Hypermediacy and Immediacy

"Like other media since the Renaissance – in particular, perspective painting, photography, film, and television – new digital media oscillate between immediacy and hypermediacy, between transparency and opacity." argue Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin in their book Remediation. After reading their thoughts it is difficult not to notice to which degree a work of art or a media product represent our desire for immediacy or our fascination with hypermediacy. Some days ago I saw a documentary about copyright called RIP!: A Remix Manifesto, where the musician Girl Talk played a main role. Both the movie, which were a mash-up of already existing films, and Girl Talk's music, which is based on samples from hits, are examples of hypermediacy. In both cases we get aware of how they are made, and of the medium. As Bolter and Grusin say: "If the logic of immediacy leads one either to erase or to render automatic the act of representation, the logic of hypermediacy acknowledges multiple acts of representation and make them visible."

Hypermediacy and immediacy are interesting concept in relation to different exhibition technologies and different preferences for exhibition design. Do we want immediacy when visiting a museum, where we forget about the medium chosen to tell us a story? Or do we want to be aware of the medium and the constructedness of the story we are told? The danger with hypermediacy is that the medium becomes more interesting than the content. Many would probably argue that the exhibition at Rockheim suffers from hypermediacy. In this exhibition the media technology that are used, and the act of remediation, are many places much more visible than the content. At least, I felt so when trying to use the installation that introduces the exhibition. On six large screens you get introduced to the six decades the exhibition deals with. Each screen shows an image of a norwegian band or artist. If you move in front of one screen the image "breaks" into small pieces. If you continue until you have removed the whole image, a music video of the band on the image starts. To start a new song on another screen you have to first end the song you started by moving in front of a cross that appears on the screen with the music video.Through history, the interest for immediacy and hypermediacy has shifted back and forth. This is also visible in the history of exhibition design. One example is the introduction of the diorama, which is one example of an exhibition technique with the purpose of immediacy. The diorama was developed to make exhibitions feel as real as possible. Often, sound effects has been added to intensify the experience.

But, where are we now when all sorts of digital media are more and more present in exhibitions? Do museums make exhibitions where immediacy is the desirable? Or do the museums' attempts to be modern and interesting make the museum visit a hypermediated experience? And what is in fact preferable?

Bolter, J.D. & Grusin, R., 1999. Remediation - Understanding New Media, London: The MIT Press.

The Museum - a Medium?

I went to London this week to visit the Natural History Museum and the National Portrait Gallery. Before and after that visit I have been writing on a chapter of my thesis where I discuss if the museum and the exhibition are media. The reason why I need that chapter is because many who writes about the museum, call it a medium, and I desagree with that. My opinion is that the exhibition is a medium, while the museum is an institution. The exhibition is one of many media the museum can use to communicate with its visitors. Others are for example webpages, cataloges, books. But, the museum is of course also a building. And some museums buildings are more important for the experience of the exhibition than others. The Natural History Museum and the National Portrait Gallery are two examples of that. When walking through these museums, the experience of the architecture is almost as important as the paintings or the fossils. When using the term medium as broad as I do in my thesis, architecture is also a medium, like a sculpture or a painting. In that way it is correct to call the museum a medium. But I don't think those who calls the museum a medium only refer to the building. Here is one example from Roger Silverstone:

"Museums are in many respects like other contemporary media. They entertain and inform; they tell stories and construct arguments; they aim to please and to educate; they define, consciously or unconsciously, effectively or inneffectively, an agenda; they translate the otherwise unfamiliar and inaccessible. And in the construction of their texts, their displays, their technologies, they offer an ideologically inflected account of the world."(Silverstone 1994, 162).

As I understand this quote he is describing the museum as an institution. Ross Parry, as another example, do focus more on the physical aspects of the museum. "Museums, after all, are a medium – in their most common state a unique, three-dimensional, multi-sensory, social medium which knowledge is given spatial form. However, they are also themselves full of media."(Parry 2007, 11). This description could fit with the museum building, but Parry do not give any explanation of how he understands the exhibition in relation to this description of the museum.

