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Inter/archi/para/meta/hyper/transmediality
Get PDFThe way Gerard Genette (1982) comprehends transtextuality, broadly as all interactions between texts, mirrors the definition of intermediality, a concept that expands these relations with a focus on media. The term intermedia, in certain way the source for the notion of intermediality, was coined by Dick Higgins (1962) to describe a specific form of Art, constructed from an amalgam of then inseparable languages, and can be dialogued with the form of intermedia later described by Claus Clüver (2007). Intertextuality, perhaps the term that should be in dialogue with intermediality, is just one of the transtextual relations, closer to what Irina Rajewsky (2005) understands as intermedial reference. Meanwhile, Elleström (2010) describes transmediality as one of the types of intermediality, closer to Genette's concept of hypertextuality. Certainly, the theoretical spaces from which these concepts originated—the French structuralism, the arts, media culture—are quite distinct, even though they observe culture in its broad sense. This work seeks ways to dialogue these different perspectives, in order to coherently encompass new forms of interaction, such as those of digital media. In this sense, we analyze the terminology to propose taxonomies that include archimediality, paramediality, metamediality, hypermediality alongside the already defined notions of inter and transmediality
Reformatted writing. Style guides, writing practices, and information infrastructures in Sweden around 1970
Get PDFAnalog and digital media technologies are, from a media historical perspective, intertwined in different and complex ways. This is especially true for the media technologies of the office, where digital media have evolved in dialog with older technologies in the analog-digital information infrastructure, and with a wide array of office practices and ideas of organization. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the intermedial relations between writing tools, paper, office practices, and infrastructure, in an analysis of the history of a document template. Thus, approaching intermedial connections between analog and digital media technologies in early computerized society, from a perspective influenced by theories of grey media (Fuller & Goffey 2012), and media as logistical and infrastructural (Peters 2015), and format theory (Sterne 2012; Jancovic, Volmar & Schneider 2019). The empirical case discussed in the paper is a style guide that was introduced to the departments of the Swedish state in 1968 called “Statsdepartementens skrivregler”. The style guide aimed at reformatting all different documents that the state relied on for its communication, but as I argue in my paper also tried to reformat office practices and the information infrastructure as such. The introduction this style template also coincided in time with the early attempts of using word processors, datafication and computerization of information management in the Swedish state (Fredrikzon 2021). The style guide—and other alike introduced in the same period in other areas of Swedish society—was based on a standard called “systematic typewriting”, developed in the 1950s to better match paper forms to the typewriter (Järpvall 2016). This standard, and the implementation in the style guides, defined a structure and design of office documents that came to persist the gradual switch from typewriters to computers in the 1980s and 90s, and in many ways still is with us
From cut and paste to CTRL+C and CTRL+V: Tracing montage in contemporary digital art
Get PDFThe aim of this paper is to connect contemporary digital productions and shared experiences on networks to the archaeological layers of media, thereby making a comparison between visual creation techniques from the past and the present, specifically referring to the transition from physical methods, such as cut and paste, to digital tools.This approach seeks to contemplate the processes inherent in gestures like cutting-pasting and dismantling-assembling-reassembling – a montage of visual elements – that underlie much of these cultural productions, particularly collages and tableaux vivants, considered here as highly intermedial phenomena. The impacts of the industrial era on artistic production were notably pronounced in literature and the arts, as technical reproducibility propelled the cut-paste process, prevalent throughout the European avant-garde in forms like photomontage, or cinematic montage. The subversive potential of these shifts is evident: concepts such as authenticity and originality are challenged; utilized materials, fragments, and remnants are reconfigured in productions characterized by hybridity and impurity. With the transition from the industrial to the digital era, we witness the widespread continuation of this art of montage due to new technologies: ready-made, assemblage, combined paintings, environments, collage-poems and object-poems, concrete and sonic poetry, cut-up, remix, sample, mash-up – processes associated with the digital condition yet not confined to it. To illustrate this proposition, we will explore digital montage experiences, such as photomontage and tableaux vivants produced for social networks, comprised of image cut-outs from the European tradition where the artist intervenes critically and incisively, bearing the same subversive potential as the ancient cut-paste gesture. The intricate intermedial relationship emerging from both instances can thus be examined through delving into the archaeological layers of the media involved, questioning how this ancient technique is revived in contemporary digital art
Art striving to otherness: Walter Pater’s Anders-streben as a historical precursor to intermediality
Get PDFThis paper proposes positioning the idea of British writer Walter Pater (1839-1894) Anders-streben (Pater, 1873) as a precursor to the concept of intermediality, thereby shedding light on the historical perspectives of intermediality. Both Anders-streben and intermediality share a remarkable resemblance in their reliance on bridging media boundaries. The concept is even briefly mentioned in more recent literature on intermediality (Rippl, 2015, p. 4-5), but is not further elaborated upon. In today's artistic climate, characterized by the celebration of crossing artistic boundaries and hybridity in artworks, Anders-streben demonstrates its relevance more than ever. The term, which Pater introduces in his influentual book Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873), refers to the possibility of arts to transgress the boundaries of their own medium into another art form.
