Remediation - Media

Discuss how remediation can help the student/ practitioner understand and analyse the form of multimedia.

Contents:

1. What is a medium and what is remediation?

2. Remediation: an evolution

3. Mediation, intermediation and transmediation.

4. Conclusion

5. Sources

What is a medium and what is remediation?

"We call the representation of one medium in another remediation, and we will argue that remediation is a defining characteristic of the new digital media. What might seem at first to be an esoteric practice is so widespread that we can identify a spectrum of different ways in which digital media remediate their predecessors, a spectrum depending on the degree of perceived competition or rivalry between the new media and the old. (p45 Bolter/Grusin)" ).

In Bolter and Grusin’s book Remediation: understanding new media, 5 arguments are put forward on the topic of remediation that explain how remediation works:

• Earlier media such as painting, television, photography and film are the foundations on which the cultural importance of new media is attained. This importance is attained through competing with, paying homage to and reshaping this older type of media.

• This process is not a modern trend. It can be seen in the evolution of painting to photography, stage production to film and magazine to web site.

• Works of media nearly always draw from another type of media to create a new piece, for example; a movie based on a novel. Many pieces of media would not exist if it wasn’t for those that pre existed.

• There are no pieces of new media in the real sense of the word. Even though we are seeing exciting new understandings and changes, these would not exist if it wasn’t for media already in circulation.

• There are three simple senses to the term вЂ?Remediation’; All media build together and are always influencing one another. Mediation and reality cannot be detached from one another. Cultural predisposition will always exist in new media.

These five simply put arguments can help a student such as myself, to grasp a better understanding of multimedia and how it works.

Although most meanings of medium (or media) stress that it is a middle term of transmitting device of some sort, Bolter and Grusin, authors of Remediation: understanding new media, argue that in our current state of media, one is always experienced and defined by its relation to other media.

What is a medium? Simply explained, a medium is that which remediates. It is that which appropriates the practices, forms and social importance of other media and attempts to rival or modify them in the name of the real. A medium in our culture can never function on its own, because it needs to enter into relationships of respect and competition with other media. There may be or may have been cultures in which a single form of representation exists with little or no reference to other media. (Perhaps a work of art or music). Examples of such development include the evolution of painting to photography, magazine to web site, radio to television and stage production to film. Such seclusion does not seem possible for us today, when we cannot even recognise the representational power of a medium except with reference to other media. (Bolter and Grusin, p. 65; emphasis added)

Bolter and Grusin distinguish two modes of remediation:

1. Immediacy, transparency, looking through media (invisibility of underlying media technology)

2. Hypermediacy, opacity, looking at media (explicit allusions, interfaces, and metaphorical borrowing from other media)

These two types are not arranged in an вЂ?either or’ dichotomy вЂ" remediation is a process of stable variation between immediacy and hyper immediacy. The problem, as pointed out by Marianne van den Boomen on her PHD blog for multimedia (http://vandenboomen.org/blog/) is that immediacy and hyper immediacy refer to states of a medium or awareness. Bolter and Grusin call these modalities respectively epistemological and psychological, all the more showing how immediacy and hyperimmedicay stay cognitively limited. To get a grip on the process of mediation instead of the state, she proposes two adjustments to their remediation concept:

1. To change immediacy or transparency into �demediation’, since this concept focuses on the productive process, the work that has to be done to achieve a sense of immediacy.

2. To stress that it is about looking through a medium and forgetting or erasing the medium completely and not about being able to look inside the medium and its mechanics, which is also a suggestion of transparency.

Remediation: an evolution

As the title states, remediation is the term used to describe the evolution of multimedia. But how has multimedia evolved throughout the years, and how could a student, such as myself look at this evolution and learn more about multimedia from it.

According to Sam Lehman-Wilzig and Nava Cohen-Avigdor and their article The natural life cycle of new media evolution, media’s evolution can be described in a simple 6 stage cycle, similar to a natural life cycle. These stages are birth (technical invention), penetration, growth, maturity, self-defense, and adaptation, convergence, obsolescence.

1. Birth: The beginning of the �life cycle’. A new medium draws on an existing technology/medium. The inventor/s may not always foresee its real, ultimate use.

2. Market penetration: The new medium enters the market, developing new uses, and attracting users. If successful it moves to the next stage; if not, the new medium fades.

3. Maturation: The new medium (or adapting old medium) finds its place in the dynamic communications environment. Maximal use and application of the medium’s capabilities.

4. Self Defense: Competition between old media and the new medium forces the former to seek new directions in order to preserve their traditional audiences.

5. A: Adaptation: The traditional medium adapts to the new situation by developing a different function and/or preserving (finding) its (new) audience.