In my opinion, I failed this week’s challenge somewhat after misunderstanding the task given to us, and after finally realising how I believe we were meant to remediate after seeing my peer’s submissions, I decided to research a little more into this process. I will talk about the challenge in a near-future blog post.
“Like other media since the Renaissance-in particular, perspective painting, photography, film, and television--new digital media oscillate between immediacy and hypermediacy, between transparency and opacity. This oscillation is the key to understanding how a medium refashions its predecessors and other contemporary media. Although each medium promises to reform its predecessors by offering a more immediate or authentic experience, the promise of reform inevitably leads us to become aware of the new medium as a medium. Thus, immediacy leads to hypermediacy.” (Bolter, 2000) The way I understood this is that when refashioning an artefact to create a new form of media from existing media, it must be of greater significance, relevant and provide a more honest experience at the time of exhibition and with borrowing from that which came before, it becomes the new standard, possessing either an influence, or taking directly from its forerunner, however having influences from an existing artefact must mean to borrow in some way in order to reshape it. In this sense, that which came before is very much a prototype for something greater if adapted and executed correctly. In terms of immediacy and hypermediacy, I believe that immediacy means to directly use elements of the existing artefact whereas to hypermediate something is to remould something to the extent where it could arguably be deemed unrecognisable and new. This could theoretically be enforced by the very definition of these three words: mediate is “to help two sides in a disagreement” (Cambridge Dictionary, 2021), immediate is “happening or done without delay or very soon after something else” (Cambridge Dictionary, 2021), and hypermediate seems to be a coined phase in which it means to “mediate to a greater extent than usual.” (Your Dictionary, 2021) With this in mind, I am curious as to how a form of media can truly be fresh, and never seen or done before.
How does someone become a true pioneer? As the most common tool for current and new digital media, I began reminiscing on fairly recent, revolutionary technology, and seeing as I adapted, poorly might I add, a scene from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), it is only fitting that I briefly mention WETA Digital’s motion capture technology in which Gollum (Andy Serkis) was realised into live-action film with tracking dots and balls, and a Lycra bodysuit – not forgetting the reshoots in the studio. Despite this instance of motion-capture being one of, if not the most popular and innovative in recent years, it is a known fact that motion capture has been around for close to a century at the point of release of the first film. Some believe that this was actually the first case of this version of ‘mo-cap’, but no. “The technology was first put to use to create a ‘digital double’ for Val Kilmer in 1995’s Batman Forever, and James Cameron populated crowd scenes in Titanic [(1997)] with performance-captured figures, replicated on a grand scale. And in the summer of 1999, actor Ahmed Best played Jar-Jar Binks in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace — he was present on set, but the CGI character, his movements animated based on the capture of Best’s performance on a soundstage after the fact, was added in his place afterwards. Jar-Jar was hated by fans, though, and so it’s no surprise that Gollum has the more lasting place in the history books.” (Yahoo, 2014) In addition to this, motion capture was first pioneered in 1914 by American filmmaker and forefather of the animated cartoon, Max Fleischer, in the form of the Rotoscope, originally a tool which has now taken on the form of art, this consisted of taking live-action footage and tracing over the frames to suspend the audience’s disbelief that the cartoon characters are moving in a lifelike fashion. In fact, this form of motion capture was also implemented in Ralph Bakshi’s animation, Lord of the Rings (1978) several decades after the instrument’s acclaimed and partial utilisation in Walt Disney’s Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs (1938).
