticity of emotion,” (173) and again later Disney said that his movie characters constitute the real, “as authenticity of communication and shared emotions”. (173) Also interesting notion that Disney TV, movies, and theme parks all promise authenticity of experience, all the while essentially advertising (by remediating) the other two. (172)
In the fist section of Remediation the Bolter and Grusin explain how technology has evolved over time. They argue and document the use of technology in several mediums to support the remediation theory as a form of communication. The Bolter and Grusin make reference to the technology creating a revolution in society. The Bolter and Grusin propose to treat social factors as two aspect of the same phenomenon technical, material , social and economic. The Bolter and Grusin were not clear on how the technologies are selected over other technologies. Is there research supporting how technologies being selected? We seem to be in a remediation of old technologies reinventing its self.
They talked about the qualities of new technologies having to replace the old in order to viable technologies. The example of the evolution of the typewriter to the computer was very interesting. Are technologies developed with the principles of social forces? The I pod would be a success of technology. Apple’s I pod is a hybrid technology and received great success. Microsoft created the Zune to compete with the I pod. The Zune has not replace the I pod. People may argue the technical superiority of one product. Some journalist suggest people of the two camps are like tribes?
Week 3
What Bolter and Grusin stated in Remediation was that remediation is “repurposing”: to take property from one medium and use it in another. By doing so, they believed, that the new medium is leading people to a place that is closer to immediacy. And immediacy’s purpose is to, ideally, eliminate the feeling of the presence of a medium. I wonder though, where should virtual reality like Second Life be located with these definitions. The idea of SL was to import the elements of real life into the virtual world. While some people really “live with” and “live in” those little bubbles of theirs, while they opt to be whoever they want to be and with whomever they want to, while they are being bothered by the fact that their SL husband or wife is being unfaithful, while they are living their dreams of becoming a famous celebrity, are they not being immersed and enjoying the immediacy? But it is also undeniable that people are aware of the fact that they are only some certain characters in virtual reality. And they understand that everything is online, done because the technology exists. Does that not make SL hypermediate?
They mentioned the argument about whether online rape can happen in the book. And I think my question about the virtual reality is the same thing. Where do they draw the line in the experiences like these between the moments of immediacy and hypermediacy while they are practically happening at the same time? With the technology today, how fast internet allows us to communicate, how can we be certain that the difference even exist? Like what I am doing right now, I am typing. I am fully aware of the fact that I am using a computer. But I am also, like any student tried to write a paper before computer even existed, thinking hard, immersed in the moment of writing.
Maybe their statement “New media oscillate between immediacy and hypermediacy, between transparency and opacity” gives better explanation about the new media. Maybe I am wrong, I think from what I have read, they meant oscillating in a linear manner, meaning last month, medium A was considered transparent, but this month, something new came out and it is thought as something hypermediate instead; not oscillating both vertically and horizontally. With the popularity of virtual reality and every other medium available today, I think their perspective is a little lacking. People are living in and with the technology now. The separation between virtual reality and actual reality will only become vaguer and vaguer. Eventually it will disappear. But other than that, considering the year that they were writing the book in, this is an interesting and well done book.
The paradox between immediacy and mediation in Bolter and Grusin’s “Remediation” interested me a great deal. I had never considered that the desire for immediacy, to have a “real” experience, is compromised by that which mediates the experience. The pinnacle of technology as described in “Remediation” would be a technology that could give the user an unmediated experience (similar to the wire described from the movie Strange Days). I question if such a technology could ever be created, or that should a technology come about, would our idea of what the “real” experience is change?
The two chapters that I read in section two were on digital art and the World Wide Web. It is interesting to see how Bolter and Grusin view the different media appropriating (or remediating) older media within them. In reading the section on the Internet the term “respectful remediation” (201) was used to define remediation that does little to change the media they are remediating. Bolter and Grusin suggest these media are mediated respectfully because they have played themselves out and are not a threat to new digital media (202). I don’t think this is the case, but rather it is our desire for immediacy that pushed for remediation projects such as Project Gutenberg.
Bolter and Grusin also suggest that most digital art is fashioned after science fiction, which when the book was written was probably the case, but I believe that this is not true today. Many of the programs used to create art prior to the publishing of this book would have required a great deal of technical knowledge that leads me to believe that those who created art that Bolter and Grusin looked at would have an affinity towards creating science fiction themed art.
With the leaps that technology has taken since the publishing of “Remediation” digital art has become much easier to create. With programs like Corel Painter that can simulate canvas and brush textures or even allow an artist to “mix” pixelized paint as a traditional painter would digital art has moved away from being dominated by science fiction towards an art comprised of many facets just like many of the traditional arts.
