An introduction to the position of the self within the thinking of Bolter and Grusin in their 2000 book Remediation

1. The self in a world of media
Bolter and Grusin: Remediation

2. Bolter & Grusin
• We are remediated
• We employ media as vehicles for defining
both personal and cultural identity.

3. Slogan of P3 (Danish National Radio)
• That which you listen to, is you
• ”Det man hører, er man selv”
• A paraphrase of a childrens
mocking:
– That which you say other
people are, you are
– ”Det man siger, er man selv”
• Point is: You become your
media while you are using it –
but you are also different from
it

4. Two logics of remediation
• Immediacy – classical holywood

5. The media is transparent

6. Two logics of remediation
• Hypermediacy – Breaking the waves camera

7. The media is very visible

8. Avatar
illustrates both
logics

9. To logics of remediation in
experiencing media
• The immersed self (lost in
the media – WOW, virtual
reality)
• The networked self is
constantly making and
breaking connections –
always aware of being
present in several media
at the same time

10. Art is about feeling present
• Quotes Cavell:
• Art has always shown
our presence
• – our presence to the
world, rather than the
world’s presence to us
• A photograph
guarantees our
being-alive

11. Alberti’s window
• We see and
understand the
world through
converting it to
something that is
presented for us
• Through frames

12. And again
The picture frame separates the viewer from the
world, but at the same time alows the viewing

13. 1. Passing through the frame into the
respresented world
(Virtual reality)
2
1
2. Objects coming through the frame and
surrounding the user (ubiquitos
computing, and hypermedia)
– The subject stays where she is, and instead the
objects of representation come to her

14. Modernism
• Can be viewed as an immediacy strategy
• Point of modernistic design is to take
everything away, that might disturbe the
message
• ”Perfection is attained, not when there is
nothing more to add, but when there is
nothing more to take away”
– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

15. Adrian Frutiger
• If you remember the shape of your spoon at
lunch, it has to be the wrong shape. The
spoon and the letter are tools; one to take
food from the bowl, the other to take
information off the page… When it is a good
design, the reader has to feel comfortable
because the letter is both banal and beautiful.

16. Modernistic
design
• Per Mollerup
• Blanka

17. Dekonstructivism
• Can be viewed as an hypermediacy strategy
• Point of deconstructivistic design is show the
that it is designed
• An electrician isn’t an opinion former, but a
graphic designer is. My argument is that all
graphic designers hold high levels of
responsibility in society. We take invisible
ideas and make them tangible. That’s our job.
– Neville Brody

18. Postmodernism
– Deconstructive typography
challenges the traditional
opposition between seeing and
reading by treating the surface as
both theoretical content and
sensual form, as both text and
texture. Rather than deliver
information the reader is
provoked to work to uncover the
message.
– “…..addressing a genre, a
tradition, but so as to expand it,
blow it open, spread it out, open
its borders to its own hidden
selves.”
“Aesthetic of the fault”

19. • Extypo
• Requiem for a dream
• Arcade Fire

20. Exercise
• Create a representation of the person sitting
next to you in class
• Google him/her
• Depict his hypermediated self in a
collage, where you use images to tell where
you find him/her
• This depiction can be used for his/her
portfolio, eventually