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Wednesday 6 November 2013

The Immediacy Illusion

As Bolter states in his book Remediation: Understanding New Media, linear perspective plays a significant role to achieve immediacy (Bolter, 2000, pp. 24-25). With old media, such as painting, an author should be able to reproduce the space beyond the surface of his “image”. For the spectator of any of these Albertian windows, a paradox arises. Through the use of a linear perspective, which is similar for the way we observe the world in our everyday lives, one could get the feeling of being present in the world beyond the canvas. This three dimensional feeling is exactly what the author wants to achieve, but the truth is that the setting still is shown in a 2D manner (on the painting itself). Also for new media, such as digital photography, the photograph on itself is just a momentary take of endless space, presented on one (flat) object. This realization is to be stated as hypermediacy (Bolter, 2000, pp. 31-44), and this bridge is one no one could ever cross, leaving us with the realization that immediacy as a concept is an illusion (Bolter, 2000, pp. 45-46). Furthermore, the second technique to achieve transparency is through erasing the surface of any base (Bolter, 2000, p. 25). Here too, the immediacy illusion comes to light: on the one hand by an artist never being able to fully effaces the surface, and on the other by making the spectator aware of the author as having as skill to erase, and thereby supporting hypermediacy and debunking immediacy (Bolter, 2000, p. 25).
The general conclusion becomes then that the ways to achieve immediacy, invalid their own underlying truth. Inherent to their own logic, they make us realize that no one could ever achieve it. Hypermediacy and immediacy can be seen as two ends of a continuum, whereby one is never able to reach the immediacy end. The hypermediacy end however, one is able to achieve, as ‘absolute hypermediacy’ is when the spectator is fully aware of the medium.

Bibliography

Bolter, J. D., & Grusin, R. (2000). Remediation: Understanding New Media Ed. MIT Press.

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