“Remediation as the mediation of mediation”
Bolter and Grusin’s book is their attempt to explain the workings of digital technology through their theory of mediation. They claim “what is new about new media comes from the particular ways in which they refashion older media and the ways in which older media refashion themselves to answer the challenges of new media” (15). The first several chapters set up their theory by situating it within the theorists that came before them and by doing this they also set up a quick history of remediation.
For this journal, you are going to explore what remediation means—to you, to this class, and to the world of popular culture. Start by defining the key terms (feel free to use Bolter and Grusin’s own definitions) before examining why remediation might be important to technology, digitality, and literacy practices. How does remediation influence these concepts? How does remediation change the way we might view popular culture? Why might remediation be an important idea in terms of helping us understanding composing? Continue in your explorations of remediation by thinking about the concept as it might apply to this class or how it might apply to you as a composer/compositionist.
In the second part of this journal you are going to investigate an example of remediation that you find in pop culture today. Explain what the example is, where it comes from and then show how the example has been remediated. Be specific—in both your example and in your explanation of how and why it is an example of remediation.
***I am not going to give you an example to work with…I want to see what you can find on your own.
***Once someone uses an example--it's gone, so you can't reuse examples.
Normal guidelines (500 words, dialogue with peers, etc)
Remediation is the act of transferring one idea from one medium to another in a seamless fashion, such as transferring a 200 page romance novel into a 3 minute song, where both convey the same idea, yet in a very different way. Remediation serves as the basis for creativity in today’s society and spurs the inventory process, as well as inspiring new forms of media. The act of remediating something, such as a news article, influences the way people think and approach life. For instance, a news story may be broadcast on the television, then quickly transferred to a website, where the navigation process changes exponentially, and then a student may write a report on the article, using the website as their information source. Remediation has utterly changed the way we, as a community, think. Ideas can be transferred through all different kinds of mediums, such as paintings, music, video games, tv shows, etc. and the way students learn has drastically changed because of that. A student no longer has to sift through books or news articles to find answers to their questions, but can type key words into Google and meet numerous amounts of answers in various forms.
ReplyDeleteIn today’s society, it is no longer a passing thought as to whether a good book will be remediated into a movie, or whether a comic book will be turned into a video game, filled with graphic designs and real life situations. In the same instance, we are seeing the effects of remediation in a technological world reflected in past forms of composition, such as a modern looking news article that “attempts to emulate in print the graphical user interface of a web site” (40). Remediation has surfaced in every aspect of the Digital Age and (according to Bolter and Grusin) is a “defining characteristic of the new digital media” (45). It takes on the task of transferring new concepts that appear in mass media fields (i.e. Facebook) and seeks to compose it in a way that it reflects their comfort zone on classic forms of media, such as a book or news article. For example, in class many of my fellow students chose to make their books covers resemble a web page, or reflect a Facebook page, even though the medium they were using was not digitalized. The influence of technology and remediation is present in today’s culture. As composers of today’s society, we are given the task of adapting to all different forms of composition, and the ability to manipulate different mediums, even “refashioning within the medium” for the proposed audience (49).
An outstanding example of remediation in the past decade has been the Harry Potter franchise. What originally began as a children’s novel was quickly refashioned in an outstanding amount of mediums. A quick example of how the inventory process worked for this particular example is the following exmaples: books, movies, video games, fanfictions, music videos, plays/musicals, drawings/paintings/digital art, theme park etc. To break this process down to a small group, I’m going to stick with four main genres. While Harry Potter began as a(1)book, it was quickly remediated into a (2)movie (as many books are in the digital-crazed population). From the original book and the movie, it was then remediated further online in the resulting (3) fanfictions. From there, people have taken the fanfiction stories and have fashioned (4) music videos after them. Each genre inspired further creation and invention from the same principal idea. The act of remediation took a generally “old fashioned” concept and refashioned it to create a new one using “existing forms” (39). For this reason, and based on this example, I believe that remediation has no boundaries that it cannot cross.
I suppose I should start with the big one: remediation. I define remediation as taking something in one form of media (a printed book, a billboard, etc.) and adapting it to a different media (A film, television, fiber-optic screen). One of the terms used the most in the introduction and first chapter is immediacy, which to me is the idea of being directly involved in something, having that first and primary experience. In contrast to immediacy is the term hypermedia, which is described as interactive applications such as web pages, desktops, video games, and so on, which focus on the heterogeneity of combined fragmentation. Yet another term Bolter and Grusin use heavily is transparency, which is the idea of erasing the presence of the artist (and I’m using that word broadly) so that the viewer believes they are seeing something that is really there, taking part in that immediacy. Perspective is an easy one. Heck, they even define it for us as “a ‘seeing through’” (24). Automaticity also pops up numerous times. This regards the removal of the artist and is often associated with transparent immediacy.
