Remediation
From What's new, new media?
Contents |
[edit] Remediation
Remediation is the incorporation or representation of one medium in another medium.
Generally speaking, remediation is the act of providing a remedy.
[edit] Remediation and New Media
According to their book Remediation: Understanding New Media by J. David Bolter and Richard A. Grusin, remediation is a defining characteristic of new digital media because digital media is contstantly remediating its predecessors (television, radio, print journalism and other forms of old media).
Remediation can be complete or visible. A film based on a book is remediating the printed story. The film may not provide any reference to the original medium or acknowldgement that it is an adaptation. By attempting to absorb the old medium entirely, the new medium presents itself without any connection to its original source. On the other hand, a medium such as a movie clip can torn out of context and inserted into a new medium such as music. Bolter and Grusin describe this as visible remediation because, "The work becomes a mosiac in which we are simultaneously aware of the individual pieces and their new, inappropriate setting." [1]
[edit] The Double-logic of remediation
Although our culture wants to multiply its media it also wants to erase all traces of mediation. For example, a typical webiste may be hypermediated, offering photographs and streaming video. These media mediate between the viewer and the meaning of the photographs and video. The viewer does not want mediation, an intervening agency, but instead the wants immediacy, a way to get beyond mediation.[2]
[edit] The Process of Remediation
According to Bolter and Grusin, Media are continually commenting on, reproducing, and replacing each other. This process is integral to media.[3]. Media constantly interact with other media by reproducing and replacing and making other changes. New Media constantly justifies itself by remediating old media.
[edit] Remediation and Reality
Because media intervenes, or mediates between viewers and what is represented, meaning is not immediate. In order to receive the meaning immediately, the veiwer can ignore the presence of the medium and the act of mediation or by diminishing the medium's represntational function. When painters of modern art chose everyday objects, like soupcans to represent, they removed mediation. The viewers recieved the meaning immediately because the object came from their "real" world, not representative of something abstract.
[edit] Redmediation as Reform
When a new medium is introduced, users expect that it will improve upon the flaws of the preceeding medium and will deliver meaning more immediately. By improving upon a predecessor, new media justifies itself. The rhetoric of remediation favors immediacy and transparency, even though as the medium matures it offers new opportunities for hypermediacy.[4].
