College 1: 01/02/2016: What is a medium?
New Media?
Media change, communication changes, but: process of ‘remediation’ is going on since time
immemorial. Remediation betekent volgens Wikipedia het opnemen van eigenchappen van een oud
medium in een nieuw medium. Elk nieuw media neemt de inhoud van de oudere media in zich op
(film met teksten, zelfde als toneel). De inhoud van verschillende media is hetzelfde gebleven.
Differences between the disciplines are: thematic (western, non-western), methodological and
epistemological. Anthropology: the study of difference and otherness. But also; exoticizing our own
everyday via the other. Communication studies is an academic field that deals with processes of
human communication. The discipline encompasses a range of topics, from face-to-face
conversation to mass media outlets such as television broadcasting. Communication studies also
examines how messages are interpreted through the political, cultural, economic, semiotic,
hermeneutic, and social dimensions of their contexts. Communication studies: sender message
channel receiver. Produce together noise. And the receiver gives feedback to the sender.
What is a medium?
- Collins: ‘medium is a way or means of expressing your ideas or of communicating with
people’
- Oxford Dictionary: ‘the intervening substance through which sensory impressions are
conveyed or physical forces are transmitted.’ This is the materiality of the medium.
Media dimensions
- Material/immaterial
- Time-biased/space-biased
- Virtual/non-virtual
- Enabling communication/restricting communication
The body as medium
Spirit medium: spirit possession is considered ‘normal’ in most societies in the world. The human
body becomes a spirit medium – a medium through which the spirit or divinity speaks.
In mediations, things can change and transform. Media can restrict communication. E.g. language.
We are born, socialized into a language, this language makes us do things, etc. So we are slaves of
language.
Language:
- Material? The intervening substance through which sensory impressions are conveyed or
physical forces are transmitted.
- Immaterial? Medium is a way or means of expressing your ideas or of communicating with
people
There are time-based and space-based media. An example of the last one is e.g. Communicating
through smoke signals. Or through drums (talking drums: whose pitch can be regulated to mimic
the tone and prosody of human speech).
Media can enable communication, but it can also restrict communication.
Terry Eagleton, language as medium
… my demand to be recognized as uniquely myself is caught up in a medium over which none of us
has proprietorship; which has its own logic quite independent of our will; and which speaks me far
more than I speak it … de taal sprijkt mij veel meer dan dat ik de taal spreek.
Aan deze stof zijn we niet toegekomen, maar dit staat wel op de Prezi en is kort behandeld in het
volgende college.
Marshall MacLuhan
In studying the communication process we cannot only look at the message, as if the medium is a
neutral carrier of it – the medium itself is meaningful. Or, media make content. The medium is the
message: it is a ‘structure of awareness.’ E.g. the war is something in between commercials.
John Law: ‘social scientists distort realities into clarity.’
The medium of the academic text - Law
Parts of the world are caught in our ethnographies, our histories and statistics, but other parts are
not, or if they are, they are distorted into clarity. If much of the world is vague, diffuse or unspecific,
slippery, emotional, ephemeral, elusive, or indistinct, changes like a kaleidoscope, or doesn’t have
1
, much of a pattern at all, then were does this leave social science? How might we catch some of the
realities we are currently missing? What is it that gets lost in translation?
The medium of the academic text is not a ‘neutral’ transmitter of meaning: the medium of the
academic text produces meaning. The conventions of text production in the sciences are stylistic
devices; they cast reality in a certain light. As such they are no different from the stylistic devices
employed in literature, poetry, painting, etc.
‘Print culture replaces the sensuous play of oral cultures with a predictable and standardized mode
of thought’
Jack Goody, the transition of heritage
What happens when you write down an oral tradition?
- Transcriptie orale traditie niet ‘neutral registratie’
- Vergelijking van verschillende versies van de LoDagaa mythe leert dat er enorme
verschillen zijn in de gereciteerde versies
- Door de recitaties op te schrijven en te publiceren gaand e verschillen tussen individuele
performances verloren
- Standaardisering
- Geletterde leden van een samenleving gaan de op schrift gestelde versie als de ware versie
aanwijzen ( de status van het geschreven woord)
- Maar waarom een bepaalde versie op schrift wordt gesteld en niet een andere, is vaak
volstrekt willekeurig
- Performers gaan er toe over de op schrift gestelde versie uit het hoofd te leren
- ‘the variability and continuous creativity of the oral tradition will soon be lost. For there is
now on where there had been many, the one having become the (written) authority’
College 2: 04/02/2016: What is a medium?
