History of Art Art in the age of mass media - Essay Example

Some of the commonly used cultural forms are web sites, multimedia, databases, computer games and animations and to a lesser extent, virtual reality. In today's culture of information and media, there is permanence and crumbling of both old and new media. New media exists due to the foundation laid by the old media and its language. But there are instances where new media is coming on its own and breaking from its roots. The distinctive feature about new media is its capacity to create a virtual world of information that, in the case of the internet, exists in servers worldwide but visualized at a computer workstation at any corner.

This illusion of reality that is organized and structured has transformed human experience. In the culture of the information society, computerization has led to developments of new forms. Old media such photography and cinema have in some ways reinvented themselves and converged into new media. The computer revolution has considerably enhanced the scope of visual culture and new avenues of expression have opened up to artists. Bolter and Grusin offer an alternate way of thinking about the new media.

They present the idea of remediation and define it as "the formal logic by which technologies refashion prior media forms" (Bolter and Grusin 2000 p.273). Modern society which is increasingly turning its interests towards various entertainment and information media has fallen into preoccupations that Bolter and Grusin term as "immediacy" and "hypermediacy" which are the two strategies of remediation. Immediacy is a style of visual presentation which aims at making the viewer unaware of the presence of the medium e.g. photographic film, cinema, artist canvas, TV sports events etc.

Immediacy attempts to give the appearance that the media doesn't exist. For example, anything shown "live" would fall under the immediacy category. Live sports events, live or breaking news, live car chases on TV are preoccupations that the general public appear to be interested in. Most of these visual presentations focus on the action taking place. There is no effort in creating a visual masterpiece or making it look artistic, instead, immediacy tries to flow along with the on going event. The emphasis is on the raw action and not on other characteristics of the event such as statistics, replays and in-depth analysis.

Immediacy tries to create an intimate link between the event and the viewer by covering the event as smoothly as possible without interrupting the flow or introducing distractions. There is an effort to engage the viewer more directly with the event and make him or her feel as if they are there watching from the stands. Hypermediacy is contrary but closely related to immediacy and involves the use of event statistics, replays from every angle and in-depth analysis to study the event and allow the viewer to gain a better understanding of it.

Multiple forms of media e.g., text, graphs, animation, film are involved in hypermediacy. It can be observed that hypermediacy is a pre-occupation the media and viewers are able to engage in after the live event. For example, a live football match which falls under the immediacy term can be scrutinized ball by ball and statistical analysis studied once the game has ended or during the half time period. Hypermediacy allows the viewer to gain a wider knowledge of various aspects of the game's details whereas