2. Definitions
• Medium: material or technical means of artistic
expression.
• Media is the plural form of medium.
• The dictionary defines media as all the
communication devices and channels of
communication used to reach mass audiences.
• First use of media in 1927, perhaps abstracted from
mass media (1923, a technical term in advertising),
pl. of medium in particular when useed as an
"intermediate agency," or a ‘carrier’ a sense first
found c.1600.
3. What this lecture is about
• The physical nature of any given thing and its relationship to its environment determines the way it works
or operates. This lecture will give a brief reminder of what we are as a species and what are our physical
and mental limitations. It will then propose that all human attempts to construct media are attempts to
extend beyond our physical and mental limitations and that each media we develop has its own
limitations and strengths, which we need to understand if we are to make the most of what each media
offers.
• This lecture takes as one of its central themes the borders and boundaries between media and will argue
that any theoretical understanding of communication should include an investigation as to how and why
particular media work in the way they do. It will introduce theories of medium specificity and will
attempt to determine what traits define a media. It will ask what differentiates film, photography, games
etc. from other existing modes of representation. How is photography distinct from painting? What are
the defining traits of the cinematic? Are games narratives?
• As we deal with these theories, this lecture will attempt to show how they each moved from descriptions
of the properties of specific medium to prescriptions for what the aesthetics of these media should look
like.
• This medium-specific approach, will also explore how cross media narratives evolve and how comparison
across media can be used to clarify the essence of any one particular media. Eisenstein, for example, rests
his theory of the cinematic on analogies to text-based media, Bazin draws on notions of photography and
theatre to talk about cinema.
• The intersections between expressive media rather than the borders between them are now becoming far
more important and in particular this lecture will explore how the human being as a specific physical and
social construction is the driving force behind how each media is used.
• Theories that celebrate hybridity and border crossing will also be introduced, and how the notion of
medium specificity plays a central role in such formulations.
4. The media specific problem with this lecture • Tufte argues that
PowerPoint’s design
inherently makes it
more difficult to
communicate with an
audience.
• Instead of giving an
informative
presentation,
PowerPoint
encourages speakers
to create slides with
ultra-short,
incomplete thoughts
listed with bullets.
5. What are we?
• Our medium specificity is that we are biological creatures. Organic in nature, we have a close genetic
connection to the animal world.
• We specifically have intensive development and differentiation of the cerebral cortex. We also have an
erect posture, free upper extremities, adapted for using and making tools, and advanced development of
the means of communication. However the need to maintain balance in the erect posture caused a certain
curvature of the spinal column and a shift in the general centre of gravity. Since the upper extremities
were no longer used for body support and walking, the skeleton of the lower extremities became stronger
and their muscles developed, the feet became arched to act as springs. All the systems of the internal
organs have adapted to the erect posture, the means of delivering blood from the lower extremities to the
heart and the brain have become more complex. The diaphragm has shifted from a vertical to a horizontal
position, the muscles of the abdomen have come to perform a much greater role in the act of breathing.
At a certain level of anthropogenesis, under the influence of labour activity and communication, biological
development became what is, in effect, the historical development of social systems.
• The newborn child is not a "tabula rasa" (clean slate) on which the environment draws patterns. Heredity
equips the child not only with instincts, s/he is from the very beginning the possessor of the ability to
imitate adults, their actions, the noises they make. S/he's physiological make-up (the round shape of the
head, the sophisticated structure of the hands, the shape of the lips and the whole facial structure, the
erect posture, etc.) are products of the social way of life, the result of interaction with other people.
• The basic aspects of our nature are physiological, psychological and sociological.
• At a basic physical level, we are part of the natural interconnection of physical and chemical phenomena
and obey the laws of necessity. However in spite of the limitations of this condition our highly developed
cerebral cortex allows us to think our way out. If we cant reach it we pick up a stick and if we cant outfight
it we sharpen a stone axe.
• A human being is a biosocial being and the subject of social forms of life, communication and
consciousness.
