For your after class writing assignment, write a 250-word summary of J. David Bolter and Richard A. Grusin’s “Remediation” and today’s lecture. Following your summary, write how at least three forms of media remediate other/older media forms.
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Remediation by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin
People remain captivated by the modernist myth of the new: they assume that digital technologies such as the World Wide Web, virtual reality, and computer graphics must separate themselves from earlier media for a new set of aesthetic and cultural principles. In their article, Remediation by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin offer a theory of mediation for our digital age that challenges this assumption. We are reminded that term remediation has evolved conceptually from the Latin term ‘remederi’, meaning to heal. While educators have applied the term as a ‘euphemism for the task of bringing lagging students up to an expected level of performance,’ environmental engineers infer it to mean restoring a damage eco system. However, Bolter and Grusin define mediation as the formal logic by which new media refashion or remediate prior media forms, and together with ‘immediacy’ and ‘hypermediacy,’ the authors suggest remediation is ‘one of the three traits of our genealogy’ of new media. Immediacy erases the media and hypermediacy makes the media opaque. Immediacy is digital media’s attempt to operate translucently with its user, providing an immediate connection with images of the real world. Hypermediacy refers to the ways in which digital media reminds its users of the media in use. Immediacy and hypermediacy are the strategies used in digital media to mediate, or represent the real world. Yet, digital technology also remediates, or refashions and potentially improves one medium in another.
Bolter and Grusin argue that new visual media accomplish their cultural relevance by paying homage to, rivaling, and refashioning such earlier media as perspective painting, photography, film, and television. Remediation has been an ongoing process; something is always being borrowed. They call this process of refashioning “remediation,” and they note that earlier media have also refashioned one another: photography remediated painting, film remediated stage production and photography, and television remediated film, and radio. The writers argue that new visual media achieve their cultural significance precisely by paying tribute to earlier media. The entertainment industry repurposes mediated content into another mediated form, such as a comic book is repurposed as a live-action movie. After class, students examined subtle remediation forms present in our digitized culture: the digital folder icon resembles the quintessential icon of an original paper folder; the phone icon mirrors the early dial up telephones; and email icons simulate the conventional envelope.
Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin uses the 1995 film strange days to set their argument for their article “Remediation.” In their opinion, the movie really captures the paradoxical ways in which new digital media function for our culture today. They talk about how our digital technologies are developing faster, than our cultural, legal and educational systems can. Bolter and Grusin introduce the idea of immediacy and hypermediacy. Immediacy means to erase and make the medium transparent, while hypermediacy means to multiply, and emphasize the medium. Since the end of the twentieth century we have been bombarded with media and images surrounding our every movement. From bus stop advertising upcoming movies, to subway stations plastered with posters, to Times Square lighting up the night life we have become one with the advertisements. Bolter and Grusin bring up the idea that right now we are in a weird place, concerning technology and media. “Our culture wants both to multiply its media and to erase all traces of mediation: it wants to erase its media in the very act of multiplying technologies of mediation.” Take the smartphone for example, in a way our smartphones erase the use of old technologies, but also multiplies other technologies. With our smartphones, not only can we call and text people, but now we can check and send emails, set alarms, listen to music and more. Due to the smartphone older form of technology are being obsoleted. The use of physical alarm clocks and radios are no longer needed, but we can obtain the same results as when we used them. In class we looked into remediation in our own daily lives. A common form of remediation could be email. Emailing has completely replaced papermail, it is a faster and easier way to formally communicate with people. Another form of remediation could be the netflix app. Netflix has replaced traditional movie theaters and vcrs, because now you can just stream whatever you wish to watch, at your convenience.
In the article Remediation by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin talks about how people are captured by the digital technologies. They talk about how digital technologies are slowly developing our society and everything we do for example things like our education system and cultures are shaped by technology. The terms that show up are immediacy and hypermediacy which both come hand in hand with each other.The terms are a way of traits of genealogy for new media. Both are the opposite effects of each other. Immediacy is to help with humans with technology as smoothly as possible whereas hypermediacy is to remind the users that we are constantly using technology for example when we use the TV the glare and everything reminds us that we are watching from the TV. Both of these terms mediate which means representing the real world. Remediation itself has been occurring ever since we built the first technologies. Things like earlier media that we used has always been constantly being built on and revitalized. Things like a small tv into a big plasma screen tv. It constantly evolves every time a new technology comes out we use the old base to develop our new technologies. Remediation is the term meaning borrowed therefore everything has been changed from old to new. Things constantly get changed from a newspaper which slowly develops overtime into being read in a tablet or on a phone and it constantly starts to build on. One example is the radio now we listen to digital podcasts back then we needs the physical radio to listen to it and now we can tune into it digitally whenever.
In the article “Remediation” by J. David Bolter and Richard A. Grusin talks about three important topics immediacy, hyper immediacy, and remediation. First is immediacy, which is a form of transparent media, meaning we don’t even realize we’re using it. For example, our smartphones is a media that we carry in our bags it helps us use apps, data, send texts, lets us stream TV shows, and listen to music. We also use it in our home like the device Cortana which is something we verbally speak to and it listens to your command. Technology has become one with our lives and it’s almost unnoticeable. Hyper immediacy is a media that is directly in our face. It’s directly advertised on buses, cabs, even on the very devices we carry. Hyper immediacy is more aggressive and it allows people to build a platform on different technologies we use. An example is by using websites that uses hyperlinks it leads you to different links that take somewhere else on a computer interface. Immediacy and hyper immediacy clash with one another because immediacy wants to erase media and hyper immediacy want to bring out different medias. Remediation is the concept that media contains other media. A new media can use something from an old media and reinterpret it. Media reforms itself from all other media that has come before it. A few ways that remediation works are by replicating next content from old content and giving it a different way to access the same kind of content. The other idea is that remediation is a two-way street new media can branch off old media, but old media can do so the same in the instance that something interesting has come up in a newer media old media can utilize it and redesign it.
In the article “Remediation” by Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin they start off by introduving the 1995 film “Strange Days”. They say that the film captures the ways in which new digital media function for our culture today. They then address our culture’s need for immediacy and hypermediacy, the film shows what we understand as a double logic of “re-mediation.” Our culture wants both to multiply its media and to erase all traces of mediation: it wants to erase its media in the very act of multiplying technologies of mediation. What they mean by this is that technology is developing faster than our cultural and educational systems, which if you take a look around is fairly true. We went from a flip phone to a smart phone in a matter of years. Technology is consistently growing and becoming more and more advanced. Let’s take the smart phone again, not only can we call and text but we can browse the internet, get emails, and listen to music, set alarms and much more. The phone makes other things like music players and physical alarm clocks become obsolete. Going back to immediacy and hypermediacy, immediacy means to erase the media and hypermediacy means to make the media denser. Immediacy depends on hypermediacy. The others then introduce remediation and says how something is always being borrowed. With this remediation has also become refashioned, the email has replaced letters and television has replaced radio. In our day and age our technologies continue to be recycled.