ReplyDeleteI think it is important to understand these terms, as well as several others that appear in the readings, because by understanding these, we can understand what the goals of certain media are (providing viewers with the experience of immediacy, making them feel as though they are actually experience what is before them). We can also gain a better understanding of how we can accomplish such goals effectively and through a wide array of media. I don’t think any of us have actually ever thought about how remediation is used in our everyday lives. It is all around us, surrounding us through television ads, billboards, Facebook pages, music videos. Everything we see and are shown as pop culture is a way of giving us that sense of immediacy. Why else would that crazy hippy guy video tape his reaction to the “double rainbow all the way across the sky?” He wanted to be there with him, to feel his excitement, no matter how acid-trippy it may have seemed. Remediation is important to composing because it also the composer(s) to alter their products through various media to reach immediacy as effectively and stylistically as they can.
I strongly agree with Sarah’s claim that remediation has changed the way students learn. We no longer have to sit in the library for so many hours, trying to sift through lengthy books to find the correct information (even though our parents like to remind us time and again how they had to, and how they didn’t have word processing programs with backspacing, just clunking typewriters). Now we can find specific words in entire articles, or even have a librarian find the exact articles we need for our papers without even setting foot in the library!
One example of remediation that stands out to me is the remix of Jane Austen’s popular novels Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. Originally novels on bound paper, these literary works found themselves being turn into as many versions of (basically the same) made-for-tv-movies as people could make. Then they went to “the big screen” and even a biography of Ms. Austen herself was produced. As Sarah mentioned for Harry Potter, I’m sure there are hundreds of fanfictions for the Austen novels. The most recent remediation brings these works back into their print form, but with some minor adjustments. Seth Grahame-Smith and Ben H. Winters have reworked the novels to incorporate a twist on today’s werewolves/vampires craze. With these horror-story-esque additions, Grahame-Smith and Winters have successfully remediated these classic tales, yet again. I agree with Sarah when she says that there are no boundaries which remediation cannot cross.
The existence of remediation gives insight into its very meaning. Remediation, as given by Bolter and Grusin, is the representation of one medium in another. I go further to say, and agree with Sarah, that it is a transition from one genre to another in a seamless fashion that is designed to intrigue and appeal to both the immediacy and hypermediacy of society and the world. Remediation is indeed a “defining characteristic of the new digital media” (45). The media bombards sensory perception and one manner is not enough anymore. The immediacy necessary “leads one either to erase or to render automatic the act of representation” (33). Therefore, the world desires the fast paced movement and exchange of ideas over slow and antiquated modes. That being said, remediation is not an entirely new idea and has existed for quite some time. The example of the Italian cabinet, circa 1660, with multiple carvings of images of religious scenes, is a force with which media theorists can rally, seeing that remediation is a force that has existed and will persist into the digital age.
ReplyDeleteSarah astutely mentions that “a student no longer has to sift through books or news articles to find answers to their questions, but can type key words into Google.” They hypermedicacy of this is extremely relevant. The search results open new windows into which students can look and see various results. Written articles are presented alongside videos and different images and graphics that all apply to a desired subject. Remediation, in its various forms of immediacy, is present in all forms of media and does so to modify and amplify technology, digitalism, and literacy practices. Having information present in various forms gives way to opening channels of discussion and though, and therefore relevant rhetorical discourse. All in all, the presence of remediation inaugurates intelligent thought while paradoxically simplifying information so that it is available to more audiences.
The popular Dreamworks saga, Shrek, is a prime example of remediation in the realm of a former media into film. The media here, however, are classic fairy tales that have been countless times to the point where the true and original forms of the fairy tales are questionable unless sought out directly. Shrek, however, is a mingling of modern in a fairy tale world that is presented in such a way that the audience becomes enthralled with the plot and exploration of the mystical and romantic connections between hero, heroine, and villain. The tying in of the fairy tales depict the female aspects of legends like Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Rapunzel, and Cinderella as modernized, strong women in a realm of magic and myth. The remediation and claim of the fairy tales as if they existed solely for the purpose of the film exists as well, which consolidates the idea that acknowledging the original work “in the film would disrupt the continuity and the illusion of immediacy” (44).
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, Shrek is a prime example of the immediacy sought by society in that the work is akin to the animation present in Toy Story. The goal is obviously “to make the computer disappear: to make the settings…and human characters look as much as possible like live-action film” (48). The transparency sought is evident in the movements of the animations as well as the physical features of limbs, hair, and clothing. Immediacy works to erase the visible parts of a remediation that make it obvious that one is not fully involved and life-like. The graphics of Shrek are three dimensional and thusly assist in lifting the veil between the fictional aspect and reality. Take this a step further, and one can explore the remediation of a remediation in the arena of the Shrek attraction at Universal Studios. Not only are the classic fairy tales repurposed in the tale of Shrek, but the movie itself is remolded to fit a new plot and theme to attract an audience in a four dimensional theme. Physical aspects, like spraying the audience with water when there is a splash on screen, three dimensional glasses, and jets of fragrant smoke to depict a smell the characters are experiencing, are all part of the new experience.