Last class
- A medium is a vehicle for meaning. It is a communicative advise that sort of brings in things
from a bringer to a receiver.
- Every object can be a medium. All objects have a dimension of being capable of mediating
something.
- No medium, no communication
- Media enable communication, media restrict communication, because e.g. language
sometimes fails us, it says a lot, but it can’t explain everything.
Important issues not yet addressed
- Media are not neutral. We cannot see media as somehow not having an impact on the
message. E.g. if you play Bach on an accordion, you could say it is music from Bach, but the
accordion transforms it into something else.
- McLuhan: ‘the medium is the message’, this links up with that the medium is not neutral.
What the medium is, in a way, divines the message.
- This makes research of re-mediation (how a message changes when it moves from one
medium to another) important: how do messages transform due to the use of a new
medium? Remediation is how the message changes when it moves from one medium to
another. E.g. Quran recitation about the medium is the message: this is an interesting
given. We need firstly to understand that the Quran is the direct word of God, therefore it is
a sacred given. In the Islam recitation is important to study the Quran, this is you, giving
your voice to the words of the Quran. Through your voice and body you bring the word of
God into the world. So, it is differently from reading, because the last one is an action where
you try to understand, you are interpretative. But recitation is just only putting the words of
God into the world and your body is only a vehicle. Why would it be more impressive to
have a young child reciting the Quran: they are seen as more natural, they seem innocent,
purity. So, this explains this ‘medium is the message.’
- McLuhan: ‘the medium is a structure of awareness’. You can’t see media in an isolation, you
have to see it in a broader something. E.g. on television the war is something between
commercials: you see the news and you see all these terrible events, and a couple of
seconds later, you see a commercial. For us it is so logically, we don’t even realize. How
does that change the whole idea about what is a war like? This will get us so far from the
reality of war.
- Now about remediation. Let’s have a look at war in another medium: In a video game a war
is an enjoyable, adrenaline producing event. Here the war is there to get us all exited. If this
idea around the war transforms into another medium, it starts to be a different thing. It
changes the ideas about it. So, the medium changes.
2
New Media?
Media change, communication changes, but: process of ‘remediation’ is going on since time
immemorial. Remediation betekent volgens Wikipedia het opnemen van eigenchappen van een oud
medium in een nieuw medium. Elk nieuw media neemt de inhoud van de oudere media in zich op
(film met teksten, zelfde als toneel). De inhoud van verschillende media is hetzelfde gebleven.
Differences between the disciplines are: thematic (western, non-western), methodological and
epistemological. Anthropology: the study of difference and otherness. But also; exoticizing our own
everyday via the other. Communication studies is an academic field that deals with processes of
human communication. The discipline encompasses a range of topics, from face-to-face
conversation to mass media outlets such as television broadcasting. Communication studies also
examines how messages are interpreted through the political, cultural, economic, semiotic,
hermeneutic, and social dimensions of their contexts. Communication studies: sender message
channel receiver. Produce together noise. And the receiver gives feedback to the sender.
What is a medium?
- Collins: ‘medium is a way or means of expressing your ideas or of communicating with
people’
- Oxford Dictionary: ‘the intervening substance through which sensory impressions are
conveyed or physical forces are transmitted.’ This is the materiality of the medium.
Media dimensions
- Material/immaterial
- Time-biased/space-biased
- Virtual/non-virtual
- Enabling communication/restricting communication
The body as medium
Spirit medium: spirit possession is considered ‘normal’ in most societies in the world. The human
body becomes a spirit medium – a medium through which the spirit or divinity speaks.
In mediations, things can change and transform. Media can restrict communication. E.g. language.
We are born, socialized into a language, this language makes us do things, etc. So we are slaves of
language.
Language:
- Material? The intervening substance through which sensory impressions are conveyed or
physical forces are transmitted.
- Immaterial? Medium is a way or means of expressing your ideas or of communicating with
people
There are time-based and space-based media. An example of the last one is e.g. Communicating
through smoke signals. Or through drums (talking drums: whose pitch can be regulated to mimic
the tone and prosody of human speech).
Media can enable communication, but it can also restrict communication.
