Remediation

Here, Jay Butler and Richard Grusin depict their view of media. They explore remediation, immediacy, and hypermediacy. As underlined in this article, remediation is the use of one medium in another. Let’s take for example a Harry Potter book. The medium can also be digested through a book-on-audio or a movie. The content is the same yet advantages of using the newer form of the medium are emphasized. The audio book enables one to multi-task while the movie allows one to use most of his/her senses to be more immersed.

Transparent immediacy refers to being immersed in the medium in order to feel presence in a world other than the one of which exists for the individual. Butler and Grusin often refer to “the wire”, a device which facilitates virtual reality, as an example. Although the wire is a bulky device which is placed on one’s head, one can see, hear, and as if even feel everything within that experience. Nintendo Wii is another example of transparent immediacy. The ability to move the Mii, your player, in the game by motions of one’s own body provides a great sense of immersion.

Hypermediacy excerpts “being there +.” It aids in taking you there yet on multiple levels and through various channels. It can more easily be viewed as a mash-up of mediums in one. For example, the internet allows one to have many windows open containing diverse mediums (podcasts, youtube videos, blogs, etc). Another example of hypermediacy could just as well be Google Wave through the collaboration of messages, wikis, emails, social-networking facets, etc. Butler and Grusin also explore the double logic of remediation. In a nugget, this concept is as if a paradox which is the elimination of media by multiplying it. A sample of this would be being at a sports bar for March Madness. By watching several varying versions of the game at once, the person who is at the bar feels great presence and immersion, in fact, even more so than the person at the actual game who is watching only one game.

Bolter, Jay, and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. London: The MIT Press, 1999.