Koller LGnwin, Kernedial®? HiT Press AO r Introduction: The Double Logic of Remediation“This i not like TV only better” says Lenay Nero in the futuristic film Sinange Days. "This is life. Its piece of somebody's life. Pare and uncut, straight from the cerebral corcex. You're chere. You're doing it, seeing it, heating ic... feeling i.” Lenny is couting to a potential customer a ‘technological wonder called "the wire” When the user places the device over her head, is sensors make concact wich the percepeual centers in har brain, In its recording mode, the wite captures the sense percept of the wearer; in its playback mode, ic delivers these recorded percep- tions to che wearer. If the ultimate purpose of media is indeed ro trans fer sense experiences ftom one person to another, the wire threatens to- ‘ique would seem to apply to books, paintings, photographs, film, and s0 on, The wire bypasses all forms of mediation and transmits directly from one consciousness to another. “The film Sirange Days is less enthusiastic about the wite chan Lenay and his customers. Although the wire embodies the desire to get beyond mediation, Strange Days offers us « world fascinated by the power and ubiquity of media technologies. Los Angeles in the last two days of 1999, on the eve of “2K,” is saturated with cellular phones, voice- and text-based telephone answering systems, radios, and bill- board-sized television screns that consticute public medi spaces. In this media-flled world, che wie itself is the ultimate mediating tech- nology, despite—or indeed because of —the face that the wire is de- signed to effae itself to disappear from the user's consciousness. When Lenay coaches the “actors” who will appear in a pornographic re- cording, it becomes clear that the experience ehe wire offers can be as contrived as ¢ traditional film. Although Lenny insists that the wite isFigure I Avira ality bead mounted display. Courtesy of Profs sor larry Hodges, GVU Cente, Geog Ineirace of Techaoogy ‘not TV only better” che film ends up representing the wire as "Ele only bettee” When Lenny himself puts on the wire and closes his eyes, he experiences che world in a continuous, first-person point-of-view shot, wich in film criticism is called the “subjective came: tweway Jo 21807 agnog 2: ‘Strange Days captures the ambivalent and contradictory ways in which new digital media fonction for our culture today. The flim proj- ects ous own cultutal moment a few years into the furuse in order to examine that momer ch greater clarity. The wire is just a fanciful extrapolation of concemporary virtual reality, with its goal of uamedi- ated visual experience. The contemporary head-mounted display of vir tual reality is considerably less comfortable and fashionable (fg. 1.1), and the visual world ic generates is far less compelling, Still, contempo- rary vireual realty is, like the wire in Strange Days, an experiment in cinematic point of view. Meanwhile, the proliferation of media in 2K LA. is only a slighe exsageration of our current medi-rich environ: ment, in which digital techn logies aze proliferating faster chan ourccalcorl, legal, ot educational insticutions can keep up with chem. In addressing our culeure's contradictory imperatives for immediacy and hypermediacy, chs film demonstrates what we call a double logic of remediation. Ous culture wants both to muleiply its media and to erase all traces of mediation: ideally, it wants co erase its media in the very act of multiplying chem, In his last decede ofthe ewenrieth century, weare in an unusual position to appreciate remediation, because of the rapid development of new digital media and the neatly as rapid response by creditional media, Older electronic and prine media are seeking to reaffirm their status within our culcure as digital media challenge ehae status. Boch nevr and old medi are invoking the cwin logics of immediacy and hy- permediacy in their efforts to remake themselves and each other. To falfill our apparencly insatiable desite for immediacy, "live" point-of view television programs show viewers what ic is like eo accompany & police officer on a dangerous raid or to be a skydiver or a race car driver hrurding chrough space. Filmmakers routinely spend tens of millions of dollars ¢o film on location or to recreate period costumes and places in order co make theie viewers fel as if chey were “really” there. “Web- cams" on the Internet pretend to locate us in vatious natural environ- ments—from a backyard bind feeder in Indianapolis (Fig. 12) to a ‘panorama in the Canadian Rockies Fig. 13). Inall these cases, the logic / Aisle ae LJ jest, Figure 2 Bird feeder webcam: the view s updated every chzee minutes Inept. comffeedercar.. home hem Janay 24, 1998. (© 1997, Wild Birds Valimive A rights reserved, Ued by permistion. uonoipewey Je 21807 s9nod a4 iwonionposnuronpipeusy Je 2/807 sj9naa 241 swotianp: Figure 13 Selphor Mountain web- cam, providing a cepetedly updated view of mountin inthe Canadian Rockies in Ban, Alber, ep! srwucbuniigondls com Jansary 24, 1998, © 1985, Sulphur Moun Gondola. All ighes reserved. Used by permission, of immediacy dictates that che medium itself should disappear and leave us in the presence of the thing represented: sitting in the racecar or standing on a mountaintop. ‘Yer these same old and new media often refuse ro leave us slone ‘Many web sites are riots of diverse media forms—graphics, digitized Photographs, animation, and video—all st up in pages whose graphic design principles reall the psychedelic 1960s or dada in che 1910s and 1920s (Fig. 14; Fig. 15). Hollywood Gms, such as Natural Born Killers and Strange Days, mix media and styles unabashedly. Televised news programs feature multiple video streams, split-screen displays, compos- ites of graphics and vext—a welter of media chat is somehow meant to ‘make the news more perspicuous. Even webcams, which operate under the logic of immediacy, can be embedded in a hypermediated web site Gig. 1.6), where che user can select from a "jukebox" of webcam images to generate her own paneled display As the webcam jukebox shows, our ewo seemingly contredic- ‘ory logics not only coexist in digital media today but ere rurually dependent. Immediacy depends on hypermediacy. In the effort to reate 4 seamless moving image, filmmakers combine live-action footage with computer compositing and two- and three-dimensional computer ‘graphics. In the effort co be up to the minute and complet, televisionFigure 4 A page from Joseph Squires Urban Diary. hep! seria art iscadalludgeelhe! place/urben_disryinto html Jen sy 24, 1998. © 1995 Urbes sizes. Used by permission, uojroypauisy fo 21207 s}9neq 244 ‘uanianp!niqne 244 :uontonposiny igure LS An image fom the [RGB Gallery atthe Hocwized web sie: coletion fig hepuwwr hoewited.corn/egblop thebeats ee January 24, 1998. © 1994-1998 ‘Wired Digital, oc. Al igs Figure 16 This webcam jukebox allows the wer to combine hee in livid webcams of her choosing. Ibepfve images comsjakebox Jen lary 29, 1998. © 1998, Ken Mose. Al sighs by permission co Ss SePanel urgee more separation sions ren a a ee soe | eacicnere ur news producers assemble on the screen ribbons of text, photographs, ‘graphics, and even audio without a video signal when necessary (as was the case during the Persian Gulf War), At che same time, even the most bypermediated productions strive for their own brand of immediacy Directors of music videos rely on multiple media and elaborate editing to create an immediate and apparencly spontaneous style; they take _areac pains to achieve che sense of “liveness” that characterizes rock mu- sic. The desire for immediacy leads digital media to borrow avidly from each other as well as from theie analog predecessors such as film, tlevi- sion, and phocography. Whenever one medium seems to have convinced viewers of ies immediacy, other media ery to appropriate that convie- tion, The CNN site is hypermediated—arranging text, graphics, and ‘video in multiple panes and windows and joining them with numerous hyperlinks; yet the web site borrows its sense of immediacy from the televised CNN newscasts. At the same time televised neweasts ate com- ing to resemble web pages in their hypermediacy (fig. .7 end I.8). The team of web editors and designers, working in the same building in Adlanca from which the celevision news networks are also administered, clearly wane their technology to be “television only better” Similarly, Figure 17 The CNN Interttive eb sce, © 1998 Cable News Net~ work, Ine Al sights reserved. Used by pezmission of CNN. pauay fo 2180= Figure 19 Phot IT Modone of the most popular gentes of computer games isthe flight simula. tor (Bg. 1.9). The action unfolds in real vime, 2s the player is required the plane. The game promises to ” pilot, and yer in what does che to monitor the instruments and f show the player “what ie is like co immediacy of the experience consist? As in 2 real plane, the simulated cockpit is full of dials to read and swicches to fip. As in a real plane, the