I argue that Anders-streben can be seen as a liminal space or the ‘in-between’ where different art forms enter into dialogue with each other and, moreover, transcend their own mediums. This claim will be supported by linking Anders-streben to Irina Rajewsky’s ‘as-if’ theory (Rajewsky, 2002), illustrating how it fosters an immersive experience within a single medium, which in turn allows for the interplay of imagined other art forms. Through a focus on the medium-specific and transcending qualities of specific artworks, I aim to illuminate how Pater’s concept of transcending artistic borders can enrich the spectator’s aesthetic experience. In essence, I want to show how Anders-streben invites viewers to immerse themselves in a multidimensional artistic journey, blurring the lines between different mediums and enhancing the overall aesthetic encounter
Weaving a history of our current connectedness: Amalie Smith’s hybrid text Thread Ripper (2020) as a techno-philosophical treatise
Get PDFThis presentation is meant to demonstrate how central aspects of our current networked digitalization are represented through intermedial literary fiction.
The organizing theme in artist and writer Amalie Smith’s hybrid literary text Thread Ripper (Danish original 2020, English translation 2022) is weaving. In Thread Ripper text and images weave intricate patterns of autobiography, reflections on artistic practice and techno-historical events. Weaving is understood both as producing textiles, but it also refers to the notion of the written text, and Smith also sees the World Wide Web as a “universal loom”.
Smith connects Clytemnestra’s weaving in Homer’s Odyssey to Ada Lovelace’s 19th century ideas of an analytical machine or engine (aka a computer) and to our contemporary understandings and experiences of a World Wide Web. Lovelace: “the Analytical Engine weaves algebraic patterns, just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves.”
Smith’s intermedial experiments becomes a techno-philosophical work of art that reveals that human thinking and creation are aspects of a universal wide web that existed way before our contemporary computers and digital networks
Digital Deixis, Passing Poeticity
Get PDFDrawing on Lev Manovich’s work, poet and literary scholar Matti Kangaskoski has identified momentariness as a crucial characteristic of digital cultural interfaces. According to Kangaskoski, related readerly effects in the case of digital poetry include “glimpses of an overall structure” and “passing moments whose meaning is formed in relation to the ephemeral reader.” (2019, 47) This paper proposes that a cognitive take on the notion of deixis can be fruitful in addressing the complexities of such momentariness. Deixis is usually understood as expressions whose meaning is relative to the discourse situation, such as “here”, and is linked to a more general perspectival positioning in cognitive accounts of language use. Departing from Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar (2008) and relating to the spatiotemporal dimension of Elleström’s media modalities (2010), the paper explores the critical potential of deictic positioning in Ian Hatcher’s Attentions (2022). It argues that the work’s commentary on the momentariness of human attention offers illuminating insights for current discussions around the digitalization of textual practices
Feedback processes in modelling: when media transformation becomes a dialogue
Get PDFAs pointed out in Ciula et.al. (2023), modelling can fruitfully be analysed as a process of media transformation. Standards for modelling and information integration are key to the modelling of future computer systems. Thus, the model-for (Mahr 2009) process of creating a computer system based on a model expressed in a standardised language is a media transformation where the model is the source and the computer system is the target.
Such standards are developed based on aggregated experience among many practitioners and through meticulous processes of analysis, abstraction, and formalization. UML is a set of standardised visual languages for the modelling of computer systems developed by the Object Management Group, and CIDOC-CRM is an ontology for cultural heritage documentation and information integration. An example of how both standards are used in modelling processes is when the planned structure and processes of a new museum collection management system is based on ontological principles found in CIDOC-CRM and expressed in UML.