6. The Specificity of Homo Sapiens
A large brain
Most of the sense organs located at
the top end and facing forwards
Long throat, small mouth, flexible
tongue and lips
An upright stance that frees the arms
from any walking duties and allows the
eyes to see further
Bi-lateral
Hands with mobile thumbs and fingers Symmetry
that allow for fine grip and rotation
from the wrist
8. SMELL and TOUCH
The human body is unable to sense many potentially harmful substances in the air we
breath. NASA has built an electronic nose to smell what the astronauts can’t. Inspired by the
human olfactory system, the electronic nose is endowed with ultra-responsive sensors and a
neural net to rapidly recognize any dangerous elements in the air.
Surgical workstations equipped with robotic arms can accurately perform motions as minute
as 20 to 30 millionths of a meter. Working by teleoperation, the physician uses a joystick-like
controller that scales down his hand motions, allowing for precision never before possible.
Pressure encountered by the robot arm is transferred back through the controller, allowing
the surgeon to feel what the robot encounters.
11. A definition
• Medium specificity is the view that the media
associated with a given art form (both its
material components and the processes by which
they are exploited) entail specific possibilities for
and constraints on representation and
expression, and this provides a normative
framework for what artists working in that art
form ought to attempt.
• Noël Carroll 2008
Normative
Adjective: Establishing, relating to, or deriving from a standard or norm, esp. of
behaviour: For example, in a prison negative sanctions my be introduced to
enforce normative behaviour.
12. What is media specificity?
An artwork, in order to be successful, needs to adhere to the specific stylistic properties of its own
medium.
“Gotthold Ephraim Lessing 1776
Medium/media specificity is a term used in aesthetics and art criticism.
It is most closely associated with modernism, but it predates it. According to Clement Greenberg,,
medium specificity holds that "the unique and proper area of competence" for a form of art
corresponds with the ability of an artist to manipulate those features that are "unique to the
nature" of a particular medium.
Medium specificity and media specific analysis are ways to identify new media art forms,
such as Internet art.
Medium specificity can be used as an aesthetic judgement tool, it can be used to frame the
question, “ Does this work fulfil the promise contained in the medium used to bring the
artwork into existence?”
We now move from descriptions of the properties of specific medium to prescriptions
for what the aesthetics of these media should look like.
13. Media specificity is a pre-modernist idea that relates to the modernist concept ‘Truth to
materials’.
It can be seen as an idea directly in contrast to the phrase “ut pictura poesis” or
“as is painting, so is poetry,” taken from Horace’s Ars Poetica
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s 1766 essay, Laocošn argues that the media of painting and
poetry are inherently different, because while poetry unfolds in time, painting exists in
space. He states that these medias should not overstep their respective terrains.
Lessing contends that an artwork, in order to be successful, needs to adhere to the
specific stylistic properties of its own medium.
Clement Greenberg in Towards a Newer Laocoon 1940 states: Medium specificity
holds that "the unique and proper area of competence" for a form of art corresponds
with the ability of an artist to manipulate those features that are "unique to the
nature" of a particular medium.
14. Media Specificity in the fine art world
• Michael Fried 1966 essay "Art and Objecthood" is an attack on minimalist art for
producing effects that do not derive from within the work itself, but instead are
dependent on the viewer's relationship with the object. This, he insists, "is now
the negation of art" (Fried, 1967)
• According to Fried, minimalists took Greenberg's plea for purity too far; instead of
exploring the materiality of the media, all they do is present the materials for what
they are.
• Fried argues that this leads to an emphasis on the viewer's encounter with the
object and its "objecthood," rather than with the formal qualities within the object
itself. This interaction is theatrical because it exists within space and time, while
Fried contends that visual art should instead aspire to absorption, which he casts
as the opposite of theatricality. The work should present itself whole at every
instant, and not depend on the viewer's relation to what is being seen.
Frank Stella John McCracken Robert Mangold Ad Reinhardt
15. • But
• In order for a medium to have characteristic qualities it must
be grounded in a tradition that has established these qualities
as intrinsic properties.
