|
Remediation Understanding New Media 1999 295 pages Complementary Texts Gunther Kress and Theo Van Leeuwen Keywords Copyright © 2002-2007 Isabel Pedersen |
Remediation: Understanding New Media by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin was published in 1999. In terms of general positioning, Bolter and Grusin are professors of New Media studies. They are not concerned so much with the past or future (the predictive mode), they want to take a snapshot of the present state of media and that which constitutes it. In addition, they theorize through countless examples and illustrations rather than lengthy passages of unapplied theory. In fact they state that you can skip the theory section and go straight to the chapters on media if you wish. They are really looking to appeal to a wider audience than simply an academic one. The central idea is Remediation. They give a formal definition in their glossary: (quote) Defined by Paul Levenson as the “anthropotropic” process by which new media technologies improve upon or remedy prior technologies. We define the term differently, using it to mean the formal logic by which new media refashion prior media forms. Along with immediacy and hypermediacy, remediation is one of the three traits of our genealogy of new media. Bolter and Grusin spend most of the text testing the idea of remediation against various and far ranging media including games, photography, art, film, TV, virtual and augmented reality, the web, malls, Disney world and so on. Their emphasis is not on the real or a notion of reality. They do not read modality markers the way Kress and Van Leeuwen read signs of perceived truth in media as social semiotic construct. They are looking for notions of revelation and disguise in media. |