I was rather taken by the symbiotic nature between immediacy and hypermediacy. Bolter says, “ … our two seemingly contradictory logics not only coexist in digital media today but are mutually dependent. Immediacy depends on hypermediacy. In the effort to create a seamless moving image, filmmakers combine live-action footage with computer compositing and two- and three-dimensional computer graphics” (Bolter 6) Hypermediacy is fairly obvious… since the birth of film, technology has used to improve the look of the images on the screen rather than attempting to remove the medium itself, like virtual reality is doing. However, hypermediacy can also be used to manipulate the audience’s vantage point and attempt to transition away from merely observing and manipulate them toward participation. Immediacy in film is a way to legitimize the message being presented, while, it seems, hypermediacy is used as a tool to elicit a guttural response. The description of immediacy as the transparent, and the hypermedia as the opaque made the understanding very straightforward.
I do, however, wonder if Bolter and Grusin (or members of this class) feel that eventually hypermediacy will disappear. Will technology advance so far that the goals shift to only those of the immediate? It seems as though that is the general direction. With the advancements in virtual reality, for example, the worlds in which Bolter and Grusin describe are completely different than the virtual realities that are around today. Will we one day no longer distinguish between virtual and reality? I personally feel that this will never be the case. I think that human have an innate desire to emotionally connect to other humans through senses that cannot be duplicated. This is why I feel that live events like theatre and sporting events will never die. It’s the simple fact that every time you walk into a theatre or an arena, the underlying reason you’re there is because of the communal nature of the solitary event. You know that you’ll never be able to experience that particular moment with those particular people ever again. But is that hypermediacy? Do sporting events and theatres WANT you to be fully aware that’s where you are? I always feel so tangent-y when I respond on these assignments . . . I don’t mean to be! Honestly!!
McLuhan would argue against immediacy, since he contends that media are extensions of man and we should never let the medium become transparent for that reason. Bolter and Grusin don’t seem to take a stand against immediacy, maybe because they believe that all new media repair their predecessors (60), unlike McLuhan who keeps retracing new media back to the body itself. B&G define remediation as the double logic of hypermediacy (awareness of media) and immediacy (transparency of media). The authors name two “versions of the contemporary mediated self”: 1. the virtual self of immersion and deep attention, associated with immediacy, and 2. the networked self of multiplicity and hyper attention, associated with hypermediacy (232).
I notice the authors speculating on the possibilities — often with too much optimism — of remediation. I never notice them stopping to question, not only if we could refashion this or that medium, but SHOULD we open all media to the possibility of further remediation? When does the reform process end, and when should it? The fine arts are a category separate from communications media, though the authors don’t clarify this distinction. The fine arts, including painting, don’t all have the same purpose as communications media. The distinction between aesthetics and utility comes to mind. One might use new media as communication tools, yet it seems absurd to consider what the “use” of a painting would be. Because of this distinction, it seems to me that some fine arts media could be corrupted by further remediation. For example, Mark Rothko’s later paintings and his chapel in Houston, where some of his art is housed. The Rothko Chapel is hypermediated because it mediates both architecture and painting, in addition to remediating spiritual belief and a “Zen-like” atmosphere. Yet, there is also a sense of immediacy in the place, a sense that is permeated by Rothko’s well-known battle with depression and his ultimate suicide. Visitors who know something about his story, his life, and his aesthetic will have a very “real” experience in the chapel. Clearly, Rothko’s “purpose” is complex. So, how could his work then be “re-purposed,” and what would be the ethical concerns of such remediation? Furthermore, B&G seem to believe that the more realistic a medium is, the more transparent and effective it will be, allowing the subject to interact more directly with the thing itself. There are myriad examples of paintings, including Rothko’s late work, that are immediate and effective and yet have nothing to do with realism. … but maybe I am doing some misreading.
w/re: Nico’s comment above, I wonder the same thing.
forgot to mention what I chose to read in Part 2: I did photorealistic graphics and digital art.
JDB and RG explain remediation as repurposing or refashioning existing media, and as representation of one or more media in another. They break remediation into separate logics: a) “immediacy” or transparency which attempts to erase any evidence of the media itself, and 2) “hypermediacy” or opacity which attempts to makes us aware of the media.
They argue that both opaque and transparent media are opposite manifestations of the same desire: “the desire to get past the limits of representation and to achieve the real.” (53) Throughout the book, the authors express deep fascination with new media and their representation of ‘real’, especially when they talk about VR and its potentials to achieve the authentic and real experience. But considering the technological advancement and the changes media underwent in the past few years, it is not wrong to claim that authenticity changes with the progression and proliferation of media and perhaps there is no one version of ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ any more, but there are multiple realities and authentic experiences. Recently, VR projects that constitute creative and aesthetic experiences, instead of replicating the world, as we know it, are getting more and more popular. I guess when this book was written technology was just fascinating. Then, VR and interactive films were believed to offer ‘full’ control, but it soon became obvious that the promised control was semi-full and the degree of it depended (and it still does) on the programmer and the limitations of the medium. We have now passed the phase of being simply fascinated by media or trusting it unreservedly.