16. Media Specificity as Communication Theory
Marshall McLuhan
• “The medium is the message"
• The central idea in his 1964 book: Understanding Media: The
Extensions of Man
• McLuhan calls attention to the intrinsic effect of
communications media and explains that it is not the content,
it is the carrier that creates meaning.
• McLuhan expands our understanding of media.
• The medium becomes the media which is
itself simply an extension of our own
physical and mental limitations.
17. Reshaping ourselves
• If we are defined by our physical and mental limitations,
by extending these we change the definition of ourselves.
• “Electronic technology is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social
interdependence and every aspect of our personal lives”. MM
• “Print technology fostered a process of specialism and detachment”. MM
• Until writing was invented we lived in acoustic space. This was a world
of emotion,… speech was the social chart of this bog. MM
• MM - Marshall McLuhan: The Medium is the Massage 1967
• “The alphabet created forgetfulness” Socrates Phaedrus
19. Social extensions
• Social [knowledge] building as a creative process of knowing
will be collectively extended to the whole of human society
(McLuhan 1964) Mobile phone networks, Facebook, Twitter
• Electronic mass media collapse space and time barriers in
human communication, enabling people to interact and live
on a global scale (McLuhan; 1962 Gutenberg galaxy)
• "The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in
the image of a global village." (McLuhan 1966)
20. What are we extending?
“Information pours upon us, instantaneously and continuously. As soon as
information is acquired, it is very rapidly replaced by still newer information.
Our electronically configured world has forced us to move from the habit of
data classification to the mode of pattern recognition.” MM
Perceptual grouping and binding is one of the main functions of ‘early vision’.
Ramachandran & Hirstein 1999
Technological development reflects existing human neurological as well as
physiological capacity.
21. Technology as Memory extensions
• Footprints
• Drawing, painting and symbol making
• Writing
• Printing
• Photography
• Sound recording
• Silent Film
• Technological convergence of Sound recording and Silent Film
• TV
• Computers (1940s)
• Magnetic tape (Available to the public from 1940s)
• Video tape (Available to the public from 1969)
• Audio-cassettes replace reel-to-reel tape, video-cassettes replace home movies.
• Digital convergence , the switch from analogue to digital, concentrated on reducing size and
increasing speed and capacity. Today’s computers use miniature integrated-circuit technology in
conjunction with rapid-access memory. Computers are desk-top, lap-top, palm-top and will soon
be ‘embedded’ in other technologies and even in human beings. The next generation of computers
is expected to use forms of ‘artificial intelligence’.
• Information storage now includes ourselves. The Visible Human Project (VHP) has created
anatomically detailed, three-dimensional representations of both the male and female bodies. The
first ‘visible human’ was Joseph Paul Jernigan, a 39-year-old Texan convicted of murder and
executed by lethal injection in 1993. Jernigan has been memorized or ‘reincarnated’ as a 15-
gigabyte database.
22. Sound and media specificity
• In the 1920's the 10-inch 78 rpm Shellac gramophone disc became the most
popular recording medium.
• A 10 inch disc rotating at 78 rpm limited the duration of recorded time on each
side of a disc to around three minutes.
• Songwriters and performers tailored their songs to fit. The 3-minute single
remained the song recording standard until well into the 1960s when the
availability of microgroove recording and improved mastering techniques enabled
recording artists to increase the duration of their recordings. (In particular Bob
Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone and the Beatles’ Hey Jude)
• The 3 minute idea still persists and over 95% of all new popular hits still fit this
format.
• Radio airplay time or slots are now based on 3 minutes. Songs that are longer
usually get a remix (often called a Radio Edit) to makes them shorter to fit.
• What started out as an engineering limitation has been adopted and maintained
by commercial interests.
• In song writing terms this becomes: Verse - Chorus - Verse2 - Chorus2 - Bridge - Chorus3
23. A Short History of Vinyl
1932: The first stereo disc is recorded by Stokowski at Bell labs in Philadelphia using vinyl rather than
shellac. By the mid 1930s vinyls are sent to disc jockeys (a term earned through jockeying up the next
record) to avoid breakage of shellac copies in the mail.
