I am a strong believer that neither media history nor the evolution of media works in isolation. Therefore, it is hard for me to get fully behind what I have come to recognize in Media Specificity as an approach. It is an approach; however, I am not sure whether it is meant to be more useful as an avenue for cultural critique or as a prompt for art making. Logically, theoretically, I understand that relying on Media Specificity to define salient traits of media, hence culture, is completely impractical (for all the reasons Noel Carroll lays out in Theorizing the Moving Image). However, I can’t help but feel that aspects of Medium Specificity’s Internal component
can be useful as a “prompt” for the creation of new work. According to Carroll, “the internal component examines the relation between the medium and the artform embodied in it” (8).
Perhaps, this opinion intersects with platform studies, but I think that evocative work can be made from considering what one is driven to make with what platform could best showcase it. This is a way to leverage platform attributes (technically, culturally, socially) to add to the resonance of a work. Even further, perhaps an assumption of what a specific medium can do best (or what a medium represents) acts as a prompt or catalyst for a nuanced piece of art. Even if that art ends up expanding the original narrow assumption, is it not a valid way to get started? This form of prompt would deal more with the potentials that a medium offers for art making, rather than the inverse prompt which deals with constraints. Work by constraint is also a perfectly legitimate way of working. Carroll refers to these constraints as “limits”. As a writer, work by constraint seems like a natural way to work and is often used as a generative writing exercise in many contemporary workshops. I do take issue with how Carroll seems to think working with a sense (even if it is an assumption) of a medium’s attributes is easy. He seems to think that art created with a medium specific approach is the easy way out. I think his opinions on this at the top of pg. 10 speak of someone who is not necessarily a practitioner. A great deal of thought and planning can go into thinking how art resonates with the medium and materiality it professes to be created within. If you are truly creating art, there is no “easy way out”. I was almost offended by his flippant comments on the subject, when I get the feeling that he has not tried to produce from both sides of the argument. I was amused and surprised at this reaction.
I do think Carroll makes some essential points that we should be aware of. Nothing operates in vacuum and the boundaries of many media are so wide-open that most attempts at describing them are overgeneralized and therefore useless. I think this text will be a touch-stone text for me and seminal in my efforts to interject in my concern over how my field is being prematurely labeled. The concern over labeling echoes some of the points and discussions in Uricchio’s “Television’s Next Generation: Technology/Interface Culture/Flow”. I had a variety of responses to this however, I was most struck by “Double Agent”. Double Agent is a type of filtered content based on metadata that learns from user selections and suggests what they would like. I know that this happens all the time online, however an aspect of this article made this specifically creepy as hell and not just for the obvious reasons. I have problems with how libraries are choosing to archive literature and the interesting labels given to works so they can be sorted, suggested and searched. While I recognize the pragmatic use for this... it is still potentially problematic. First, there is the case of how and what labels we develop on a whim now forever altering what we consider writing in the future. Labels/Metadata have a power of growing and molding a field, or growing and molding our culture. Double Agent has a similar power. Based on the metadata that we encode the machine lumps together specific content. In some way, large or small, this content becomes equalized. Then after an umpire reads our viewing preferences, we are told what we probably want. There is no way that this does not have the potential of shaping us. The illusion is a more democratic viewing, but in reality we are “suggested” by the system. It is even more insidious because we think that the system is adapting to us, but in reality, we are partly adapting to the system because it supposedly gets better at telling us what we like each time. Creeeeeepy. Part of this problem is interesting for me because it shares aspects with some of my thoughts on the archival and curation of works of writing in digital media. This article also offers lots of parallels between TV’s nebulous state as a delivery mode that offers a little bit of everything and how I see writing evolving in the future.
can be useful as a “prompt” for the creation of new work. According to Carroll, “the internal component examines the relation between the medium and the artform embodied in it” (8).
Perhaps, this opinion intersects with platform studies, but I think that evocative work can be made from considering what one is driven to make with what platform could best showcase it. This is a way to leverage platform attributes (technically, culturally, socially) to add to the resonance of a work. Even further, perhaps an assumption of what a specific medium can do best (or what a medium represents) acts as a prompt or catalyst for a nuanced piece of art. Even if that art ends up expanding the original narrow assumption, is it not a valid way to get started? This form of prompt would deal more with the potentials that a medium offers for art making, rather than the inverse prompt which deals with constraints. Work by constraint is also a perfectly legitimate way of working. Carroll refers to these constraints as “limits”. As a writer, work by constraint seems like a natural way to work and is often used as a generative writing exercise in many contemporary workshops. I do take issue with how Carroll seems to think working with a sense (even if it is an assumption) of a medium’s attributes is easy. He seems to think that art created with a medium specific approach is the easy way out. I think his opinions on this at the top of pg. 10 speak of someone who is not necessarily a practitioner. A great deal of thought and planning can go into thinking how art resonates with the medium and materiality it professes to be created within. If you are truly creating art, there is no “easy way out”. I was almost offended by his flippant comments on the subject, when I get the feeling that he has not tried to produce from both sides of the argument. I was amused and surprised at this reaction.
I do think Carroll makes some essential points that we should be aware of. Nothing operates in vacuum and the boundaries of many media are so wide-open that most attempts at describing them are overgeneralized and therefore useless. I think this text will be a touch-stone text for me and seminal in my efforts to interject in my concern over how my field is being prematurely labeled. The concern over labeling echoes some of the points and discussions in Uricchio’s “Television’s Next Generation: Technology/Interface Culture/Flow”. I had a variety of responses to this however, I was most struck by “Double Agent”. Double Agent is a type of filtered content based on metadata that learns from user selections and suggests what they would like. I know that this happens all the time online, however an aspect of this article made this specifically creepy as hell and not just for the obvious reasons. I have problems with how libraries are choosing to archive literature and the interesting labels given to works so they can be sorted, suggested and searched. While I recognize the pragmatic use for this... it is still potentially problematic. First, there is the case of how and what labels we develop on a whim now forever altering what we consider writing in the future. Labels/Metadata have a power of growing and molding a field, or growing and molding our culture. Double Agent has a similar power. Based on the metadata that we encode the machine lumps together specific content. In some way, large or small, this content becomes equalized. Then after an umpire reads our viewing preferences, we are told what we probably want. There is no way that this does not have the potential of shaping us. The illusion is a more democratic viewing, but in reality we are “suggested” by the system. It is even more insidious because we think that the system is adapting to us, but in reality, we are partly adapting to the system because it supposedly gets better at telling us what we like each time. Creeeeeepy. Part of this problem is interesting for me because it shares aspects with some of my thoughts on the archival and curation of works of writing in digital media. This article also offers lots of parallels between TV’s nebulous state as a delivery mode that offers a little bit of everything and how I see writing evolving in the future.
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