ON MEDIA Response

The On Media text reminded me of the theater production scene from Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom.  In this scene, the main character Sam escapes his seat in front of the town play and wanders into the backstage areas.  Before meeting Suzy for the first time in the dressing room, he encounters various layers of the theater production out of their linear order of appearance in the play. 

This reminds me of intermedia more than multimedia, because it directly comments on the nature of one art form.  Instead of compiling fragments of popular culture icons as the last video I found (Franz Ferdinand's music video to Right Action), this one is narrative based and conveys the absurdity of all the costumes and backgrounds of a play when seen away from the stage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0Zu8mumg-M 

Marika's response to On****Media

Hovagimyan’s On **** Media discussed post-media and the evolution of art forms and people’s interactions with them. Something I found very interesting in this week’s reading was this idea that as we develop technology that allows us to replicate or portray things more and more realistically, the medium that new technology was replaced with begins to move into a move creative direction. Simple replication becomes less important because something exists that can do it better. Art is constantly changing and the tools with which we create art are becoming more advanced at an alarming rate. Even as a 22-year-old I find myself saying, “Remember back in the day when we couldn’t capture every moment with a photograph?” The video I am posting is a somewhat literal response to the reading because I really enjoyed the thought of this pressure to be realistic being taken off one medium and allowing it to be more abstract and creative in different ways. I posted a remix of Bob Ross's videos (the guy who made videos with step by step instructions explaining how to paint very generic scenery).  While everyone has different taste and enjoys different forms of art, there is definitely some judgment that comes from the art world when someone paints or creates something generic, unimaginative or without content (bringing in the concept of intermedia!). This just shows how art has evolved and comments on Hovagimyan’s point that with the invention of photography, painters were no longer needed to portray realistic scenes. This video shows how we now laugh at and make fun of people like Bob Ross whose artwork and style of painting is antiquated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLO7tCdBVrA

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

In the article, Hovagimyan differentiated several sorts of media and gave some examples to demonstrate the features of each one. What I found interesting is that he said “meaning for any art work is a communication process, a shared tribal agreement on the meaning of any icon, symbol, etc. In this sense, meaning had more to do with language and the evolving nature of linguistic forms. I place art in the category of a language as well” I believed that even with the sense of “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”; reproduction gives art pieces new definitions. For instance, the world-known reproduction L. H. O. O. Q. by Marcel Duchamp refreshes the traditional method of viewing an artwork. Also, it influenced artists from 70s and 80s. 

http://www.marcelduchamp.net/L.H.O.O.Q.php

Another thing came into my mind when I was reading the “cross media” part in the article was that The Da Vinci Code from Dan Brown could be an example of Cross Media. The novel used the mass media as a medium to represent another kind of media.

Also, there was a further exploration in the last paragraph. “The art is ever changing.” This sentence reminded me several things. By the time every invention was created, there was no way to imagine what it could achieve and how would it be in the future. With this in mind, the way of transmission varied a lot in years. Especially in the 21^st century, the fast spreading information and prevalent technology lead artists a way to make creative artworks. I believe that there is no singer would release their songs out without editing their vocal. Also, exaggerations were made to mass medias, especially the ones with commercial uses. On the one hand, the involving of computer technologies may make the artworks more aesthetic. On the other hand, I may consider some kinds of editing were too much that would fool the audiences’ eyes.

Exploring the term "intermedia"

Like others, I've found Foster's description of "intermedia" fairly difficult to grasp, especially as it relates to multimedia. As I understand it, multimedia is the combination of two or more media in the creation of a work, such that that work is viewed as a product of that combination. For instance, a "movie" is (most often) a multimedia piece that is the product of combining motion picture filming, diegetic sound and non-diegetic sound, and artificial and natural elements of mise-en-scene (as well as writing and performance). 

Intermedia, then, to me, is also a combination of two or more media, but in this case, the product exist in a sort of interstitial space between these media, as opposed to existing in a new category created by multimedia. Essentially, as I understand the two, multimedia is basically a new medium created though the combination of other media, while intermedia is not a creation of a new medium, but is instead a gray area between existing media through the combination of these media. 

To me, it seems that multimedia is a homogenous mixture, while intermedia is a deliberately heterogenous one. 

Here is a small example of intermedia (as I understand it). 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq7O6eR12oM

At various points in this animated show, motion picture is used. In this case, at 9:45.

Reading Response- Reading On

I did not have much of a hard time reading Hovagimyan’s article because I remember reading about similar ideas in another class. I agree that once an art is reproduced it changes in oneway or another. Even when printing a photograph that was found on the internet- the picture quality will be different, the lighting might change, and the photo might get stretched. The idea of preserving art by reproducing does also change the art. I found interesting that Hovagimyan says that the “symbolic language from paintings doesn’t compare with the information”. Photography is said to capture the moment, but capturing a moment is very difficult in one shot especially because it could be manipulated through lighting and even in videos, the message can be manipulated.

What I found even more intriguing was the definition of post media era stating that generative art is ever changing. I believe all art is ever changing after we moved from painting as the primary method of capturing a moment. But, I do agree that art is ever changing. I chose to look up one of the words the author used; mimesis, on google images and one of the images caught my eye. This image, “Mimetic”, captures the idea of the article and is a great example of the definition I found, “fool the eye”; where one cannot tell the difference between the real and reproduced. When looking at this image I do not know what image was first, the one of the roman statues or the female. I have a feeling it was the roman statues, but I might be wrong. It also seems like two different paintings were put together by some digital means, or perhaps it is a painting.