1940: Mobile DJs become popular around the world as entertainers for military troops during WWII,
however they still only use a single record player.
1943: Jimmy Savile launches one of the world’s first DJ dance parties playing jazz records in an upstairs
function room in Leeds.
1947: One of the first people to use twin turntables for continuous play is Jimmy Saville who pays a
metalworker to weld two domestic record decks together for more continuous play at his dance parties in
Leeds. This style of ‘twin-deck’ DJing utilising a microphone for talk over becomes industry standard.
1947: The “Whiskey-A-Go-Go” opens in Paris playing popular records, this is considered by some to be
the very first disco.
1948: Columbia Records introduce the 12inch vinylite Long Play (LP) 33rpm record.
1949: RCA Victor release the first 45 rpm single, seven inches in diameter, with a large centre hole to
accommodate automatic play mechanisms. (Microgroove technology introduced)
1951: The first Jukebox that can play 7-inch 45 rpm records is introduced.
24. Photography
• The concept of medium-specificity has had a profound impact on photography. In
its early history, photography struggled to establish itself as a legitimate art form.
Theorists devised a justification for the art of photography that positioned it
against its competitor, painting. Art photographers such as Stieglitz, Weston, and
Strand argued that in order for photography to be taken seriously, it must operate
only according to its own capabilities: it must not aspire to imitate the aesthetics
or materials of painting. The art of photography became defined on strictly
medium-specific terms.
Pictorialism
Stieglitz Weston Strand
25. The Photographic Tableau vivant
19th Century Photography mimics painting and theatre
Pictorialism as a response, is seen by early
20th century photographic critics as being more
media specific.
However pictorialism is ‘Like a Picture’
I.e. Its values derive from painting.
26. The Tableau Vivant is re-interpreted as being media specific in the
1980s in particular through the influence of Jean-Francois Chevrier’s essay The
Adventures of the Picture Form in the History of Photography (1989) and Jeff
Wall’s large scale constructed images. Pictorialism, according to Jeff Wall could
be seen as an attempt by photographers to unsuccessfully imitate painting.
"By divesting itself of the encumbrances and advantages inherited from older art
forms, reportage, or the spontaneous fleeting aspect of the photographic image
pushes toward a discovery of qualities apparently intrinsic to the medium,
qualities that must necessarily distinguish the medium from others and through
the self-examination of which it can emerge as a modernist art on a plane with
others” Jeff Wall
Vanessa Beecroft Jeff Wall
27. The Lens as an extension of the faculty of sight
• A camera lens can be seen as an extension of the eye. Kamps, (2011) explains the relationship between the eye and a
camera and his explanation helps us understand the media specific nature of lens based media and also how we can
understand the camera as an extension of our faculty of sight. He points to the fact that both eyes and lenses focus an
inverted image onto a light sensitive surface, the retina and the film stock, as well as both being able to adjust the amount
of light entering, using aperture change and iris dilation. More importantly he points out the differences, in particular the
subjective nature of human sight and the way that a camera is “an absolute measurement device” . This means that a
camera sensor does not have the intelligence of a brain associated with it and that “the signals recorded need to be
adjusted to suit the colour temperature of the light illuminating the scene”. Therefore all the technological developments
surrounding lens selection, aperture adjustment, film stock sensitivity, lighting equipment etc. etc. are all developments
that are designed to help make the camera as sensitive as the eye. The camera operator of course being the ‘brain’ behind
choices made in terms of the use of this technology.
• The audience have grown up with their own ‘sight’ and the experiences associated with visual perception will be directly
associated with the images produced by film technology. It is at this basic level that perhaps emotional empathy operates,
a dark scene being associated with experiences of the dark in the ‘real world’, such as being in a cave or being out at night;
bright light being associated with early visual experiences of a summer’s day or a spring morning.