experience of che game is chat of working an interface, so that che immediacy ofthis experience is pure hypermedicy Remediation did not begin with the introduction of digital media, We can identify the same process thoughout the last several ‘bundred years of Western visual representation. A painting by the Seventeenth. cenrury aiet Pieter Senna, photograph by- Edad ‘Weston, and 2 computer system for vireual reality are different jn important ways, bur they ere all ettempes to achieve immediacy by ig- naring or denying the presence of the medium end thesct of mediation. ‘A of chem seek to put the viewer in the same space as che objects viewed. The illusionisic painter employs linear perspective and “reals Sic" lighting (Bg. 1.10), while the computer graphics spocalst ma- thematizes linear perspective and creates “models” of shading and illumination (. 1113 plate 1). Fusthermore, che gol ofthe computer graphics specialists isto do aswel s, and eventually beter than, che pincer or even the photograph. Figure 1.10 Saenredam, Pieter Jone, "8, Bov in ale” 165 “The Joha G. Johnson Colleton, Philadelphis Museum of Are. Used by permis, pouay Jo 21807 s19neq 24s :worronposiuywoneipewsy Jo 21807 s1gnog sy swonianponuy Figure L11_ A photoresistecom= puter graphic the nave of Cartes Cached, by John Wallace and Joa La. © 1989, Hewlece Packard (Co, Used by permission Like immediacy, bypermediacy also has its history. A medieval illuminated manuscript, a seventeenth-century painting by David and windowed multimedia application are all the Bailly, and a buce expressions ofa fascination with media, In medieval manuscrip large inicial capital letters may be elaborately decorated, but ehey still she place 2). In many multimedia constitute part of che cext itself, and we are challenged to eppt ion of text and image (fg. 1.12; applications, icons and graphics perform the seme dul role asin figure 1.13; plate 3), in which the images peek out at us through the word ARKANSAS. This dual role has a history in popular graphic design, as aFigure 1.12 A page from a Book of Hours, cen 1450, © Robert W. ‘Woodruff Library, Emory Univer- sic. Used by permission. Bae sioner pinni seer ns Duc aan peak sonerpnernrgrnt anaer o Figure 113. Arkansut: the splat (opening) screen fers mulcimedia celebration of the sate vonvipausy Jo 21207 a]anea 24s ‘uonenpoviusFigure 114A Coney Isand por Ci om ce 130 7 ‘Sidon nals i i hth Jaca 24, 199, : postcard of Coney Island from the early ewentieth-cencury shows (Eg. 1.14), Today as in che pase, designers of hypermediated forms ask us to i take pleasure in ce ac of mediation, and even ou popular cleue does 3 tke pleature. Some hypetmediated ar has been and remains an elite 2 ‘any examples of hypetmediated events thac appeal to millions. 5 In the chaps thet follow. we examine the process of remediation in 5 contemporary media, Jn part I, we place the concept of semediation i within the adions of cen literary and cltural theory. Readers who 2 are less interested in teary may want to tur dzety eo par I, which 5 illustrates the work of remedis asuch media as computer geaphics, g film, selevision, che World Wide Web, and virtual calitya These illus- ers should make sense even without trative ch faller explanations of eransparent immediacy, hypermediacy, and remediation provided in 1 bow pare I In pare IIT, which is again more theoretical, we con new digical media ae participating ue % Because readers may choose not to read the book in linear order, we have provided references—the printed equivalent of hyperlinks —to connect points made in the cheoretical chapters with examples in che illustrative chapters, as well as some references from each illustrative chapter to others. This link directs che reader to pare. ® p. 85 (Out primary concern will be with visual cechnologies, such as computer graphics and the World Wide Web. We will axgue that these new media are doing exactly whet their predecessors have done: pie-senting the sf and improved versions of other me- senting themselves 2s cefasbioned and imps ix, Digital visual media can best be understood through the ways whieh iby. li, evs t- No medium today, and cersnly no ‘Fogle media ven, soems odo cleral work olen fom ota snedia, ny more than it works in isolation fiom other socal and eco- nss from she pactiular hey refashion older media and the ways in which older xy honor, rival, and revise linear-persps 7 omic forces, out new my “ways in whic ‘media refashion chemselves tc ee the challenges of new media,