0.
guide 1.
introduction 2.
method as field of discussion
3. practice
4. theory
5. conclusion and further discussions
| 4.
theory |
4.1 the dialectic of “reading” and “writing” Media Education 4.2 the novelty and distinctiveness of digital media forms Digital Media Research 4.3 multimodal digital media and visualised culture A matter of method? 4.4 “artifacts of expression” and “expressive artifacts” Exploring theory through practice |
4.4.1 Artifacts of Expression. Production 4.4.2 Theory altered by practice 4.4.3 Expressive artifact. Post-production reflection 4.4.4 Theory altered by critical inquiry. The double logic of immediacy and hypermediacy, post-structuralism and performance theory Reading performance theory, the resonance between the double logic of immediacy and hypermediacy, post-structuralism and performance-theory - between hypermediacy and performativity, becomes hard to overlook. Corresponding with how hypermediacy is an immediacy that grows out of the frank acknowledgment of the medium and is not based on the perfect visual re-creation of the world (Bolter and Grusin [1999] 2000:81), the “performative” feature of post-modern work can be observed in that they are, “more and more about themselves and its processes, less and less about objective reality and life in the world “ (John Barth according to Carlson 1996; 131) [74. on agitprop performances]. The suggested relation between the double logic of immediacy and hypermediacy, post-structuralism and performance-theory is part of a complex and interesting discussion of performativity. In turn, this discussion is tied to the discussion on visualisation and expressive shifts in our culture, drawn in the previous section [75. dichotomies and respective academic fields listed]. Trying to cover the diverse field of performance studies by recognising, analysing, and theorising the convergence and collapse of dichotomies or “clearly demarcated realities, hierarchies, and categories”, Richard Schechner (2002) consider such a convergence or collapse as at the heart of postmodernism and as a profound departure from traditional Western performance theory: “From Plato and Aristotle forward, theorists have agreed that theatre “imitates”, “reflects”, “represent” or “expresses” individual actions and social life” (Schechner 2002:116). Through developments in photography, film and digital media questions arouse concerning exactly what was an “original” – even if there could be such a thing as an original” (Schechner 2002:116). This deconstructive questioning or suspicion may be considered the fundament of the so called “performance principle” that postmodernism applies to all aspects of social and artistic life (Schechner 2002:114). As I read Sechner the “performance principle” is to approach every act, every idea, as a performative, correlating to poststructuralists opposing “all notions of universals, originals, or firsts” (Schechner 2002:124). Although being an interesting discussion, the suggested relation between the double logic of immediacy and hypermediacy, post-structuralism and performance-theory is but an illustration of the potential expansive dynamic of practice and theory in interdisciplinary practice-based learning and research in this thesis on method. As follows, this far-reaching discussion will not be traced here any further than I find it illuminating for the method-perspective [76. see in its place recorded seminar discussion on Duskalplasjon and post-structural thinkin]. What I find important to extract from this discussion related to my refined knowledge of the double logic of immediacy and hypermediacy is how performance studies, much informed by post-structural thinking and visa versa, does not study texts, architecture, visual arts, or any other item or artifact of art or culture as such. When texts, architecture, visual arts or anything else are looked at, according to Schechner, they are studied “as” performance. That is, they are regarded as practices, events and behaviours, not as “objects” or “things” (2002:2). In my view, this analytical practice might explain why the double logic of immediacy and hypermediacy may seem to lack potential when trying to analyse media-artifacts. The double logic seem to slip away or refuse to respond to any categorising. Why? Because the double logic of remediation is not defined ontologically or objectively, but rather “in terms of the reproduction of the feeling of imitation or resemblance in the perceiving subject. (Bolter & Grusin [1999] 2000:53). Illustrated by Extended, this means that the same feature of a performance may be said to engage both strategies of immediacy and hypermediacy in order to achieve an authentic expression. If the viewer finds the communication alien, that is, it resists immediate or transparent communication, the mediatedness is recognised, and the strategy becomes “immediacy through hypermediacy” [77. example from Extended]. Such an account of what appears to be internal contradictions of the double logic of Remediation and the lack of exploratory potential is one of meny critiques and criticism saddressed toward Remediation (e.g. John Bonnett (2002:unpaginated) characterising Remediation as “analytical muddle”, Anders Fagerjord 2003). In view of how the double logic is not defined ontologically or objectively and the suggested link between the double logic of immediacy and hypermediacy, post-structuralism and performance theory, one might however argue that the double logic of immediacy and hypermediacy easily gets criticised, perhaps misguidedly, as an analytical tool for study of media as communication-“objects” or -“things”, an ambition that may well not be the case. The remediation-perspective may be said to focus on a dynamic between media - exploring what drives this dynamic in order to assert defining characteristics of new digital media. Rather than an understanding of how media communicate, I suggest that the remediation-perspective with its double logic, might be said to reveal both less and more than this, that is, a cultural-theoretical backdrop suggesting why or for what response diverse media, communicate as they do (or rather, we, by employing them). As the authors point out themselves, immediacy and hypermediacy are contradictory imperatives but the double logic is located in our culture. “(...) Our culture wants both to multiply its media and to erase all traces of mediation (Bolter & Grusin [1999] 2000:5). Re-reading Remediation As I contextualise the four Extended performances and thereby the embodied double logic of immediacy and hypermediacy through post-production, critical reflection and re-reads Remediation in a less web-related context than that of my previous media education, the genealogy of the perspectives presented in Bolter and Grusin´s book become more prominent [78. the “genealogy” of the double logic of immediacy and hypermediacy]. According to the authors the double logic creates “historical affiliations and resonances (not origin)” closely related to other “double logic” strategies of performing, mediating, thinking which are conscious of the performativeness: “The process of remediation makes us aware that all media are at one level a “play of signs”, which is a lesson that we take from poststructuralist literary theory” (Bolter & Grusin [1999] 2000:19). |
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| 4.4.5 Recap section 4.4 . Exploring theory through practice |
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Practice-based Method. Exploring Digital Media through
the Dynamics of Practice, Theory, and Collaborative, Multimedia Performance
Hovedoppgave i mediavitenskap for cand.filol
graden, Universitetet i Oslo, Institutt for medier og kommunikasjon, Mai
2006, Idunn Sem