Remediation is the process of remedying something. It is the taking of some medium and changing it in a way that it takes on a new form. It refreshes the original version of that something. As I have learned in my public relations class, journalists remediate press releases that are sent out by large organizations. Press releases just have the bare facts; there is no synthesis or application of those facts to how they will impact the reader. Journalist take those bare facts and put them into an engaging story form with a catchy headline that will make people actually want to read about anything… from something as boring as a new fundraiser to as exciting as an inter-office scandal. They take the original and put a new and interesting spin on it. With all of the technology in today’s society, remediation is everywhere, and not just in the writing world. Apple products are always being changed and reinvented. We have gone from the iPod, to the iPhone, to the iTouch to the iPad in just a matter of a few years. We have gone from cassette tapes, to CD’s to iTunes, LimeWire and Rhapsody. When people post short blurbs about music videos, television shows or books on their Facebooks or Twitters this is an example of remediation. Things in our world are constantly being amended, rectified and repaired. I completely agree with Sarah when she says that there are no limits to remediation. Since we live in a constantly communicating age, we have unlimited access to all forms of literature and this has encouraged all sorts of opportunities for things like fan-fiction, blogs and online journals to pop up all around us. The projects that we had to complete on Tuesday are even an example of remediation. We were told to take one idea that appealed to a young audience and make it appeal to a new and more mature audience. In my project I made Facebook have a new spin by making my poster a Facebook chat message and other students were very creative in the ways that they manipulated ideas to fit their new audience. Remediation is an interesting concept and there are endless examples of it in the today’s Digital Age.
ReplyDeleteEssentially remediation is when you take one thing and turn it into another without losing the message. I love Sarah Kate’s example of changing from a romance novel to a love song, it reminded me of Taylor Swift. Having been both a news journalist and currently working at a public relations firm, I am a living example of the situation Sammi talked about in her post. I’ve written a story as a journalist based on information first given to me as a press release from a public relations company. Just today I’ve written a press release and sent them out to several newspapers and television studios. Both the press release and the article replay the same messages, just in different ways (even though they are both in print).
ReplyDeleteRemediation makes it much easier for us to obtain different literacy’s thanks to all the new technologies we have at our disposal in today’s society. The internet in particular is a huge form of remediation, taking works that were once in print form and moving them online for wider access. It makes me think of Google books and websites like that; where now instead of actually holding a book in our hands we can just log onto our laptop and read almost any book we want without paying for it. One big effect I think this has had on our society is that we demand all the information we need instantaneously. Just like with all the instant communication with texting and BBMing, people get annoyed if it takes longer than ten seconds for a page to load on the computer (I’m guilty of this too).
We need to keep in mind that technology is always changing, which means that any works we hope to compose will probably need to change mediums as well. I’m sure Plato never thought that his words would one day be on a computer. An example of remediation that I see in pop culture today is looking at song lyrics on a page and then watching the music video. I’ll use Taylor Swift’s (love her) song Love Story to illustrate my point. First the song lyrics start out on paper, and when you read them you have the opportunity to imagine the song playing out anyway you want. I’ll admit that I’ve seen and heard some song lyrics and applied them to my life in one way or another. Then when you see the music video you get a whole new idea of what the story is about because you see it from the musician’s point of view. Same story, different ways of portraying it. While the song itself takes on different remediation’s, it also takes the idea of a fairy tale and makes it into a modern day love story. Taking Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and turning it into a song is another example of remediation.
Remediation is the alteration from one medium to another. Which is to say that remediation makes one thing into another; text to picture, picture to video, video to video game, etc. Immediacy, the key to successful remediation, is defined by Bolter and Grusin as “our name for a family of beliefs and practices that express themselves different at various times among various groups.” (30) This focus on immediacy sets the forecast for what type of remediation any given demographic at any given time seeks in their media. As a product of the immediacy, we have created a “hypermedia” to suit our wants and needs. “Hypermediacy” is defined by Cotton and Oliver as “an entirely new kind of media experience born from ages, sound, text, animation and video, which can be brought together in any combination.” (31)
ReplyDeleteRemediation is an undeniable facet of our modern way of life. It doesn’t take a psychologist to tell you that we live in an over-medicated, over-sexed and over-media-saturated society perfect for any variation of attention deficit disorder. One prime example of this is the modern man’s best friend: the smart—I mean, cell phone. Ten years ago consumers weren’t tweeting on their crackberries during a boring lecture, or carrying a 20,000 song library in their pockets via an iPhone, they were making phone calls. JUST phone calls. The phone companies were making a killing on charging you for every minute that you went over on your plan because you WEREN’T text messaging. Take a minute to think about how our demands and usage for cell phones have changed over the years. The same concepts apply to remediation. Remediation ties in very well with the laws of supply and demand. Imagine a phone company that offered you 300 minutes and 100 texts (never mind your data package!) for $50 today. Ouch, that’s steep for today’s market! Not just steep, but laughable. Because it doesn’t meet the demands of the consumer, who can get connected with T-Mobile, have unlimited talk, text and media for just over that price. The point I’m trying to make is this: times change. People evolve and require more from their market, which in this case is media. The way we seek and acquire our media is different for everyone. For that reason, we must be flexible and willing to expand to meet the “consumer’s” demands. Remediation is essential in this classroom because it’s here that we’re going to learn how to take it into the career field. Our demands for new mediums are evidenced in the creation of this major at Florida State in 2009. While here we’ll study the history of text, image, and media, we’re foremost going to become the pioneers for these applications tomorrow. We have to know what the viewer wants so that we can deliver it to them at laser fast speeds and with a variety they’ve never seen before. Michael is correct; everyone is tickled by different things. We turn to media for not just our news, but also for our entertainment. And DJ makes an interesting point with his reference to animated children’s films. This reminds us that we aren’t JUST catering to the average adult, but for people of all ages. Remediation is our way to keep up with a changing world with changing expectations.
