What is Media Studies What is Media What
- Slides: 30
What is Media Studies? What is Media? What is a Medium?
A “medium” is an instrument of communication that requires three supports: material, sensual and cultural.
“That is a cubist painting. ” “It is exhilarating to look at. ” “It is boring and outdated. ”
Medium: Material Affordances
Medium: Material Affordances • • • Paint: pigment, canvas, frame, brushes Architecture: steel, concrete, glass Photography: camera, emulsion, paper Film: celluloid, camera, projector, screen Dance: what our bodies can do Language: what the performer’s voice can do
Medium: Material Affordances • Videogames: computer, controller, game engine, code • Internet: computer, networks, protocols • Video: digital format, compression • Cell Phones: phone, networks, satellites With digital mediums materiality is more layered.
Medium: Material Affordances
Medium: Material Affordances The material affordances include everything the medium can do. It is limited by the forms it can materially support. A still photograph can reproduce an image of reality, but it can’t move.
Medium: Sensual Affordances • • Paint: visible spectrum, relative scale, binocular vision Architecture: navigable, livable, comfortable Film: speed of perception Videogames: speed of action
Medium: Sensual Affordances The sensual affordances of mediums are everything the human can physically sense, perceive, do and comprehend. These limit how we can shape its material affordances. For example, even though we can theoretically program a game where the player has to accurately shoot 30 enemies a second, a player’s eyes and fingers can’t move that fast.
Medium: Cultural Affordances • • • Genres Conventions Film: editing, familiar storylines Videogames: shoot, run, jump Architecture: building codes Television: 30 minute sitcom, commercials
Medium: Cultural Affordances The cultural affordances of mediums are everything people can communicate through them. Social forces limit how we shape its sensual affordances. For example, even though many different unknown kinds of videogames potentially exist, we keep recreating the same genres: platformer, shooter, puzzle, etc. , because that is what we know, and that is what sells.
Medium: Cultural Affordances It is culture that defines what is and what is not a medium.
Medium: Cultural Affordances Are videogames a medium?
Medium: Cultural Affordances Is flying an airplane a medium?
Medium: Cultural Affordances Is Sumi-e a medium, or merely a genre of painting?
Cycle of Limitations Domain of potential
Cycle of Limitations Domain of potential
Cycle of Limitations Domain of potential
Cycle of Limitations Domain of potential We never know the true potential of any medium. Domain of potential
What are the Material Constraints of Film?
Stan Brakhage (filmmaker)
Stan Brakhage (filmmaker) (view Mothlight)
What are the Sensual Constraints of Film?
Seeing with new eyes… (view Brakhage interview) Mothlight explores some of the limits of sense and material of film beyond cultural limitations.
What are the Cultural Constraints of Film?
Just as Hollywood limits these in some ways, it expands them in others. (view Bourne Identity fight)
What are the material, sensual and cultural limitations of videogames?