Reversed Remediation

A Critical Display of the Workings of Media in Art

By Saskia Isabella Maria Korsten

JIn this paper I distinguish between the theories of remediation and reversed remediation and apply this theoretical foundation to new media art that exemplify what I call ‘reversed remediation’.

This aesthetic strategy subverts Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin’s notion of ‘remediation,’ which serves a historical desire for immediacy.Countering Marshall McLuhan’s fear of the narcotic state that the user of a medium can enter when becoming a closed system with the medium; reversed remediation offers a chance to wake up the viewer. It creates a state of critical awareness about how media shape one’s perception of the world. (Art)works that employ reversed remediation destabilize remediation mechanisms, by making media visible instead of transparent. It makes critical awareness possible because it lays bare the workings of media instead of obfuscating them.

Hypermediacy, the multiplying of technologies, is the central operational method for both remediation and reversed remediation. In remediation, hypermediacy is used to enable a seamless transition between different media in order to render all media transparent. This soothes the user into immersion. In reversed remediation, hypermediacy is used to display the incongruities between media in order to frustrate immersion. This fosters critical awareness. For example, in Evelien Lohbeck’s artwork noteboek, this happens when one wants to manipulate a drawn duration bar but suddenly realizes that an analog environment is inserted into a digital environment. One’s attention is thus called to the irreconcilable incongruity between different registers of media.

Reversed Remediation. How Art Can Make One critically Aware of the Workings of Media

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