On Media Yukun Liu

The statement that Hovagimya gave is “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.” I disagree with him. I would say media is more like a system and an environment. Media doesn’t change us more than we change media. For example, the example Hovagimya gave us, “painting moved increasingly towards abstraction upon the arrival of the photographic process” is not that convincing. With the arrival of new technologies, it’s a common thing that people start using new things and throw away old things. I don’t consider it as what media change us, it’s more like we find an easier way to do something and start using the easier way. Mechanical recording and reproduction media can’t replace painting even in non-abstraction area at all because certain people are still using painting as a medium to show their ideas. It’s not a simple thing to just replace an important media with new technologies. For example, people are still using films even if digital is a better media for most of us.

The other thing caught my eyes is the post media part in the conclusion. “In generative art or music or theater, computer algorithms create or manifest the forms of art.” I agree with him. Computer algorithms can produce things that people can’t produce and they can understand things people can’t understand. These make post media unique and important. As he mentioned in the end, “in this way the art is ever changing. There is no master and subsequent copies. There is only dynamic iterations of form.” These are the features of post media. Moreover, these make post media as an independent media, which we are moving into now.

This is the video I found:

http://ubumexico.centro.org.mx/video/Murata_Takeshi_Silver_2006.mp4