Lecture 9 - Media Specificity

Definition

Media- The plural of medium - All the communication devices and channels of communication used to reach mass audiences
Medium - Material of technical means of artistic expression

• Edward Tufte (author) believes that powerpoint  actually makes it more difficult to present and communicate properly with an audience
• Tufte argues that instead of creating a useful, informative presentation, power point encourages speakers to write in bullet points as if they were there to sell a product
• this was the original purpose of powerpoint but now that is not always the case
• Media shapes the way things evolve for example - The invention of the Biro pen changed hand writing.

 The specificity of Homo sapiens

• Early man created their tools from what they knew - the stone axe was initially created as a tool as it was based on a tooth that was known to cut and rip flesh.
• it was also an extension of the arm
• tools (media) that is developed is usually and extension of something for example, glasses are and extension of vision, satellites are an extension of reach etc
• New technology often mimics old ones, such as the first cars mimicked the horse and carriage
• Medium specificity is the view that the media associated with a given art form (both its material components and the processes by which they are exploited)  entail specific possibilities for and constraints on representation and expression, and this provides a normative framework for what artists working in that art form ought to attempt.
• Medium/media specificity is a term used in aesthetics and art criticism

In order for medium to have characteristics

• Painters use underline geometry
• This was the creation of cubism 

•  Marshall Mcluhan 'the medium is the message' - was printed ' Medium is the massage' but mcluhan decided to keep it this way as it actually links to the topic well.

•  'If we are defined by our physical and mental limitations, by extending these we change the definition of ourselves.'   
• Socrates said ' The alphabet created forgetfulness'

• Our social patterns have been shaped by media - newspapers, books, television, cinema etc, often controls our daily lives and timetables.
• Television for example shapes the layout of our living rooms, where the fire used to be the focus of the room, it then changed to be the TV 
• The beginning of cimema altered social patterns
• Social extensions - our developments in media has extended the hwhole of human society

Technology as a memory extension

• Brain is effected by media

-footprints
Drawing, painting and symbol making
Writing
Printing
Photography

• Photography is a perfect example of extension
• Lens is an extension of sight
• Film Stock - 'In The Wizard of Oz, (1939) the Kansas dust bowl appears in black-and-white and the world of Oz in technicolor'

Graphics format often rules digital or material

• Type formats live on as memory of old technology
• The design grid is a ghost of Guttenberg Press from 1439
• The Medium is the Massage is a typo