The eyeball camera lens
“The tiny camera combines the best of
both the human eye and an expensive
single-lens reflex (SLR) camera with a
zoom lens. It has the simple lens of the
human eye, allowing the device to be
small, and the zoom capability of the
SLR camera without the bulk and weight
of a complex lens. The key is that both
the simple lens and photodetectors are
on flexible substrates, and a hydraulic
system can change the shape of the
substrates appropriately, enabling a
variable zoom.”
28. Film
Münsterberg was the first writer to establish the specific nature of film as an art form. In1916, he points to
flashbacks, close-ups, and edits as the techniques that are used in film to capture narratives and contrasts
these to the means available to theatrical productions.
“These devices (close-ups, edits etc.) are all objectifications of mental processes.” He points out that these
techniques are what distinguish film from theatre. In his writings he also introduced ideas relating to
audience reception. He started to ask questions as to how and why an audience might learn the conventions
of this new art form. He pointed to the fact that audiences did not get confused by large close ups in
comparison with medium format shots. They did not think for instance this meant people were getting bigger
or smaller.
Panofsky (1934) states that an audience’s enjoyment of film is not to do with subject matter, but to do with
“the sheer delight that things seemed to move.”
Perception Is Movement, Movement Is Perception
Salvatore Leonardi
Movement is an attention Getting Device:
External attention getting devices -
intensity and size
contrast - unexpected stimuli (orienting response)
repetition
movement we naturally respond to movement (midbrain)
Internal attention getting devices
motives and emotions needs, interests
set or expectancy past experience tunes us primed
29. During cinema's history, a whole repertoire of techniques (lighting, editing, camera supports, the use of
different film stocks and lens, etc.) were developed to modify the basic record obtained by a film
apparatus.
Photography is coupled with a motor and a set of particular physical constraints were worked with that we
now understand as the media specificity of film.
Jean-Luc Godard defined cinema as: “Truth 24 frames per second“
Bazin introduces the idea of reality "captured" on film, which implied that cinema was about photographing
what existed before the camera, rather than "creating the 'never-was'" of special effects. Rear projection
and blue screen photography, matte paintings and glass shots, mirrors and miniatures, optical effects and
other techniques which allowed filmmakers to construct and alter the moving images, were seen as
suspicious by many early film critics.
The difficulty of modifying images once they were recorded was what gave cinema its value as a
document, and this was at the core of Bazin’s media specific film theory. He makes a distinction between
“those directors who put their faith in the image and those who put their faith in reality”
However other early theorists such as Eisenstein tended to mix up their theories and Eisenstein’s interest
in Montage directly contradicts Bazin.
However both use specific media contexts on which to build theory.
Bazin: the lens collects light and the film stock records it.
Eisenstein: Film must be cut and reassembled in order to create narrative.
Eisenstein describes five methods of montage in his introductory essay "Word and Image“, in it he
combines literary theory with film theory.
Metric - where the editing follows a specific number of frames (based purely on the physical nature of
time), cutting to the next shot no matter what is happening within the image.
Rhythmic - includes cutting based on continuity, creating visual continuity from edit to edit.
Tonal - a tonal montage uses the emotional meaning of the shots to elicit a reaction from the audience;
more complex than from the metric or rhythmic montage. For example, a sleeping baby would emote
calmness and relaxation.
Overtonal/Associational - the overtonal montage is the cumulation of metric, rhythmic, and tonal
montage to synthesize its effect on the audience for an even more abstract and complicated effect.
30. Bazin advocated the use of deep focus, wide shots and the "shot-in-depth", and preferred what he referred to as "true continuity" through mise en scène
over experiments in editing and visual effects. This placed him in opposition to film theory of the 1920s and 1930s which emphasized how the cinema can
manipulate reality. The famous staircase sequence from The Battleship Potemkin employs montage to create the illusion that the staircase is almost
endless, and intercuts shots of a stroller rolling down the steps with close-ups of horrified faces and dying people, thus destroying the reality of the actual
space and using metaphors and juxtaposition to create a specific response. Wells and Renoir use the lens to capture the totality of a situation so that the
audience have maximum information to allow them to read what is going on.