As both standards are meta-models based on experience and pre-existing systems and formalisations, their creation is also based on a modelling process. In this paper, examples will be given of cases where new systems are modelled and implemented based on standards while lessons learned from the process directly influences new versions of the standards. This will be used as a basis for discussing questions of feedback in media transformation processes, in which media transformations shows a dialogical nature, and comparing it to other cases where such dialogism can be claimed for media transformations
“Paint me a word picture” – the role of ekphrasis in livestreamed tabletop role-playing games
Get PDF“Actual-play” and “narrative-play” are some of the terms currently used to describe a fledging format of storytelling which has risen to some online prominence through the past decade. To provide a summarized definition, “actual-play” is a serialized, unscripted and collaborative form of storytelling comprised of filmed ‘sessions’ of tabletop role-playing games, in which one participant serves as the Game Master (or Dungeon Master, or Storyteller, depending on the specific game system), functioning as a narrator of sorts, while the other participants – the Players – embody each a character of their own creation. Role-playing games (Dungeons & Dragons being the most famous among them) gained popularity during the 1980’s, and have always involved some measure of storytelling. The emergence of filmed role-playing as a narrative genre streamed to a wide audience, however, has been made possible only through online streaming platforms such as YouTube and Twitch and their decentralized approach to content creation. As a narrative format, actual-play’s collaborative and improvised nature means that pre-prepared text, visual or audio resources may play a part in the weaving of the story, but the lion’s share of settings, objects, and character’s movements and actions in space must be represented verbally. As such, ekphrasis plays an important part in role-playing as a game, and actual-play as a storytelling genre. The expression “theatre of the mind” has been utilized by the RPG community describe game situations where no visual resources are available, and the participants must track the scene in their own minds. Thus, the success of any tabletop role-playing game experience, and of actual-play as a genre is heavily reliant on players and audience members all achieving enargeia, and sharing, in their minds, similar images of spaces, objects and movements that have been verbally relayed. In order to reflect on roleplaying games and actual-play storytelling as particularly intermedial formats, I will depart from the modality modes (Elleström) and existing considerations on the medialities of games (Makai) in order to look into how ekphrasis, as a rhetorical device that stretches back to ancient Greece (Webb, Führer), appears here in a digitally streamed storytelling context
The Banksy Way or Are AI-tools a threat for Political art?
Get PDFAn AI-generated photo on Instagram with some Banksy effect shows two children watering an olive tree. The boy is wearing a yarmulke, the girl a Palestinian shawl, a keffiyeh. The photo serves as a starting point for this presentation in a discussion about the possibilities and risks of K1 in terms of the relationship between knowledge/information and the transmission of values. In doing so, I want to contribute to a richer picture of how political opinion changes in times of crisis by asking how visual meaning-making takes shape in an intense news flow. Digital platforms offer new and valuable ways to share opinions and information, while also enabling the spread of false information (Schirrmacher & Mousavi 2024, 2). Here, the viewer believes that it is a photograph of a street art work by Banksy and attributes a certain authenticity and value to it. In the viewer’s co-creative gaze, the photograph become a communicative act, a technical medium of display (Elleström 2021), and as such perhaps even an intervention in an ongoing conflict (cf. Källström 2023).
With AI-tools it is possibly to create a picture like the one of the two children watering an olive tree. Some may argue that this kind of art lacks originality, creativity, or soul. That it is just copying existing data without understanding or meaning. Taking off from Aristotle’s hylomorphic modell (Manning 2013), we could stress that it lacks content (hyle), being just form (morphe). Other may claim that AI-art expands our horizons and challenges our perceptions. It is said that, although the internet has democratised access to information and publishing, it also brings about communication methods that threaten democratic processes (Schirrmacher & Mousavi 2024, 2). Harvard scholar Shoshana Zuboff argues that digital technologies threaten democratic societies in her book on “surveillance capitalism”. Zuboff defines “surveillance capitalism” not only as a “new economic order” but also as “an expropriation of critical human rights”. This warning points to the necessity of addressing the role of communication in contemporary society and in particular, how networks serve as spatiotemporal performative space in which communicative events can take place. It also makes it necessary to re-emphasise the active role of the media user in an attempt to emphasise the ethical implications of aesthetics (see Källström 2023; cf. Bäckström, Führer & Schirrmacher 2021, 217)
Sustainable? Looking at intermedial expressions of sustainability in the social media content of Copenhagen Fashion Week
Get PDFIn this conference, I aim to present an analysis and comparison of one YouTube video, and five Instagram posts of Copenhagen Fashion Week (CPHFW) - a non-profit organization responsible for hosting the biannual fashion show of the same name – with a specific focus on the concept of sustainability. Sustainability, which is described to be the core value of CPHFW, is understood in this analysis as a concept of social science that is, according to Bent Flyvbjerg, context-dependent. The “context” in this case features the Youtube video titled Design (2022), part of CPHFW’s sustainability series on the platform, and five select Instagram posts of the same organization from the years 2023 and 2024 that contain an image, as well as a caption mentioning sustainability. Therefore, I look at written and spoken words, as well as audiovisual expressions occurring in still and moving image, across two social media stages with their specific affordances – with the aim to identify and present the expressions of sustainability, and their intermedial transformations and interactions across formats and platforms. In terms of methodology, I utilize Kay O’Halloran’s multimodal discourse analysis and Lars Elleström’s intermedial modalities, in order to identify the expressions themselves, their transformations, and the overall intermedial image and experience of sustainability that can be accessed by the viewer. In the end, I aim to uncover how CPHFW’s image of sustainability is brought forth through, and translated into their verbal and nonverbal communication on social media, and present an - inevitably subjective - assessment of that image of sustainability based on the intermedial analysis.