I would argue that if we want to discuss the museum / the exhibition as a medium it is really important to differ clearly between the museum as institution, the museum building, the exhibition, and the media used in the exhibition. Some weeks ago I introduced the three media categories qualified, basic, and technological media. We can try to apply those on the concepts we are dealing with here. The museum institution, we can skip, it is not a medium. The museum building consists of the basic medium three-dimensional form, the technical medium stone/bricks/wood (building material), and is the qualified medium museum building, or maybe architecture. The exhibition is a qualified medium consisting of many different technical media, and many different basic media, and maybe also different sorts of qualified media. I don't think I would call the exhibition a technical medium. Because an exhibition is nothing without the content. A TV exists without the content, as do a computer, a radio, the paper of the newspaper. You need several technical media to make an exhibition, but none of those are an exhibition on its own. In that way the exhibition is similar to the opera, the theatre play and the concert. They are all qualified media, a form we can communicate through, build up by a variety of technical media. But then, what makes an exhibition a medium if it is not a technical medium? What makes something a qualified medium? Elleström argues that there are two qualifying aspects that constructs media. These are the contextual qualifying aspect, and the operational qualifying aspect. The first one refers to how historical practices, discourses and conventions form our understanding of a medium, and the second to aesthetic and communicative characteristics. That means what the medium look like and how it communicates, which is not necessarily connected to the technological possibilities. I will try to discuss the contextual and operational qualifying aspects of the qualified medium exhibition in another blog post.

Parry, R., 2007. Recoding the Museum, New York: Routledge.

Silverstone, R., 1994. The Medium is the Museum: on objects and logics in times and spaces. I R. Miles & L. Zavala, red. Towards the Museum of the Future. London: Routledge.

Nettutstilling - hva er det?

Jeg har lenge tenkt at jeg skulle skrive et innlegg om nettutstillinger. Fordi jeg både fascineres og irriteres av dem. Tanken er god. Internett gir folk muligheten til å besøke museet fra deres egen stue. Det høres jo bra ut. Tilgjengeliggjøring, flere enn de som bor i nærheten eller er på reise kan se museet. Det er også bra. Et inntrykk av museet før man beveger seg ut av stua og betaler, det er det sikkert også mange som setter pris på. Formidling av verker og gjenstander som ellers ville ligget usett på lager. Supert. Og i tillegg, tenk på de estetiske mulighetene man har. Og mulighetene til interaktivitet. Tenk på det man kan prøve ut, som man ikke har ressurser til å prøve ut i det fysisk museet. Dette fascineres jeg av.

Men det er her jeg har blitt skuffa. Jeg vil ikke kalle det jeg har sett nettutstillinger. Hvorfor heter det ikke nettmagasin? Eller nettutstillingskatalog? Nettveggavis? Eller nettartikler? Hva er det som gjør nettutstillinger til nettutstillinger? Er det egentlig noe annet enn en hjemmeside med ett bestemt tema, som er knyttet til et museum? Mange nettutstillinger tar utstillingen som medium tilbake mange tiår, synes jeg. Det er små bilder og lange utstillingstekster. Og ikke så mye mer.

Det jeg lurer på, og som jeg håper noen har lyst til å være med å diskutere, er: er det mulig å utvikle nettutstillingen til en særegen spennende sjanger? Hva skal til for at noe er en nettutstilling, og ikke noe annet? Det er sjelden man lurer på om en utstilling er en utstilling eller ikke. Eller er det egentlig umulig å lage nettutstillinger, fordi det mest definerende trekket ved en utstilling er det fysiske rommet som de besøkende beveger seg gjennom? Er googleart en nettutstilling? Er jeg kun forutinntatt på bakgrunn av dårlige eksempler?

Hva tenker du?

Noen tips om gode nettutstillinger?