Sunday 20 May 2012

Lecture 9 - Media Specificity

What is media specificity?



  • Medium: material or technical means of artistic expression.  
  • Media is the plural form of medium.  
  • The dictionary defines media as all the communication devices and channels of communication used to reach mass audiences. 
  • First use of media in 1927, perhaps abstracted from mass media (1923, a technical term in advertising), pl. of medium in particular when useed as an "intermediate agency," or a ‘carrier’ a sense first found c.1600.  

Tufte argues that PowerPoint’s design inherently makes it more difficult to communicate with an audience.
Instead of giving an informative presentation, PowerPoint encourages speakers to create slides with ultra-short, incomplete thoughts listed with bullets.





Medium specificity is the view that the media associated with a given art form (both its material components and the processes by which they are exploited)  entail specific possibilities for and constraints on representation and expression, and this provides a normative framework for what artists working in that art form ought to attempt.  


Useful Website, easier to understand than the slideshow: http://benmayfield.wordpress.com/2012/01/10/media-specificity/







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