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Bolter and Grusin’s 1998 book Remediation provides a framework for understanding mediation itself and how different forms of media interact with one another. According to their analysis, the very act of mediation functions under a double logic, each with seemingly disparate ends. The two logics are named immediacy and hypermediacy. Immediacy is the ability of a mediated text to faithfully recreate the sense experiences of an individual. It has its origins in perspective painting, in which artists would attempt to place the viewer in their own point of view, giving viewers the sense they were looking directly at the subject of the painting; this tradition is carried forward in film and first-person shooter video games Immediacy is intended to be transparent, erasing “all traces of mediation” to give the audience an authentic replica of experience (5). In contrast to the transparency of immediacy, hypermediacy is translucent in that it draws an audience’s attention to the media itself, either implicitly or explicitly. It is accomplished in three ways. First, by a text’s intentionally or unintentionally calling attention to itself as mediated, e.g., the idea of “breaking the fourth wall” or a visible string connected to a “UFO”; second, the notion of an audience interacting with a text via some type of interface brings the medium to the forefront of a viewer’s attention; third, it is the multiplication of media within a single text, attempting to engage as many
The two authors set out to explain how media replicate other media in their attempts to achieve hypermediacy, immediacy, or some combination of the two. This idea that media are in some regard always representing other media is the defining feature of remediation. The majority of the novel functions as an explication of remediation via a genealogical approach, in which we see how media throughout history have taken features from their predecessors and adapted them, implicitly trying to “remedy” the imperfections of a previous medium. For example, television’s adaptation of a “ticker” on the bottom of the screen is a remediation of the analog stock market ticker, and we can look at the internet as remediating many, if not all, media that have come before it, given the wide variety of available content. Remediation isn’t just confined to technologies, however. They also make mention of the movement of content from one medium to another. Examples of this are all around us: the adaptation of any number of novels or comic books into films are also considered remediation. Understanding mediation and the process by which media attempt to refashion other media are the essence of remediation.
senses as possible. While the two logics are framed as having separate ends, the two actually function together, as noted in this third case of hypermediacy. This third articulation is the central paradox of mediation. Bolter and Grusin state “Our culture…wants to erase its media in the very act of multiplying them” (5). It is this act of multiplication that brings us to their core concept, remediation.

Archive: Remediation.txt

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