Bolter and Grusin describe remediation as one of the three components to the genealogy of new media. It’s the process of using “new media to refashion old media.” I agree with Sarah and DJ in their assessment that remediation is not just the reworking of an original it must also be a “seamless transition” and the preservation of the core meaning of a work. The second component is immediacy this is one of the two styles of remediation. The idea is to create a work that transcends its medium so that the viewer forgets the constraints of the medium. The third component is hypermediacy which is the second style of remediation. The goal is to remind the viewer of the media. Technology plays a role in both styles. Either the technology is in the forefront (hypermediacy) reminding the viewer of the medium or its behind the scenes (immediacy) working to create a realistic experience that transcends the medium.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite example of remediation is the popular nineties film 10 Things I Hate About You. It’s an updated version of the classic Shakespeare play "The Taming of the Shrew." Although the film is set in a modern day high school the main concepts of the original work are preserved. Remediation is about taking the original composition and reworking it to fit a different media or in a different genera. Michael’s example of the reworked Jane Austen novels (i.e. Pride, Prejudice and Zombies) is excellent example of remediation where the media (print) stays the same, but the genera changes from romance to horror. I find Sarah’s idea that “remediation has no boundaries that it cannot cross” intriguing and accurate. In essence remediation is all about crossing boundaries. Remediation is about defying convention. It’s creating something unexpected and innovative while reserving the original intent. Successful remediation shows that a composer’s idea can transcend the constraints of medium and genera.
Remediation is the task of taking an original piece of work, and changing or modifying it to fit either the desire of the current lifestyles, to re-attract attention, or just for updating purposes. The idea behind mediation is to replace the old information or material with something new based on the same concept.
ReplyDeleteMuch of remediation comes from the desire of potential interested people. For video games and TV shows, most of the concepts behind games have never changed. There will always be a family that deals with trials and tribulations together as a moral for a TV show. There will always be video games that are meant to make you feel like the fastest racecar driver out there, or the best warrior in the battlefield. The point is to immerse the person in the newer form of the old, thus remediating their outlook on the product or concept as a whole.
Remediation is not only in technology though. Remediation is limitless, and can be found anywhere from remodeling an apartment when you move in, to creating a collage out of old magazines and photos. The fact that the material used to formulate a new creation, while using the old material is the key factor. The usage of old material is really the only significant factor determining whether a situation be categorized as a remediation or not.
One example from the reading that stood out to me as accurate was “Our culture wants both to multiply its media and to erase all traces of mediation: ideally, it wants to erase its media in the very act of multiplying them.”(5) Essentially this is exactly the point of media: in relation to technology, literature, as well as culture, the point of a remediation is to show the “new” concept in order to “erase” the old. When the flat screen TV’s came out, the idea was to promote these new TV’s to such a degree that the old TV’s would seem obsolete and not worth it. Walkmans, CD players, Stereo systems and Cassette players all exemplify remediation in that they were once a new item, that quickly was replaced by a remediated form of itself.
My example relates to Both Sarah and Sammi’s belief that remediation has no limitations. My example is a personal one. I was involved with my mother’s piano studio quite a bit this summer, and with that came a recital. The remediation that took place was that my mom chose her most gifted students, and allowed them to partake in an interesting opportunity. She took the famous pop song “Apologize” by One Republic, and completely remediated the entire thing. She had one of her female students sing the song; my mother accompanied a young girl playing the piano, along with a drummer, a triangle player, and a castanet clicker; all while I danced my choreographed dance to it. This was an example of remediation, maybe on a different level than technology, but in my opinion it was an example of remediation nonetheless. We took something original, and reformulated it to make it our own, which completely defines the concept of remediation.
Remediation refers to the advancement of media from old technologies to new ones. The two strategies are immediacy and hypermediacy. Immediacy refers to a method that strives to make the person forget about the medium they are using/the media is using and feel like they’re “really there” (5). One example given in the reading is when a TV show or film makes you feel like you are in the car with the character; the view you see makes you feel like you’re there. Hypermediacy, on the other hand, reminds the user of the medium being used. The example given here is illuminated manuscripts; the way the first letter of a part is larger and fancier than the rest of the print keeps the reader conscious of the medium. These concepts are important because they form remediation by working off each other. “Immediacy depends on hypermediacy.” Immediacy uses hypermedia to create “liveness.”
