#mediumisthemessage

December 2, 2021: “Life Matters”

A B C, easy as one, two, three

Simple as lit-er-acy,

A B C, one, two, three, linearity girl

A B C is easy as like counting up to three,

Free of ambi-guity,

That's how abstract love can be

That's how detached love can be

Static uniformity,

The Medium is the Message

Take a look at this ad. Would it work the same way if it were just in a magazine? Or on Instagram? No – it needs the real world interaction with the tunnel and the cars to make sense. 

In this case the medium is incredibly important to the message, it not only enhances it but it makes the people who interact with it feel engaged. Perhaps they even feel like they’ve been eaten. I feel this is effective because it usually garners a reaction. A gasp, a laugh, a head shake – all these things are wanted in an advertisement because it usually means the person will remember. It also means when they see something related to your ad, in this case the rest stop, they will think of the ad and feel the same reaction. They may not stop, but I do think it will make someone stop and go in.

[READING] Keyword: Medium Specificity

“In order for a medium to have characteristic qualities it must be grounded in a tradition that has established these as intrinsic properties.”

“while poetry unfolds in time, painting exists in space”

Define avant-garde, kitsch, abstract painting, 

Look up Clement Greenberg, Wassilly Kandinsky, WJT Mitchell

“Music, he contends, is inherently pure and abstract because it cannot be described in terms of any other media.”

“In [Michael Fried’s] 1966 essay “Art and Objecthood,” he attacks minimalist art for producing effects that do not derive from within the work itself, but instead are dependent on the viewer’s relationship with the object.... According to Fried, these minimalists took Greenberg’s plea for purity too far; instead of exploring the materiality of the media, all they do is present the materials for what they are." Consider this in terms of the final project where you are asked to make media meta.

What was the argument over photography? Research Weston, Stieglitz, Strand, and Man Ray.

““The medium is the message,” which [Marshall McLuhan] coined in the first chapter of his 1964 book Understanding Media, not only entered the accepted rhetoric of media studies, but also became the common idiom used to discuss emergent technology. According to McLuhan, media should be defined as “extensions of man” (McLuhan, 1964:4), and include any technology that is not found in our natural state. In his view, “the ‘content’ of any medium is always another medium” (McLuhan, 1964:8); the medium is thus specific through its effects, not its content.”

“Outside of the realm of art, medium-specificity has taken on different cultural and social connotations, and the self-awareness that McLuhan promoted has led to a tongue-in-cheek culture of the “meta.” Our ability to talk openly in culture about the effects of media on our lives – from TV to the web to instant messaging–might not exist without McLuhan’s theorizing the media as the “message,” or as he later writes, “the massage.””

[IN-CLASS READING]

Medium of a Text: “Some varied specific examples of media could include a paper, a speech, a letter, an advertisement, a billboard, a presentation, a poster-board, a cartoon, a movie, a painting, a sculpture, an email, a Twitter tweet, a Facebook post, graffiti, a conversation (face-to-face, on a cell phone, via text messages) . . . this list is nearly endless.”

Tools to Make a Text: Mouth- Verbal Communication, Body Language, Writing Tool- Visual Communication, Computer- Digital Communication

Tools to Decipher a Text: Reading, Viewing, Hearing Instruments, Eyes, Projector, etc.