When I first read Foster’s article, I wasn’t quite sure exactly what he was trying to get across to the reader; his point was coated in extremely technical terms that I could not figure out, nor did he seem to have one real thesis except to try and explain that video was very closely related to intermedia. That was something I could definitely understand, because it’s obvious that videos bring together different types of medias into one central medium. They incorporate sound and images to create one of the most realistic experiences that anyone could receive from any medium. But why does Foster strive so hard to differentiate between intermedia and multimedia? At the end of the article I felt just as confused about the entire argument then I did in the beginning. From what I could understand Foster seemed to be defining multimedia as something that brings together different medias while intermedia is an overlap of them, but isn’t that essentially the same thing, the only real difference being the terms?
Foster uses the claim that video is a perfect example of intermedia to support the argument made throughout the article that tries to define intermedia and differentiate it from multimedia. He states that video “…is an extension of ourself because we can no longer distinguish between ourselves and TV-type technology without what McLuhan has called an anti-environment.” I took this to mean that because video incorporates so many things to be realistic, we see it as such and no longer any form of art. This I can accept in the argument because I know that this can be extremely true; we can accept video as reality if there are no barriers that force it to self-recognize as a video.
The clip I have choses from Ubuweb is of a men’s cologne commercial directed by French New-Wave director Jean-Luc Godard. I chose it because I believe it is both an example of how video is and is not intermedia according to Foster. In it, many things are being combined and overlapped, mainly dialogue and music, video, but also narrative and commercial selling. The multiple layers seem to resonate with Foster’s ideas of what video is and how it is multimedia. At the same time, I believe it is an example of how video cannot be multimedia because it calls attention to itself being a video because of its harsh sound and video quality, and the fact that at the end of the narrative, a narrator breaks the fourth wall and directly tells the audience to buy the product.
http://www.ubu.com/film/godard_schick.html
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