Renoir On Purge Bébé
Eisenstein Battleship Potemkin
Wells Citizen Kane
31. Film Stock
• The technical specifics of Velvia (Velvia, 2012) are that it is a type of daylight-balanced colour reversal film and has a
smooth image structure, it also has extremely high levels of colour saturation and image quality. It was very fast, had a fine
grain and an ISO of 50. Because of the high levels of colour saturation and image quality, Velvia’s main use in film making
was for landscape shots and special-effects backgrounds. However one film in particular used Velvia as a chosen film stock,
this was Vincent Ward directed film What Dreams May Come (1998) starring Robin Williams, where the action takes place
inside an actual painting. In this case the choice of this highly saturated film stock was perfect. The Velvia film stock was
used to create the feeling of being inside the world of the canvas, its saturated colours reflecting the fact that all the action
was supposed to be taking place within a painter’s colour palette. When action takes place in the ‘real-world’ the film stock
changes back into a normal standard Kodak film stock.
32. In The Wizard of Oz, (1939) the Kansas dust bowl appears in black-
and-white and the world of Oz in technicolor
Uses of film stock rely on an expected audience emotional reaction
to heighted colour.
33. Animation in Film
• Twentieth century animation became a depository for nineteenth century
moving image techniques left behind by cinema.
• Before film stock a variety of handcrafted methods were used. Magic
lantern slides were painted at least until the 1850s; so were the images
used in the Phenakistiscope, the Thaumatrope, the Zootrope, the
Praxinoscope, the Choreutoscope and other nineteenth century proto-
cinematic devices.
• Not only were the images created manually, they were also manually
animated. In Robertson's Phantasmagoria, which premiered in 1799,
magic lantern operators moved behind the screen in order to make
projected images appear to advance and withdraw. Nineteenth century
optical toys enjoyed in private homes also required manual action to
create movement -- twirling the strings of the Thaumatrope, rotating the
Zootrope's cylinder, turning the Viviscope's handle.
• Film animation links the hand craft of drawing to the motor and film’s
projection technology.
34. Norman McLaren “Animation is the art of movements that are drawn. What happens between each frame is much more
important than what exists on each frame. Animation is therefore the art of manipulating the invisible interstices that lie
between the frames.“
35. Comics
Scott McCloud
Understanding Comics
• Due to their media certain art forms are better at certain tasks than others.
• The Art of Comics: A Philosophical Approach
• From the chapter: Making Comics into Film p. 149
• By Aaron Meskin, Roy T. Cook, Warren Ellis To be released Feb. 2012
36. Comics
• Between word and image
Pictorial narratives or
expositions in which
Juxtaposed pictorial and
words usually
other images in
contribute to the
deliberate sequence,
The printed meaning of the
intended to convey
arrangement of pictures and vice
information and/or
art and balloons versa
produce an aesthetic
response in the reader in sequence
38. We learn to read meaning into
physical properties because we
are used to doing that from an
early age.
Somewhere in the background of a
good communication is your
mum’s smile.
39. Comic specificity
Each page is segmented into panels (or frames), which have borders that
separate them from other panels.
Individual panels contain one part of a story (perhaps dialogue between
characters), or a character's inner thoughts (represented by speech and thought
balloons) that leads into the next panel.
Panels are routinely separated by blank areas called gutters.
Panels are set out to logically flow one to another, guiding the reader's eyes so
that they can take in the story in a sequential manner.
Comic books are often called sequential art -- a type of graphic storytelling.
Shaping the Maxx is the classic text examining how a complex comic book
could be transferred to TV. http://www2.gsu.edu/~jougms/Maxx.htm
Adaptation across media is necessarily a process of translation, you can’t
merely import forms from one medium to another. The work of adaptation
transforms the original content because the new medium cannot simply
duplicate the old.
