Wednesday, January 28, 2015

On **** Media by G.H. Hovagimyan

 Personally, I found G.H. Hovagimyan’s article On **** Media to be undeveloped and lacking a well sort out thesis. Though he generated some good ideas and explanations on this shift into a “Post Media” era, I believe the point he was trying to convey was very vague and flat. His thoughts were not formulated properly and so they didn’t really convince me that the world we are living in today is shifting into “Post Media” times.

The thing that irritated me the most about Hovagimyan’s article and possibly the underlying reason as to why I found it to be undeveloped is the fact that in the second line of his article there is an error. A day before I read this article, I read a passage by W.J.T. Mitchell entitled Addressing Media that mentions Marshall McLuhan and his thesis, “The medium is in the message.” I had also written a two-page response paper on this idea and so upon reading the second line of Hovagimyan’s article, I immediately recognized it. However, by the time I finished reading the third line I realized something was wrong. I immediately pulled out my reading from my Introduction to Media Studies class and checked if my hypothesis was correct, and it was. G.H. Hovagimyan spelt McLuhan’s name incorrectly by adding an extra C to his name. Realizing this fact, I immediately lost faith that anything Hovagimyan would argue in the reminder of his paper would be correct or worth believing. Not only did he misspell the name one of the greatest contributors to Media Studies and gave his quote a random guy, but he was also deceiving his readers who were unaware of who McLuhan was.

However, despite the fact that Hovagimyan lost my trust I must admit that he did have some decent points. In the case of painting and photography it is true that there is a shift into the “Post Media” era with cameras now having the ability to capture images with such precision that it feels realistic. The act of capturing an image no longer requires great effort (sitting down for hours to get a portrait painted), but can be done in a matter of seconds. This makes the distribution of art easier and more accessible but as Hovagimyan mentions this is the reason why we are in a “Post Media” era. Machines are now capturing the art form that humans have been doing for years and there is no turning back from this advancement. Sooner or later in this “Post Media” era, the need for human interaction will be no longer necessary, for with the right programs and developments these technologies will be able to run on their own.

This comparison between painting and photography along with other good points forced us to think about the future and where technology will lead us. Nonetheless, as I mentioned before, if Hovagimyan expanded on his examples and demonstrated how they will impact this shift into the “Post Media”, his point would have been clearer and further developed.




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEzuWWmn9xI


-Danielle Rennalls

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