DTC 101 – Spring 2013

@brandonluc01

The media of today has changed dramatically  over the years. Advances in technology allow news programs to apply applications improved from the old to make the news more interesting, reliable, and current. In Jay David Bolter and Richard Gruisin’s article “Immediacy, Hypermediacy, and Remediation,” they talk about the influence of remediation on the immediacy of media. Bolter and Gruisin “call the representation of one medium in another remediation, and we will argue that remediation is a defining characteristic of the new digital media” (45). Meaning that remediation is the refashioning of preceding medias to create new media. The purpose of remediating old media is to make new media more immediate. Bolter and Gruisin describe immediacy as,“The automatic or deferred quality of computer programming promotes in the viewer a sense of immediate contact with the image.” (28) This quote is stating that remediated mediums has allowed viewers/users to forget they are confronting a medium and feel that they are receiving direct interactions with the media presented. Remediation and immediacy can be clearly seen when comparing modern news stations with old news stations. Remediation has advanced technologies like high definition imaging, surround sound capabilities, and on screen text to make the user feel as if the news being presented is directly interacting with them through the news medium. Older news stations without these advances had pixelated  images, static sounds, and limited on screen texts which acted as distractions that reminded the user of the medium they are using. Remediation has achieved “interfaceless interfaces” in the modern day news broadcast stations to create a relationship with the user and the medium.

@cougar_sean

In 1990, the news was presented as a documentary; it feels well prepared, researched and founded in hard facts. However, it lacks the presentation of multiple windows that make media “disappear” (66) as Bolter and Grusin suggested is necessary for a vehicle to become immersive. In laymen’s terms, the news program from 1990 was a singular source of production with a variety of behind-the-scenes work being done. The news clip from 2008 on the other hand offers the aura of immediacy right away as the ticker runs across the bottom of the screen allowing audience members to jump back and forth between multiple facets of information.

The basic idea of immediacy claims that what is happening in the here and now is of the utmost importance. However, obvious change in broadcasting shows current technology is never enough for our rapidly moving culture. Bazin believed photography and cinema were “discoveries that satisf[ied] once and for all, our culture’s desire for immediacy,” (69) but he was wrong. Bolter and Grusin point out the adaptation or “remediation” of film with the addition of computer graphics. Just as filming techniques are continuously modified, news media and how it is presented changes as well. Remediation is about taking what is available and building on that technology or way of thinking. The basis of local news has not changed, however we have added to it since 1990. Readers, video screens, live interviews, favorite posts, tweets or photos are all displayed and interlinked in one place. That is the core concept of technological development and that is the meaning of true remediation.

I found this photo on Google Maps while searching in Key West, Florida. I find it to be an interesting scene due to the inability to know what is really happening. Is the man stretching? Is he reaching to pick something up? Or has the Google car actually captured a man at one of the worst times, tripping and falling off a ledge. All scenarios could be true because there is not enough evidence to prove one over the other.

There is something about a photograph that makes it mysterious and creates the ability for there to be alternate explanations for what is happening in the picture. Even though this photograph recreates the scene exactly like it happened, we still do not know for sure what is going on. This is where I think Walter Benjamin states it best in his article “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” when he says, “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be” (page 3). If we were actually standing at this place where this picture was taken and we had the ability to watch what was happening there would only be one scenario we could imagine. But since this is just one single frame of existence stripped away from all the surrounding context, there are now many stories one can come up with because there is no way to truly know the truth from a single picture.

I have two pictures from opposites sides of the world.  The first one is from Bangkok  Thailand in the heart of Chinatown.  I was there just last summer, it’s a crazy chaotic place, and it is very common to see parents ride with their children in this manner.  The second one is from Chicago, and from the looks of it right under the L train.  Perhaps this bride is going to get on the L train to go to her wedding, or perhaps she’s going to celebrate at the bar.  I choose to believe the latter because that’s what I’d be doing.  Walter Benjamin says, “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be,” (p.3).  These two photos existed in a particular time and space, their time has passed but these images eternalize that specific moment.  Google street view allows us a way to peer into the lives of other people all over the world, but in a very detached way, which I find fascinating.

This picture struck me as I was looking around google maps. I found the ambulence, and I began following it, curious as to where it was going. Eventually I came across this scene, a scene with multiple facetes that I couldn’t analyses them immediatly. As Walter Benjamin said “This constitutes the shock effect of the film, which, like all shocks, should be cushioned by heightened presence of mind.” Pictures and films have a unique ability to give you an almost unfiltered view of an instance. This picture takes place in Chile, in what is quite possibly a dangerous part of town. The photograph is taken from a place where there is no feasible way for me to get the picture, and yet there it is.

Photography is pure, this is a pure view of this place, of these people. But while it’s a pure view, it’s only of an instance. We have no way of knowing if the ambulance was in a rush to help someone that was injured, or what the story of the family on the left is. You can almost feel the tension between the two men on the right, photography asks questions but refuses to provide answers. It’s almost maddening how a simple picture can ask so many un answerable  questions.

@ ohheyitshonor

In ” The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” by Walter Benjamin, the reader finds the different aspects Benjamin observes in ‘modern’ art today. An example of this type of digital art is seen below. This is a person’s view looking up at London’s most famous tourist attractions. This massive Ferris Wheel is known world wide as it towers above the city giving the average traveler a birds eye view of the expansive city. For a monument known for a grand aura in reality, this digital image by far doe not do it justice. The view is distorted as we see multiple viewpoint within one picture, something that never occurs in reality.

This image, in turn, represent what Benjamin claimed as the ‘death of the aura.’ As a digitally created image, one of the 21st century would assume that whatever vantage point was captured is entirely reality and a view which anyone can experience. However, as the author explains, film, as well as still capture of moments cannot capture everything that makes those places and moments beautiful. The grandeur of the downtown London attraction is lost in the mistake made mechanically, but even if it hadn’t been there, there it is the loss of emotional drive within the scene which Benjamin refers.

Overall, this digital mistake captures the mindless efforts of the camera to capture moments which can never be encompasses simply by a lens.

A Distorted Veiw of this famous landmark