In this class we turn to the idea of medium as one that can help us look more astutely at a variety of images.

1. Module 8.1
Medium + Technology
Art 100
Understanding Visual Culture

2. agenda 3.8.16
definition of medium
brief introduction to McLuhan’s thought

3. Every representation exists in a physical
form.
This physical form is a medium, plural media.

4. Definition: medium
A medium is something in the middle—in between us and the
depicted scene. As a physical presence with its own special
properties, we must consider it carefully.

5. Edvard MUNCH
The Scream
1895
32 by 23 1/4 inches
pastel on cardboard

6. Here, "medium" is stripped away and the painting
becomes pure image, applied like a sticker to the
surface of a completely different medium.

7. Flask China, Jiangxi
Province
Ming period (1368-1644),
early 15th century (probably
Yongle era, 1403 - 1424)
Porcelain painted with
underglaze cobalt blue
H. 18 1/2 inches
D. 14 inches
Here the medium is
painting on ceramic, on a
dimensional object, prior to
glazing

8. JPEG names a set of
standards for digital
compression and coding of
continuous-tone still images
Joint Photographic Experts
Group
information structured
according to a specific set of
protocols so it can be widely
shared

9. Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322), Yuan dynasty (1271-1368)
Undated, handscroll, ink and pale color on silk, 25.4 × 36.2 cm.

11. Dorothea LANGE
"Destitute peapickers in California;
a 32 year old mother of seven
children. February 1936." original
photo caption
[This image later became known as
“Migrant Mother.”]
LEARN MORE about this iconic
photo:
http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/128_m
igm.html

13. Definition: media
The “media” is shorthand for the “mass media”—print, radio,
television, and internet are important examples.

14. technology as media
McLuhan uses the word to refer to all forms of technology
created by human beings, not just those that communicate
information. All human innovations are media for McLuhan,
whether they are physical (like the zipper or ballpoint pen) or
conceptual (like physics or mathematics). All of these are
media because they mediate – or stand between – our
physical selves and our interaction with, the world around us.
Every medium enhances or intensifies some human
attribute, ability, or experience.

15. Marshall McLuhan (1911-
1980)
attended University of
Manitoba, Cambridge
University
became an English
professor
prescient theorist of the
media and its effects.
The Gutenberg Galaxy
(1962)
Understanding Media (1964)
War and Peace in the
Global Village (1968)
Yousef Karsh, Portrait of McLuhan, 1974

16. As an investigator, I have no fixed point of view, no
commitment to any theory–my own or anyone else’s. As a
matter of fact, I’m completely ready to junk any statement
I’ve ever made about any subject if events don’t bear me out,
or if I discover it isn’t contributing to an understanding of the
problem. The better part of my work on media is actually
somewhat like a safe-cracker’s. I don’t know what’s inside;
maybe it’s nothing. I just sit down and start to work. I grope, I
listen, I test, I accept and discard; I try out different
sequences–until the tumblers fall and the doors spring open."
-From “The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan,"
Playboy Magazine (March 1969).

17. Technology is not
neutral.
McLuhan regards each new technology
developed as an “extension of man”—a
change in our human capabilities that
significantly changes our sense of what it
means to be human.
Technology is transformative.

18. McLuhan uses
electricity as one
example of a
medium.
railroad
telegraph
telephone
gramophone
electricity
movies
‘talkies’
automobile

19. On p. 24, McLuhan states
that: “...the ‘message’ of
any medium or technology
is the change of scale or
pace or pattern that it
introduces into human
affairs.”

20. The message of these
signs, for McLuhan, is
not their literal text, but
the aggregated ways in
which electricity has
transformed our
human lives.

21. So, what is the “message”
of electricity?
How has it transformed human
existence?

22. Consider our world…

23. Jean-François MILLET (1814-1875)
The Angelus 1859; oil on canvas; 21.85 x

24. …before electricity

25. Gerrit DOU (Dutch, 1613 - 1675)
Astronomer by Candlelight
late 1650s
Oil on panel
12 5/8 x 8 3/8 inches

26. Compare our
experience of the
electrified night.

29. Western
Hemisphere
at night
composited satellite
imagery, NASA,
2012
Image credit: NASA's Earth Observatory/NOAA/DOD

30. Artist Edward Hopper loved to depict the
alienating glare of the electrified night.
Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, 1942
oil on canvas, 33 1/8 x 60 inches
Art Institute of Chicago

31. Edward
Hopper
Automat
1927
oil on canvas
28 1/8 x 36
inches

32. Berenice ABBOTT (1898–1991)
Automat, 977 Eighth Avenue, Manhattan 1936
Gelatin silver print, 7 5/8 x 9 11/16 inches

33. “…the ‘content’ of a medium is like the juicy
piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract
the watchdog of the mind.”
p. 32
In other words, McLuhan urges us not
to look through the medium as if it were
transparent, look at the medium to see
what it does and how it has changed
us.

34. So, what is the “message” of electricity?
“The message of the electric light is…totally
radical, pervasive, and decentralized.” (p. 25)
Our very way of being in the world has
changed completely.

35. fragment of a coiled basket found in Danger
Cave, Utah, c. 7800 BCE

36. Danger Cave, UT
extremely dry conditions preserved: beetle wings, textiles,
human coprolites, leather scraps, pieces of string, nets
of twine, coarse fabric, basket fragments, and bone and
wood tools such as knives, weapons, and millstones.
remains of 68 plant species as well as the bones of many
species of animals were also preserved in the cave.
The age of the oldest material was over 11,000 years—older
than all but a few of excavated sites in North America.

37. "Basketmaker,"
in The Young Tradesman
1832

42. media effects
• According to McLuhan, all media – that is, all human inventions,
artifacts, and ideas – have these four effects in common:
• they extend our bodies, minds, and beings
• as they extend some human ability they simultaneously obsolesce
some other form of experience
• they retrieve and enhance a sense or skill that was obsolesced earlier
and that current media do not stimulate
• when pushed to their limit they have a reverse effect, producing
opposite or complementary forms

43. As a result of this ongoing process of liquidation and revival,
every cultural era proceeds forward while looking backward,
viewing the present through a "rearview mirror." An
environment becomes fully visible only when it has been
superseded by a new environment, so we are always one
step behind in our view of the world, terrified of confronting
the present head-on.

44. examples
clothing is an extension of the skin because it enhances
the function of our skin in protecting our internal organs
the phone is an extension of the ear and the range of the
voice
the internet is an extension of the central nervous
system and the brain

45. The introduction of a new medium always removes or
reduces the role of some other medium or form of
experience. The invention of the car, for example,
obsolesced the use of horse-and-buggy.
Obsolesced forms do not disappear completely but
reappear in the form of art or as a source of nostalgia. The
phenomenon of antique reproductions and handcrafted
utensils as art form illustrates this idea. In the age of
supermarkets and slick packaging, a farmer's market
becomes a source of intense nostalgia and a tourist
attraction.

47. Weegee, Their
First Murder,
1941
Though photographs may
seem like “transparent” records
of reality, they too exist in a
specific medium.

49. For example, reality moves on,
while this photograph is static,
freezing a single moment in time.
For example, reality is in color,
while this photograph is in back and
white.
For example, we don’t see well at
dusk but a flash illuminates this
scene for us.