Terry Eagleton, language as medium
… my demand to be recognized as uniquely myself is caught up in a medium over which none of us
has proprietorship; which has its own logic quite independent of our will; and which speaks me far
more than I speak it … de taal sprijkt mij veel meer dan dat ik de taal spreek.
Aan deze stof zijn we niet toegekomen, maar dit staat wel op de Prezi en is kort behandeld in het
volgende college.
Marshall MacLuhan
In studying the communication process we cannot only look at the message, as if the medium is a
neutral carrier of it – the medium itself is meaningful. Or, media make content. The medium is the
message: it is a ‘structure of awareness.’ E.g. the war is something in between commercials.
John Law: ‘social scientists distort realities into clarity.’
The medium of the academic text - Law
Parts of the world are caught in our ethnographies, our histories and statistics, but other parts are
not, or if they are, they are distorted into clarity. If much of the world is vague, diffuse or unspecific,
slippery, emotional, ephemeral, elusive, or indistinct, changes like a kaleidoscope, or doesn’t have
1
, much of a pattern at all, then were does this leave social science? How might we catch some of the
realities we are currently missing? What is it that gets lost in translation?
The medium of the academic text is not a ‘neutral’ transmitter of meaning: the medium of the
academic text produces meaning. The conventions of text production in the sciences are stylistic
devices; they cast reality in a certain light. As such they are no different from the stylistic devices
employed in literature, poetry, painting, etc.
‘Print culture replaces the sensuous play of oral cultures with a predictable and standardized mode
of thought’
Jack Goody, the transition of heritage
What happens when you write down an oral tradition?
- Transcriptie orale traditie niet ‘neutral registratie’
- Vergelijking van verschillende versies van de LoDagaa mythe leert dat er enorme
verschillen zijn in de gereciteerde versies
- Door de recitaties op te schrijven en te publiceren gaand e verschillen tussen individuele
performances verloren
- Standaardisering
- Geletterde leden van een samenleving gaan de op schrift gestelde versie als de ware versie
aanwijzen ( de status van het geschreven woord)
- Maar waarom een bepaalde versie op schrift wordt gesteld en niet een andere, is vaak
volstrekt willekeurig
- Performers gaan er toe over de op schrift gestelde versie uit het hoofd te leren
- ‘the variability and continuous creativity of the oral tradition will soon be lost. For there is
now on where there had been many, the one having become the (written) authority’
College 2: 04/02/2016: What is a medium?
Last class
- A medium is a vehicle for meaning. It is a communicative advise that sort of brings in things
from a bringer to a receiver.
- Every object can be a medium. All objects have a dimension of being capable of mediating
something.
- No medium, no communication
- Media enable communication, media restrict communication, because e.g. language
sometimes fails us, it says a lot, but it can’t explain everything.
Important issues not yet addressed
- Media are not neutral. We cannot see media as somehow not having an impact on the
message. E.g. if you play Bach on an accordion, you could say it is music from Bach, but the
accordion transforms it into something else.
- McLuhan: ‘the medium is the message’, this links up with that the medium is not neutral.
What the medium is, in a way, divines the message.
- This makes research of re-mediation (how a message changes when it moves from one
medium to another) important: how do messages transform due to the use of a new
medium? Remediation is how the message changes when it moves from one medium to
another. E.g. Quran recitation about the medium is the message: this is an interesting
given. We need firstly to understand that the Quran is the direct word of God, therefore it is
a sacred given. In the Islam recitation is important to study the Quran, this is you, giving
your voice to the words of the Quran. Through your voice and body you bring the word of
God into the world. So, it is differently from reading, because the last one is an action where
you try to understand, you are interpretative. But recitation is just only putting the words of
God into the world and your body is only a vehicle. Why would it be more impressive to
have a young child reciting the Quran: they are seen as more natural, they seem innocent,
purity. So, this explains this ‘medium is the message.’
- McLuhan: ‘the medium is a structure of awareness’. You can’t see media in an isolation, you
have to see it in a broader something. E.g. on television the war is something between
commercials: you see the news and you see all these terrible events, and a couple of
seconds later, you see a commercial. For us it is so logically, we don’t even realize. How
does that change the whole idea about what is a war like? This will get us so far from the
reality of war.
- Now about remediation. Let’s have a look at war in another medium: In a video game a war
is an enjoyable, adrenaline producing event. Here the war is there to get us all exited. If this
idea around the war transforms into another medium, it starts to be a different thing. It
changes the ideas about it. So, the medium changes.
2