ReplyDeleteRemediation helps us understand composing because it essentially is composing based on older compositions. It is also a huge part of our class and the EWM major since, for example, the text we work with used to embody a print medium but now a digital one. Like Alicia said, remediation helps us keep up with a rapidly changing world.
There are plenty of examples of remediation in the ways we listen to music, like Sammi mentioned, or the way we read/see stories, like the Harry Potter example Sarah said. Another example of remediation can be found in fashion. Many years ago, little kids played with paper dolls who wore paper “clothing.” Later, real dolls with real cloth clothing were (and still are) popular. Cabbage Patch dolls and Barbies have clothing that resembles the fashion of the children playing with them. When I was younger I used to love dressing my dolls and Barbies. A few years later, after the movie Clueless came out, a game was released where you could look through Cher’s closet and pick out her outfits. I still liked dressing my dolls, but it was just so fascinating and fun to do it on the computer. Today, kids go online to play dress up: there are Barbie games in which you can put her in different styles and outfits without physically doing so. While babysitting over the summer, the 7-year-old girl I was taking care of asked if she could use my iPhone to play a dress up game. The game featured a little avatar figure and the player could choose her outfits- clothes, shoes, accessories, etc. In a way, these computer programs use immediacy to get the player to forget they’re on a computer by using a variety of outfit choices and patterns: they really focus on the “fashion” part. In another way, the programs show hypermediacy because you don’t physically touch the clothing.
Remediation applies to everything we do today. It is all about improvement. When we create a first draft of anything, remediation is to follow. This is true for the entire class, last week for example, when we brought in a draft of our poster project and gave each other feedback. We took the project home to revise, remediation set in. In pop culture remediation is what makes pop culture, well, pop culture. If it weren’t for remediation, it would just be culture. There would never be new and different things to read, watch and play.
ReplyDeleteTechnology is the largest employer of remediation. There are constantly new and smarter electronics coming out daily. The technology world is fast-pace and cut throat. They improve electronics at an enormously high rate, and if the remediation process doesn’t take place- a product doesn’t survive.
Literary practices, like I said, are completely relevant to remediation. Without it, the projects and stories we write cannot reach their full potential. The world is viewed, in any aspect, as always having room for improvement.
These concepts are greatly influenced by remediation. The iPhone is a result of remediation we can trace back to the telegram. The car is a result of what we can trace back to a wagon or even a horse.
When we take a look at pop culture we see things, for the most part, that are the new-est, the most cutting edge. Pop culture is a lot of the time a remediated form of old pop culture. Things are either viewed as in or out.
I would have to say the largest form of remediation in pop culture is the iPhone. Apple has created a culture within itself for its users. Two iPhone users have a bond when they meet. They exchange tips and the latest and greatest app, which is a new piece to the phone whenever the user wants to download one. The iPhone is a part of technology that is also updated right within the users home through their computer. The iPhone also doesn’t discriminate. There are sports apps, shopping apps, reading apps, vampire apps, television apps, Scrabble. too. The possibilities are endless. Apple makes users feel as if the world is at their fingertips.
We must ask what this phone was a remediation of. It was a remediation of a cell phone, obviously, but it was a remediation of a cell phone, calculator, gaming system, e-mail inbox, post-its, the weather channel, it is the remediation of so many things and put all in to the palm of our hands. This makes it such a special thing to people, it is many peoples lives. It is neat to see a cell phone be such a cultural phenomena.
There is always room for improvement. This, in my belief, has made the standard for remediation of this product go up tremendously. I feel, and some would disagree, that nothing better than the iPhone will come out, but I have no doubt in my mind that it will.
Mediation is the process of taking something, be it an idea or story or any other of a number of things and putting it into some type of media form that others can experience and appreciate. Remediation therefore is the process of taking that idea from one media type and translating it into another. For example, the recent trend of taking novels, which are the written word, and translating those words into the form of a movie. Immediacy is the process the audience goes through when experiencing some type of media, the wanting to immerse yourself so far into the experience that you forget that you are not actually there. Like when I read a book I immerse myself so deeply in the story that I forget or do not notice what is going on around me in the real world. People want to take it even farther than that, they want to make it so that the audience is so ingrained into what is going on that they don’t even realize that what they are seeing is not actually happening. Hypermediacy is the thing that makes us aware of the media we are participating in in subtle ways.
ReplyDeleteRemediation is important to technology, digital and literary practices because it promotes the evolution of those medias. An example of why it’s important to technology is the development of the DVD and DVD player. Well the movie media needed a new evolution so as to keep a market so they developed technology that enabled that evolution, that evolution led to others and the development now of bluray. How remediation is important to technology is similar to how it’s important for digital and literacy practices. The bottom line for all of them is that remediation opens the door for all of the practices to evolve.
