On Media Response- Karina Banda

Hovagimyan stated “At the start of the 20^th century mechanical recording and reproduction media were beginning to change the way in which societies communicated and formed their tribal mythos”. During that time media and their purposes were constantly changing as recording technology was constantly being updated and evolving. Painting started to go into a new direction after photography provided a better way to represent reality. As the camera's abilities started evolving and people started manipulating its processes, it has evolved into a bigger thing involving lights and careful set-ups.

Now we have played enough with all these new technologies and rather than letting the technologies change us, we are now changing and manipulating the technologies we have, in other words, using it as a language as Hovagimyan describes. When you first start learning a language, you need to follow the careful structure of it but once you are comfortable enough, you can deviate from textbook-like sentences and create new ones of your own. Technology has become such a big part in our world that “the new cultural mythos is a mapping out of human society that is extended into its technology and in a sustained symbiosis with that technos”. In our Post Media environment that Hovagimyan describes, we are letting computers manipulate and create our art forms and because of this, there is no uni-formal way in approaching the different types of mediums we currently use as there are hundreds of processes you can choose to use for any type of medium to shape it.

Artist Agathe Snow's video “Total Attitude Work Out Video” (http://ubu.com/film/snowa_workout.html) is a great piece that showcases the ideas of Hoyagimyan presents. In this video, Snow has borrowed the “language” (the presentation) of self-help videos and mass produced work out videos to make her own statement of societal views of “hot-girls” in this parody video.