On Media Response

I’m going to deconstruct Hovagimyan’s argument for my own sake. It seems as if he agrees with McCluhan’s concept that “The Medium is the Message” historically, but believes that art no longer relies on its medium to gain meaning or to portray information. In other words, “Post Media” has to do with the idea that—due perhaps to technology—medium has become an irrelevant aspect of an art piece when it comes to the message it is trying to express. Hovagimyan uses the introduction of photography as an example, stating that when distribution of war photographs began, artists stopped painting war scenes. Following the logic of the argument, it appears that this might be because the medium of photography did a better job of conveying the message and “truth” of war than the medium of painting, rendering painting relatively useless for war information distribution.

Another clue that I used to identify Hovagimyan’s main point is the fact that he says in his concluding paragraph that “computer algorithms create or manifest the forms of art.” The key word here is “forms.” I’m not entirely sure where this concept of computer algorithms came from and why he felt it appropriate to just throw a term like that in an article about art in his last paragraph without an sufficient explanation. But anyways, back to the significance of using the word form: by stating that computers are generating the forms of art, not just the art work itself, he is further suggesting that the form in which a piece of art takes is irrelevant and merely computer generated. Put simply, we no longer rely on medium to receive information. 

I’m not sure any of this made sense. If this is actually what he is arguing, then I find this very compelling. However, Hovagimyan’s article was so scattered that I struggled to really identify a cohesive argument at all.