On ***** Media and Félix González-Torres

Hovagimyan's On ***** Media focuses on explaining what he calls "post media," that being those works of art that are always changing and that cannot be copied exactly as they were seen previously.  I found this concept very interesting once I understood what he was arguing, but getting to that point was a bit confusing.  I'll agree with a previous post on this article that Hovagimyan did not cite enough sources to support and explain his definition of post media, making the article a little hard to follow.  However, I believe that he was positing that post media often makes use of technology much more frequently than has been seen in the past.  This is where I think his example of photography sort of replacing realist paintings comes into play.  When photography became a popular practice, painters no longer needed to paint things as they really were and they could represent things through more abstract means.
Going back to post media's constantly changing form, I immediately thought of one of Félix González-Torres’s art installments.  This piece is called “Untitled” (Placebo – Landscape – For Roni) and it consists of a pile of gold-covered candies from which the exhibit viewers are encouraged to take one.  This pile of candy constantly changes its shape and size.  I find this piece of artwork very interesting because it shows that nothing stays the same or lasts indefinitely.  It also goes against what every gallery visitor knows as a rule with every other artwork: don't touch.  “Untitled” (Placebo – Landscape – For Roni) is a perfect example of post media since it is always changing and cannot ever be reproduced exactly the same as it was, in either appearance or in its viewer's reactions to their chance to interact with the art.  Below is a link to an article about this exhibit.  http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2007/12/13/sweet_but_not_sugarcoated/

considering "post media" information environment

There is something amazing about media, which is their power of connecting us as audiences and also the artists with the subject within crossing space and time. They also spread beauty, development and inheritance of different cultures.

After reading Hovagimyan’s article on his belief on the society entering into a ‘Post Media’ environment, I especially want to response to his points of view that the forms of photographies and films endow more depth and meanings to art works. I believe for most of the time, photography and film provide more visual impact and detailed information than paintings as media in conveying mythos and meanings. In the beginning of 20th century when photography first emerged, photographies are shot in a more objective perspective since the photographers were not so skilled enough to insert connotation in their art works. However, as photography become a rather common tool for recording and reproducing, photographers are able to communicate more subjective connotations. As what Hovagimyan explains, “Meaning for any art work is a communication process, a shared tribal agreement on the meaning of any icon, symbol, etc.” Sure, photography and film can do that better. However I think comparing to paining, as photographs gets more experienced, the fancy of techniques  in photographs might lead to the neglect ion of content and details. This happens especially when color photography appears. Ted Grant once said that “when you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in Black and White, you photograph their souls”. Without the effect of the color on photographs and films, the content, composition, imagination and inner conflict in the black-and-white photographs themselves get to their highlights. Therefore I don’t completely agree on Hovagimyan’s statement that “the symbolic language of representational painting just doesn’t compare with the information of a photograph.”

The following link is a documentary video on two war photographers Michael Kamber and louie Palu on their journeys of taking photos of wars happened in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is amazing of how powerful their photographs is in their details and the stories behind.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCXsekzcRm8

On ***** Media - Response

In On ***** Media, Hovagimyan discusses how innovations in digital media allows for the boundaries between different forms of ‘old’ media to be blurred. Digital media gives us the ability to sample several different forms of media and combine them in various ways.

I found the article itself to be rather weak and unconvincing – Hovagimyan cited very few sources supporting his position, for the most part only bringing up sources to refute them as part of his argument. However, he did bring up some interesting points about the origins of our modern, continuous media. Once photography was readily available and artists did not have to struggle for realism as much, they began to find ways to bend the truth and manipulate what was being seen through a camera lens.

I was reminded of an unusual combination of film with other media; La Jetée (d. Chris Marker, 1960) is a science-fiction short film composed almost entirely of still images accompanied by narration. Though the film barely qualifies as such, it challenges the standard form of film by drawing attention to the medium itself. Film is nothing more than a series of still images, so theoretically this film is no different. By injecting a short video clip in the middle of the film, it further draws attention to the unique way it interprets the medium.

An English dub of La Jetée (approx. 30min) can be found here: http://vimeo.com/46620661.

Post Media Defined

From The G.H. Hovagimyan article it appears that Post Media really came about with the invention of the photograph. For the most part, up until this point, art had predominantly been focused on capturing reality. G.H. Hovagimyan notes that,"paintings moved towards abstraction with the invention of the photograph." It doesn't seem plausible that every artist for thousands of years was solely trying to capture reality.

In his article, Hovagimyan discusses Post Media, which is defined through several different mediums of media including Television, Telephones, photography, and several other methods. However, he notes several characteristics of photography that show how it is Post Media. He notes that photographs can be altered through means such as lighting, or the ability to hide reality through film, by means of what appears to be cinematography. He also discusses how, although he does not agree, mass production takes away from the artistic medium. However, the point Hovagimyan appears to be making is that Post Media is defined through change, but more specifically technology. With an increasingly more tech-involved society, media and art are becoming harder and harder to define, it's probably not definable all together, because each different form of media has unique characteristics that allow the user to have limitless opportunity.

With that said, art before the invention of the photograph is no different. For one, many artists from all over the world pursued to make religious influenced scenes, and although many of them appear to capture reality, there is an enormous amount of symbolism. Within that there are also several different ways in which the symbols were represented. Sometimes it's through the production of the art itself, and other times it is actual symbols within the painting. For example during the Dutch Golden Age of Painting there were symbols of all kinds, including death, fertility, adultery, and many more. The idea of symbolism, allowed artists to create anything their imagination could process, which in effect allowed art to change over the centuries, perhaps not at the pace technology allows, but enough to consider it a part of G.H. Hovagimyan's definition of Post Media.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnolfini_Portrait