I think that the way Bolter and Grusin say how remediation influences those concepts is the best. “What is new about new media comes from the particular ways n which they refashion older media and the ways in which older media refashion themselves to answer the challenges of new media.”(Bolter 15) Basically every time that a new media is invented or comes up with a new improved way to express itself the other types of media rush to evolve as well so as not to lose the attentions of people.
Remediation constantly changes our perceptions of popular culture. The new things come out so fast that we don’t have time to become tired of the old. It seems like the newest version of remediation becomes the newest trend until an older version of media comes out with something new. So there is no set popular culture.
We need to understand remediation to truly understand composing. We need to visualize our works having the ability to be transferred to any type of media at any time. If they are created with that in mind then they are more likely to stick around longer than something that cannot be remediated.
Remediation is important to me in this class and as a composer because it makes me think of different types of media and how something I compose in one media can be translated into another. Also knowing what it is can help me prepare for and do projects in this class concerning remediation.
An example of remediation in pop culture today, the most prominent one I can think of is the remediation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. This particular series of books has been translated into several movie versions. I personally have seen a cartoon version and then the live action one that came out a few years ago. Those are several versions of remediation but I can provide more examples. There were several video, computer, and online games that were created using the storyline and characters from the books. There were also a couple board games like trivial pursuit and monopoly that released Lord of the Rings versions. There were also, as mentioned in a few previous responses, the presence of fanfiction stories centered around the characters and universe of the books and movies. I am sure that that is not all the ways that this series of novels have been remediated those are just the ones from off the top of my head.
I believe DJ targeted the definition of remediation best: "Remediation, as given by Bolter and Grusin, is the representation of one medium in another." By this it is implied that remediation is the mutation of different content into different forms of media. Michael said: "One of the terms used the most in the introduction and first chapter is immediacy, which to me is the idea of being directly involved in something, having that first and primary experience. In contrast to immediacy is the term hypermedia, which is described as interactive applications such as web pages, desktops, video games, and so on." These two terms are crucially important to remediation and work hand-in-hand with it, considering that they are the two ways people can take media.
ReplyDeleteRemediation is and will be around for a long time. It is so prominent in society today it's crazy. It's something that you don't even really notice either. I was aware of its occurrence, but I wasn't aware that it was an actual term. I agree with DJ when he said: "remediation is not an entirely new idea and has existed for quite some time. The example of the Italian cabinet, circa 1660, with multiple carvings of images of religious scenes, is a force with which media theorists can rally, seeing that remediation is a force that has existed and will persist into the digital age." There is no denying that remediation is a part of everyone's life, whether they are aware of it or not. Like Alicia Deer said: "Ten years ago consumers weren’t tweeting on their crackberries during a boring lecture, or carrying a 20,000 song library in their pockets via an iPhone, they were making phone calls. JUST phone calls." Times are changing along with the trends, and remediation is essential in this process.
Remediation is a necessity within our class because it is important to be able to understand all the different types of media and their conversions in order to succeed in the industry. Alicia got straight to the point: "While here we’ll study the history of text, image, and media, we’re foremost going to become the pioneers for these applications tomorrow. We have to know what the viewer wants so that we can deliver it to them at laser fast speeds and with a variety they’ve never seen before." Reflections of these abilities are already showing within our class work and projects, as Sarah Kate said: "in class many of my fellow students chose to make their books covers resemble a web page, or reflect a Facebook page, even though the medium they were using was not digitalized. The influence of technology and remediation is present in today’s culture."
An example of remediation within pop culture today is within the entertainment industry. An example would be use of icons, such as Hannah Montana. Hannah Montana started off as a simple show on the Disney Channel, and that was it. But, once people started seeing its impact on its audience, they took it a lot further. Hannah Montana became an idol to most kids. You would see her everywhere, from dolls, to lunch boxes, to clothing lines. She has music which she sells to the general public and a movie outside the show. She has her own website in which kids can visit and play games on or whatever they please. Basically, remediation plays a big part in the marketing of certain things, and in this case it was a pop icon.
Remediation is basically the idea of getting a work of art and transferring it over to another medium. Bolter and Grusin use plenty of terms to help understand the concept of remediation, such as immediacy and hypermediacy. They describe immediacy as “making viewers feel as if they were really there.” Hypermediacy is referred to as incorporating the internet or computers. Bolter and Grusin also make a point to say that these two logics are “mutually dependent” on each other when it comes to understanding remediation. Remediation influences the concepts of technology, digitality, and literary practices because it is the changing of the medium through which it is presented, or how it is reworked that affects these concepts. Technology is everywhere, and through the use of technology, or the internet, works are recreated, to portray the same message but at a different angle. I think this ties in with the literary practices, because sometimes you may not be aware of an “angle” that a certain work could be looked at, but that same angle will be highlighted by a reworking through a different medium. I liked Alissa’s example on the press release being sent to newspapers, because I too have worked from both sides, and I am well aware that although it is the same information, they are written in different perspectives, for different audiences.