JDB and RG on many occasions use Modern art as a metaphor to describe their remediation concept. They argue that high Modern art was self-justifying as it offered the viewer an experience that he was not expected to validate by referring to the external world. Modern art also promised authenticity of experience by emphasizing the process. (54) But the reason that Modernism faded was because it was not fulfilling. As much as the modernist person was individualistic, postmodern individual is empathetic and contextual. Global culture (or village) is the result of western cultures rejecting modernist individualistic and abstract values. Postmodern artists rejected modernists’ obsession with form and surface, and instead they shifted their attention to social, cultural and political contexts including critiques of gender and ethnic differences. They began to empathize. So the authors ideas on remediated self was perhaps very common considering our postmodern identities, although the book suggests that the new media such as VR and MUDs made us aware of others, and pushed us to empathize with them. Yet I believe that because of our need to quickly achieve ‘multiple perspectives’ and our desire to empathize with the world around us, we developed the technologies and not the other way around.
In Chapter 3, the authors define two versions of mediated self that correspond with the logics of remediation: networked self (being connected and interrelated) and the virtual/mobile self (living simultaneous lives besides the physical one). (232) Again, they talk in extent about the effects of the new technologies on both the idea of ‘self’ and on the society. But they disregard the effects that the society has on the media and ignore the fact that social and cultural needs shape the new technologies as well.
I read Digital Art and Film from Ch.2 and it seems to me (as in many other parts of the book) that the authors tried to force their remediation theory into all very different discourses.
I see a theme developing in this class, and basically it is that everything is built on something in the past. The authors of Remediation made the point that media cannot be the same in a different type of media form, text and motion picture for example. Taking a story like Lord of the Rings by J.J.R. Tolkien and make a big budget motion picture will not give a person the same experiences, because both of these should be considered to be two separate forms of media. This representation of one media form into another digital work is the true sense of Remediation. However, the real emphasis in the book was the idea that media should be as transparent as possible. Virtual reality is the most transparent of all of the other media forms. In Chapter 9, Virtual Reality the authors state the following:
“Just as the World Wide Web best exemplifies the logic of hypermediacy
© p. 196, virtual reality is the clearest (most transparent!) example of
the logic of transparent immediacy. © p. 21 Virtual reality is also the
medium that best expresses the contemporary definition of the self as a
roving point of view. © p. 243 Finally, virtual reality has become a
cultural metaphor for the ideal of perfect mediation, and other media
are now being held to the standard supposedly set by virtual reality.”(p.161)
I am not sure if Second Life could be considered as a form of a virtual reality, but many of the people that I have met in Second Life have been very transparent to me. I personally always try to come across in the same way. When I am in Second Life I become so wrapped up in the environment that I can lose myself. I can change my camera angles in order to see an object better. It would be very cool if could get tactile sensations from a body suit when I am in the environment.
‘Remediation’ suggests that the shared root of all types of feminism, that is, that all women are disadvantaged and oppressed, is born out of the technological. ‘Remediation’ mentions the influence each media form has on each other form and says one can’t exist independent of the other. Also, all aspects of society that interact with media share equal blame for its existence (society, individual, psychological and technological drives). The issue of favoring a male point of view – the visual – is troubling as the only solution seems to be an advancement of technology (ala, ‘the wire’). Ignoring the content of a media and attributing its message be the medium, visual media will always favor the male (according to ‘remediation’).
During meditation camps females tend to stay sat for longer than their male counterparts (when both are equally new to it). Many have taken this to suggest females are more at one with their bodies; more connected to their physical/emotional selves. I’m not sure what media would suggest a connection between the self and the technology, but I think McLuhan would suggest television, and other ‘cool’ technologies, would create this connection. I think ‘Remediation’ suggests this connection doesn’t exist because it is a purely visual connection, and the physical/emotional self is left out. I’m not sure what to make of this. I’m a bit confused as to where ‘remediation’ agrees and disagree with McLuhan, but it seems like the book attributes visual-video media with being ‘hot’.
There is an interesting example of new-media mimicking old-media in the creation if Pixar’s Wall-e. Many people hail it to be far superior to their previous films but Pixar say they didn’t make very much advancement in 3D technology. The advancements they did make were in the way they ‘shot’ the film- they created a ‘virtual camera’ that had a lens, pivot points, depth behind the lens, and many other subtle features that until Wall-e were ignored. For Wall-e, Pixar borrowed completely from the way old film was shot and it was hailed as more ‘realistic’. This suggests our concept of realism when watching video is deeply connected to our past experience watching film and television. This destroys the idea that film displays an indexical connection to the real. Many documentaries rely on this concept of an indexical representation of reality but the fact that it is shot on a camera suggests that all visual media are to some degree reflexive. ‘Remediation’ suggests the computer is the most reflexive media as you are constantly breaking your connection to the content to interact with the media; the menu’s and bars and buttons.