Animation often translates wide frames in a comic into horizontal camera
movements. Camera movements also provide the translation for more complex
comics devices. Usually a change of comics frames signals a new spatial
perspective on the action, this might become a pan or slow zoom when it
translates into film.
40. Format
• In graphics format often rules Format can be digital or material
• Software formats
• AI - Adobe Illustrator's metafile format.
• CGM - Computer Graphics Metafile: An International Standards Organization metafile format for images.
• GIF - Graphics Interchange Format
• JFIF - The JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) File Interchange Format. Where would you be without compression?
• PSD - Adobe Photoshop's native format, which stores all of its layer and selection and miscellaneous other image data.
Format represents the
physical point of contact
with the user; affecting
how we receive a
design's printed or online
information.
Format is derived from
the media specific
qualities of the material
used. Material manufactured in thin sheets from the
pulp of wood or other fibrous substances
41. Type formats live on as a memory of old technology.
The design grid is a ghost of Guttenberg from 1439
The Medium is the Massage is a typo
42. The Digital Age
• The manual construction of images in digital cinema represents a return
to nineteenth century pre-cinematic practices, when images were hand-
painted and hand-animated. Using the computer as a tool to do this is
simply using a very powerful extension.
• Today, with the shift to digital media, the marginalized techniques of
image manipulation (Rear projection and blue screen photography, matte
paintings and glass shots, mirrors and miniatures etc.) move to the centre.
• In effect digital technology merges disciplines. Film and animation
become combined, CGI creating a world of hard to distinguish differences
between live action and animation.
• As differences between media disappear the concept of medium-
specificity needs to change or it becomes redundant. Media can also be
defined by the social or cultural context they are practiced within and this
is perhaps a way into looking at convergent media.
43. Extending the social
• In his 1977 book Marxism and Literature, Raymond Williams proposed a reading of medium-
specificity where media are defined by the social or cultural context they are practiced in (“From
Medium to Social Practice”).
• Williams traces the evolution in art historical terminology from defining artworks according to
“medium,” to defining them as “practice.” For instance students used to study ‘painting’ or
‘sculpture’ now they study ‘fine art practice’.
• Post-modernism emphasises the conceptual rather than the material basis of practice.
• Like Williams, Rosalind Krauss argues for a “different specificity” in what she deems “the post-
medium condition,” A Voyage on the North Sea: Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition.
• The Greenbergian notion of medium-specificity will not be located in materials or methods, but in
the “essence of Art itself”. The successful art of this post-medium age will reflect on its own
practice in relation to the past.
• Are the old and the new media completely separate entities or are new media old media delivered
with new technologies?
• For Bolter and Grusin the specificity of new media, their “newness,” lies in the way they remediate
older media. Building on McLuhan, they define remediation as “the representation of one medium
in another.” This conceptualises the relationship between old and new media not as oppositional
but as part of a media genealogy, focusing on their connections and affiliations instead.
• Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin. “Remediation.” Configurations 4.3 (1996): 311-358
44. Where are we going?
• The convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and
cognitive science is transforming global society. Technological convergence is
beginning to define the way societies interact and organise themselves.
• The new technologies that convergence produces have immense consequences
for global security, communications, surveillance, health, ecosystems, biogenetics
and the prolongation of life. And as with every new technology, new marginalised
groups (the ‘have nots’) are being created.
• In particular, cybernetics – the science of communications and automatic control
systems in both machines and living things – is having a revolutionary impact on
education and culture, on genetic research and evolving biotechnologies, on food
production and the health of people. New applications are being developed that
not only contest previous theories, but may also change the very nature of human
self-understanding and the social relationships that sustain it.
• Science fiction will become science fact, we may in future become an extension of
the media itself.
46. • Adorno, Theodor (1975). “Culture Industry Reconsidered.” New German Critique 6: 12–19. [End Page 111]
• Adorno, Theodor, and George Simpson (1941). “On Popular Music.” Studies in Philosophy and Social Sciences 9: 17–48.
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