ReplyDeleteRemediation might change the way we view popular culture because if you think about it, everything that is “new” now may potentially be a mediation of a previous work. The possibilities are endless, and although the typical example of a book being made into a film comes to mind, a film can be based off a poem, a news article, or vice versa. Even some of the popular songs now can be seen as a form of remediation, since a lot of the beats for all the top hit songs sound exactly alike, and a lot of artists will take key phrases from other artists or songs that seem to make it big.
I think it is important to understand remediation, because then you can see how other works affects the new works being created today. It also shows how different mediums are being used to target the same messages, or to reiterate one that might come across a bit clearer through another mode. I think it is important in this class, because we will be able to learn more about the process and how to use it in order to improve in our careers. I think remediation is a big deal, especially in this industry, and to be able to understand and practice it, will give us a big advantage in the field.
An example I can think of is True Blood. The idea for the TV show was taken from the Charlaine Harris novels, then created into the show, and now there are comic book stories about them, there are blogs created from the “characters”, and there are even “True Blood” bottles, that are sold to look like the authentic kind from the show. There are also Halloween costumes for them.
Media exists in different mediums. Art exists in different mediums. All forms of expression exist in different mediums. Be it a speech by the president, spoken word, or a photomontage by an up and coming artist, media can exist in many different ways. The beauty about media is its attempt to answer society’s cultural interest in both immediacy and hypermediacy. The definitions I will get into later, however I find it interesting that Bolter and Gruisin make the strong statement of saying art and medias immediacy and hypermediacy is ‘demanded’ by society. Immediacy, as I understood it, is for art and media to exist with a transparent medium, for the viewer to see the subject and take no notice of the artist’s presence. Ultimately a photo or film is the best way to capture immediacy, there are no brush strokes, no presence of the artist physically creating the subject, it answers society’s question of immediacy within an ‘Albertian Window’. Hypermediacy on the other hand, is the presentation of media and art in a multiple window fashion. Similar to that of a computer screen, each new window grabs your attention and it is in fact a window within a window. Almost like ever changing immediacy. Though Bolter and Gruisin claim society demands immediacy and hypermediacy within forms of media, I would personally prefer to think that society is more interested with media’s ability to exist as immediate or hypermediate. If it was demanded of all media, would we not just look out our window and hope to see a cop chase or stand outside a bank all day to witness a bank robbery?
ReplyDeleteWhat immediacy and hypermediacy does allow, is for the same media to be remediated, to exist in multiple forms, to be recreated or as Bolter and Gruisin say ‘repurposed’. Remediation allows not only art and media to be repurposed, but ideas as well. A movie based on a book, a song influenced by a
The word remediation refers to, like Alex stated, “the advancement of media from old technologies to new ones. The two strategies are immediacy and hypermediacy. Immediacy refers to a method that strives to make the person forget about the medium they are using/the media is using and feel like they’re ‘really there’”. Which is a great point because if this is done effectively the audience will fill as though they truly are engulfed in the medium, actually present for what is taking place.
ReplyDeleteRemediation is part of our everyday life, sometimes we don’t even notice that it is happening, but with everything we experience it. Katie’s point that, “n pop culture remediation is what makes pop culture, well, pop culture. If it weren’t for remediation, it would just be culture” was genius and very true. It’s the remediation that makes this culture popular. Remediation is so prevalent in our life it effects how we view things and our retention rate of those things. It applies to our class because remediation keeps things present in your mind and that is exactly what we did with the project and assignments we work on, having workshops/peer revision time helps bring that together.
One of the biggest forms of remediation would deal with the cell phone trends, Blackberries in particular. Blackberries have become a way of life for people. I personally have one and do everything on it, from the academic sense to socializing on different networks. Commercials promote this Blackberry lifestyle and how by having a Blackberry you are connect to other Blackberry users. The make having a Blackberry seem as though through ownership your options are limitless. And because of phones like Blackberries it has helped made other forms of remediation possible. For example, Blackberries have applications for so many things and it only allows those other forms of remediation such as Twitter, Facebook, reality television etc to now be portable. It is actually funny for me to think because when I reflect back on the first cell phone I got the coolest thing it could do was change the face-plate colors and play snake.
Remediation was described by the entertainment industry as "repurposing." This is where the content of one medium is borrowed and used in another. The point of repurposing is to get the audience to either forget about the original medium or to juxtapose it to the remediated work and compare it to the original. Remediation seems to have the purpose of immersion, getting the audience to temporarily forget about the original mediums and to become entranced in the work as an individual object. Immediacy and hyperimmediacy are the tools used to achieve this act of seeming lost in a work, as if the view is "really there." With virtual realities of today, it seems that that goal is closer than ever. Since the book was written, technologies have increased a tenfold and there is production on new computers like touch screen iPads and new game systems like Microsoft's Kinect. Both of these new technologies allow more immersion in the products. With the iPad, the user's actual hands make the screens move and change, rather than a mouse. With Kinect, the user's actual body movements determine the movement of the virtual players. This examples are hyperimmediacy to the latest extreme.
