Erasing the traces of presence
In digital technology, as often in the earlier history of Western representation, hypermediacy expresses itself as multiplicity. If the logic of immediacy leads one either to erase or to render automatic the act of representation, the logic of hypermediacy acknowledges multiple acts of representation and makes them visible. Where immediacy suggests a unified visual space, contemporary hypermediacy offers a heterogeneous space, in which representation is conceived of not asa window on to the world, but rather as "windowed" itself-with windows that open on to other representations or other media (Pg: 34)
It is a visual style that, in the words of William J. Mitchell(1994), "privileges frag- mentation, indeterminacy, and heterogeneity and... emphasises process or performance rather than the finished art object" (8). Interactive applications are often grouped under the rubric of '"hypermedia,"and hypermedia's "combination of random access with multiple media (Pg: 31)
Vast audiences for
popular film and television continue to assume that unmediated presentation is the ultimate goal of visual representation and to believe that
technological progress toward that goal is being made. When interactivity is combined with automaticity and the five-hundred-year-old perspective method, the result is one account of mediation that millions
of viewers today find compelling. (Pg:30)
Although effacement is by no means universal in Western painting, even before the nineteenth century, it was one important technique for making the space of the picture continuous with the viewer's space. This continuity between depicted and "real" space was particularly apparent in trompe (Pg: 25)
To achieve transparency, however, linear perspective was regarded as necessary but not sufficient,for the artist must also work the surface to erase his brush strokes. (Pg:25)
"Cartesian perspectivalism" constituted a peculiar way of seeing that dominated Western culture from the seventeenth century to the early twentieth by allowing the Cartesian subject to control space from a single vantage point. (Pg: 24)
As Albrecht Diirer noted, and as Panofsky (1991) reminded us in Perspective as SymbolicForm (27), perspective means a "seeing through," and, like the interface designers of today, students of linear perspective promised immediacy through transparency. (Pg: 24)
These earlier media sought immediacy through the interplay of the aesthetic value of transparency with techniques of linear perspective, erasure, and automaticity. all of which are strategies also at work in digital technology. (Pg: 24)
All of these enthusiasts promise us transparent, perceptual immediacy, experience without mediation, for they expect virtual reality to diminish and ultimately to deny the mediating presence of the computer and its interface. (Pg: 23)
In order to create a sense of presence, virtual reality should come as close as possible to our daily visual experience. Its graphic space should be continuous and full of objects and should fill the viewer's field of vision without rupture. But today's technology still contains many ruptures: slow frame rates, jagged graphics, bright colours, bland lighting, and system crashes. (Pg: 22)
Although effacement is by no means universal in Western painting, even before the nineteenth century, it was one important technique for making the space of the picture continuous with the viewer's space. This continuity between depicted and "real" space was particularly apparent in trompe (Pg: 25)
To achieve transparency, however, linear perspective was regarded as necessary but not sufficient,for the artist must also work the surface to erase his brush strokes. (Pg:25)
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"Cartesian perspectivalism" constituted a peculiar way of seeing that dominated Western culture from the seventeenth century to the early twentieth by allowing the Cartesian subject to control space from a single vantage point. (Pg: 24)
As Albrecht Diirer noted, and as Panofsky (1991) reminded us in Perspective as SymbolicForm (27), perspective means a "seeing through," and, like the interface designers of today, students of linear perspective promised immediacy through transparency. (Pg: 24)
These earlier media sought immediacy through the interplay of the aesthetic value of transparency with techniques of linear perspective, erasure, and automaticity. all of which are strategies also at work in digital technology. (Pg: 24)
All of these enthusiasts promise us transparent, perceptual immediacy, experience without mediation, for they expect virtual reality to diminish and ultimately to deny the mediating presence of the computer and its interface. (Pg: 23)
In order to create a sense of presence, virtual reality should come as close as possible to our daily visual experience. Its graphic space should be continuous and full of objects and should fill the viewer's field of vision without rupture. But today's technology still contains many ruptures: slow frame rates, jagged graphics, bright colours, bland lighting, and system crashes. (Pg: 22)
Virtual
reality is literally "in the viewer's face." The viewer is given a first-
person point of view, as she gazes on a graphic world from a station
point that is always the visual center of that world. As computer scientists themselves put it, the goal of virtual reality is to foster in the
viewer a sense of presence: the viewer should forget that she is in fact
wearing a computer interface and accept the graphic image that it offers
as her own visual world (Hodges et al. 1994). (Pg: 22)
The practices of contemporary media constitute a lens through which we can view the history of remediation. What we wish to highlight from the past is what resonates with the twin preoccupations of contemporary media: the transparent presentation of the real and the enjoyment of the opacity of media themselves. (Pg: 21)
We do not claim that immediacy, hypermediacy, and remediation are universal aesthetic truths; rather, we regard them as practices of specific groups in specific times.' Although the logic of immediacy has manifested itself from the Renaissance to the present day, each manifestation in each age may be significantly different, and immediacy may mean one thing to theorists, another to practicing artists or designers, and a third to viewers. The diversity is even greater for hypermediacy, which seems always to offer a number of different reactions to the contemporary logic of immediacy. Remediation always operates under the current cultural assumptions about immediacy and hypermediacy. (Pg: 21)
Source:-
Bolter, J. David, Richard Grusin, and Richard A. Grusin. Remediation: Understanding new media. mit Press, 2000.
The practices of contemporary media constitute a lens through which we can view the history of remediation. What we wish to highlight from the past is what resonates with the twin preoccupations of contemporary media: the transparent presentation of the real and the enjoyment of the opacity of media themselves. (Pg: 21)
We do not claim that immediacy, hypermediacy, and remediation are universal aesthetic truths; rather, we regard them as practices of specific groups in specific times.' Although the logic of immediacy has manifested itself from the Renaissance to the present day, each manifestation in each age may be significantly different, and immediacy may mean one thing to theorists, another to practicing artists or designers, and a third to viewers. The diversity is even greater for hypermediacy, which seems always to offer a number of different reactions to the contemporary logic of immediacy. Remediation always operates under the current cultural assumptions about immediacy and hypermediacy. (Pg: 21)
Source:-
Bolter, J. David, Richard Grusin, and Richard A. Grusin. Remediation: Understanding new media. mit Press, 2000.
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