Immediacy, Hypermediacy and Remediation

In the first chapter, the authors Bolter and Grusin mention immediacy, hypermediacy, and remediation. Appropriately, they offer up that they make no assertion that any of these three concepts are universal truths. Instead they are practices of certain groups at specific times. "We do not claim that Immediacy, Hypermediacy and Remediation are universal or aesthetic truths; rather, we regard them as practices of specific groups in specific times." (Bolter 2000, pg:22)

I would like to focus on the concept of Transparent Immediacy. First I think we need to understand the two concepts separately to gain better understanding of the both together. Transparency refers to the goal of interface designers and developers to make a '"interfaceless" interface'(Bolter 2000, pg:23) This meaning to make it so natural in its feel and look it eases itself on the user. The goal is "to foster in the viewer a sense of presence; the viewer should forget that she is in fact wearing a computer interface and accept the graphic image that it offers as her own visual world (Hodges et al. 1994)" (Bolter 2000, pg:20). Take pilots in training to fly an aircraft, the point of the virtual spaces is to make the whole procedure seem real in every way, the reason for this is that although the student pilot is not actual thousands of feet in the air he/she must feel like they are to gain a benefit from the training in order to attain a pilots license. On the other hand, not all transparent immediacy has such a positive outcome and can result in the user becoming so immersed that they lose their sense of reality.

Immediacy is the users’ reference for immediacy in access as well as interaction and understanding. In other words, the users want an instant connection with the medium. “The automatic or deferred quality of computer programming promotes in the viewer a sense of immediate contact with the image” (Bolter 2000, pg:28). Bolter is saying here that when a person/user is in use of the video to converse with another, they have an equivalent or better sense of this immediate contact, accept with the individual that appears in the virtual reality world. 

My understanding of transparent immediacy is a person that removes themselves so that the user is no conscious that they are confronting a medium, but stands in an immediate relationship to the contents of that medium. 

Bibliography:

Bolter. D and Grusin. R (2000) - Remediation: Understanding New Media

Image available at:

http://www.aviationnews.eu/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/ATR-pilot-trainer.jpg

 

 

Creeber on Digital Culture

The rise of New Media can first be traced back to a number of movements beginning in the late nineteenth century. Modernism was one of these movements, and it was optimistically promoted by its followers as a way to change human society for the better. Creeber specifies modernism as being an umbrella term for how society responded to change during the industrial revolution. Developments in science and technology during this era were equally reflected by developments of artists and intellectuals. This period is arguably where the origins for new media lay. 

The Frankfurt school was a by-product of the modernist movement. They compared the rise of mass culture to the mass industry that dominated working society. Parallels were especially drawn with Fords production lines. Whilst he was issuing cars that were "exactly the same," and accessible to anybody, so to, argued the Frankfurt school was the "identical" mass media, irrelevant as to whether it was a novel or a television show. The growing homogeny was seen as an attack on "high culture," BBC Director General, John Reith argued.  Although the Frankfurt school's views were mainly negative, they were still willing to recognise the significance of new media forms. After WWII, analysist Barthes' used a system of semiotics and structuralism to study mass culture and media forms. He concluded that audiences were powerless, merely consuming  the output. 

Post-modernism is connected to the changes that have taken place in society post-industrialisation. Innovations towards the latter half of the twentieth century sped up the processes that would lead to mass media as we recognise it. McLuhan was one theorist who understood the potential for mass media. 

"Much of his work anticipated the power of New Media to enhance and audience's interactivity with electronic information as a whole"  

(Creeber, 2009: 15) 

Postmodernism celebrates popular culture for its lack of depth or value, instead embracing its "shallow" content, which places aesthetic and image above all else. This can be compared to the modern internet culture, where cult-like status is applied to generally meaningless memes. Increased interactivity allows anyone to become a producer, shunning the constraints of past decades where the majority of the population were voyeurs. 

Bibliography:

Creeber G & Martin R | Digital Cultures, 2009 | Open University Press 

Manovich on New Media

"The computerization of culture not only leads to the emergence of new cultural forms such as computer games and virtual worlds; it redefines existing ones such as photography and cinema. " (Manovich, 2002: 35) 

Manovich argues that the rise of new Media not only introduced new media platforms, but also reinvented those that already existed. It has even changed the somewhat previously untouchable nature of the  static and moving image. In particular, he focuses on the shift that cinema has experienced. The validity of revolutionary nature of these changes however, can be questioned. Is new media really the instigator towards the first major reformation of this industry? 

In actuality, many of new media's revolutionary principles can be traced back to far earlier methods, nullifying its apparent uniqueness. For one, it is easy to argue against its claims that digital media have allowed a multitude of platforms, such as text, moving images and sounds to be be shared and viewed through one device for the first time. As far back as the 1920s, predating the modern PC by nearly a century, Manovich points out that filmmakers were combining sound, text and moving images together. This would make cinema the original platform for multimedia. 

Furthermore, is the debate that whilst  digital media is discrete, analogue media can only be continuous. Manovich contrasts the 2D sampling of space with the cinemas sampling of time in order to debate this issue. The sampling of 24 frames a second created whilst filming can be used to prove that cinema had already prepared us for new media. "All that remained was to take this already discrete representation and to quantify it," (Manovich, 2002: 66)  a simple mechanical step. 

In summary, it cannot be ignored how new media has changed the way we look at existing media platforms such as cinema. It is important to remember, however, that new media is not the only precursor for change in the industry. A brief look will reveal that a gradual change has been happening since the conception of cinema. It could be suggested that its the speed of change that new media brings that is more vital, compared to the fact that it brings change at all. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Manovich L | 2002 | The Language of New Media (MIT Press)