ReplyDeleteAn example of remediation, however, lies in the latest Resident Evil video game based film, Afterlife, which immerses the audience in a 3-D realm of the game. Even though the audience isn't playing the game, the effect of theatrical 3-D appropriately remediates the games to believable immediacy.
My former understanding of Remediation, although not as carefully illustrated by Bolter and Grusin, went something like; Computer, copy, paste, then slightly distorting it and call it yours. After reading the first chapter in Remediation, it would appear that that word is more involved than I had anticipated. As I have mentioned before, I had some experience over the summer taking press releases and refashioning them for a local audience for my theatre internship. But it wasn’t until now that I have felt properly introduced to the labyrinth of reinvention we choose to call remediation. As Bolter and Grusin mention, Remediation always operates under the current cultural assumptions about immediacy and hypermediacy. (21) They define these terms as the perceived presence of current technologies, as with virtual reality, and emphasizing process or performance over product as Mitchell determines, respectfully.
ReplyDeleteI could certainly apply the concept of remediation to this class, my major, as well as my identity as a composer. On this last project we had to present, we might not had realized it at the time, but we were engaging in remediation. Taking a specific trend in popular culture and marketing it to a different audience. Sounds like remediation to me. I have no doubt that this will be a good indicator for the work I will be doing with my major, in addition to getting better acquainted with exciting technology for remediation purposes. It is essentially the Editing part of the EWM. Applying this to myself as what I already know of myself as a composer, I would say that there was a reason I didn’t choose creative writing. Not that there isn’t some level of creativity to remediation, I just prefer certain genres. One of the things in which I see the most of myself with the practice of remediation, is that there is a considerable amount of reverence associated with acknowledging foremen and precursors. I can appreciate this since foremost, you must already have existing knowledge of something to remediate it i.e. earlier forms of art, painting and photography with graphic design and computers.
The best example, not already used, that comes to mind is reworking comic books into movies, some cases like the Batman series, reworking movies into more movies. There is a totally different feeling you get when you pick up a comic book and try to simulate the action on the page in your own mind. It is possible that the people responsible for this remediation thought their own perspectives could be interpreted into these movies. There is one thing that does concern me about remediation, the possibility that are own imaginations will become obsolete. But I have hopes that we will find a place of cultural reflection designated for the earliest paintings, nondigital photography, and countless books and manuscripts that laid the groundwork for remediation itself. I can appreciate Alicia’s take on the iphone and our over-medicated, over-sexed, media-saturated society perfect for any variation of A.D.D. All I can say is awesome job.
I'm going to say that remediation in my own words would be taking any genre and slightly changing it into another form of a genre. Bolter and Grusin mentioned immediacy and hypermediacy by saying "in every manifestation, hypermediacy makes us aware of the medium or media and (in sometimes subtle and sometimes obvious ways) reminds us of our desire for immediacy" (34). Remediation influences these concepts in a way that if we cannot say view the news because of being in a setting where a television is not available to us, we can find it through the internet or by opening up an application in our phone when we need news fix, now! Popular culture has been changed by remediation due to being able to keep up on gossip of our favorite TV shows and stars not by tabloid magazines with stories and pictures, but now through websites like Perez Hilton and TMZ. I'm pretty sure "there's an app for that" too. However, books have been turned into million dollar movies, like Harry Potter and Twilight, and then franchised upon into merchandise so we can show how much of fans we are. If that doesn't scream remediation in conjunction with today’s pop culture, then I don't know what does.
ReplyDeleteRemediation, in my own opinion would help make anyone a better composer by understanding that we as writers can have our original ideas expanded upon then made into something bigger and better. Using the book example, a consumer can read a book, have their own mental picture, but once that book turns into a movie or television series, the consumer has their own mental idea in visual form possible close to what they were imagining. With that it can be said that anyone who has watched a really good movie is kind of taken into that world and thinks about what if. I can say that the movie Inception from the very beginning of the movie took me in and I felt as if I was part of that movie. Even after I still can't wrap my head around what was reality and what was the dream.
I thought about what a good idea on my own would be of remediation other than the used examples of Harry Potter and so on. I was watching an episode of the Girls Next Door on E! In the episode Hugh Hefner was talking about his idea for Playboy started with him drawing out comics as a young adult. He even in one of his comics made mention that he wanted to start a magazine and then a year later finally came out with Playboy and Marilynn Monroe's pictures that he bought for six hundred dollars right as she was just becoming famous. It made me think that although I may not be right that it could be remediation from the fact that even though Hugh Hefner had the idea through a comic that had nothing to do with girls, it became a bigger idea in a new genre. The comic to Playboy and now Playboy is everywhere from the magazine, to a website, merchandise, and even the Playboy suite at the Palms in Las Vegas.
I like Katie's example of the iPhone as remediation and I can agree with that. Bolter and Grusins mention of virtual reality is coming pretty close with things like the iPhone and the applications for anything. We now pretty much have a mini computer with touch capabilities in the palm of our hands.