Comparing the two iterations of motion capture, we know now that this is a serious case of hypermediation, where something has been altered beyond the point of recognition and has become an influence in itself to be scrutinised and remediated further in future. We could also argue that depending on which is more popular out of two or more relatable artefacts that this could affectively alter the course of impending artefact remediation and adaptation. Think Thomas Eddison vs Nikola Tesla, “Though the light bulb, the phonograph and moving pictures are touted as Edison's most important inventions, other people were already working on similar technologies, said Leonard DeGraaf, an archivist at Thomas Edison National Historical Park in New Jersey, and the author of 'Edison and the Rise of Innovation' (Signature Press, 2013). 'If Edison hadn't invented those things, other people would have,' DeGraaf told Live Science. In a shortsighted move, Edison dismissed Tesla's 'impractical' idea of an alternating-current (AC) system of electric power transmission, instead promoting his simpler, but less efficient, direct-current (DC) system.” (Ghose, 2020) The most interesting instance of remediation for me is with Hideo Kojima’s most recent game, Death Stranding (2019), of which Kojima claimed that he and his team did not want to be tied down to conventions of any genre (IGN, 2020), and in turn led people to believe that he was trying to create his own. Something new. This was not the case exactly, rather an assumption made by the media. However, despite not wanting to adhere to genre principles, there is an issue with this statement because regardless of whether a genre and/ or sub-genre is selected as a point of reference or not, if you are taking influences from other artefacts, then you are already either consciously or unconsciously drawing out genre elements. With this approach of creativity, as listed on the Internet Movie Database, Death Stranding corresponds with several well-known genres: Action, adventure, drama, fantasy, horror, mystery, and science fiction. (IMDb, 2021) Gamerant implies that the genre supposedly created could be that of “a ‘connection’ or ‘strand-type’ game” (Meyer-Lorey, 2019), although in the gaming community, likely to the dismay of the games creators, it has simply been labelled as a walking simulator. But reading the article further, “a new genre has to either make a brand-new, unheard-of feature the centre of the game experience, or find a way to highlight an old set of features in a way that has not been done before. Ideally, a new feature or new take would be the primary aspect of the game and define the entire experience of playing it.” (Meyer-Lorey, 2019) Arguably, for some this could be an unimagined genre but for me, purpose is to be inspected very differently to that of content within games and so this reconnection aspect, in my eyes, is merely thematical.
Based on this logic, I conclude that to ideate something entirely new then you would have to ignore any forms of influence, perhaps other than personal or historical, but even then, creative practices have existed for what seems like forever. It would be impossible to escape from music for example as it is everywhere. Art has been a crucial feature to our everyday lives for centuries on end! If a new form of media is to be created with the conscious choice of not using any other artefacts as influence, then your work is still more than likely to inhabit traits inherent to existing pieces of artwork simply through the unconscious psyche, and life experience. When remediating to the point of the unrecognisable, the risk of alienating those who you are intending to market to is quite high as familiarity is a strong foundation of commercial success. Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding may have been somewhat genre-bending, but there was also a sense of not knowing whether to invest in a product that is so out of the ordinary. Even with being a Kojima fan myself, I was sceptical prior to and up to the release of the game. However, we could argue that, in some cases, popularity is key to getting away with such risky innovations as Kojima is very much an auteur of the video game industry.
For now, when ideating for my own projects, I think will just stick with keeping things more familiar and marketable.
Bibliography
Bolter, J. D., 2000. Remediation: Understanding New Media. 1st ed. London: MIT Press.
Cambridge Dictionary, 2021. Immediate. [Online] Available at: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/immediate [Accessed 05 February 2021].
Cambridge Dictionary, 2021. Mediate. [Online] Available at: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/mediate [Accessed 05 February 2021].
Ghose, T., 2020. Nikola Tesla vs. Thomas Edison: Who Was the Better Inventor?. [Online] Available at: https://www.livescience.com/46739-tesla-vs-edison-comparison.html [Accessed 05 February 2021].
IGN, 2020. Hideo Kojima: Death Stranding as a New Genre. [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSsLvfNKEGQ&ab_channel=IGN [Accessed 05 February 2021].
IMDb, 2021. Death Stranding (Video Game 2019) - IMDb. [Online] Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5807606/ [Accessed 05 February 2021].
Koses, B., 2014. A Brief History of Motion Capture - Geek Insider. [Online] Available at: https://geekinsider.com/breif-history-motion-capture/ [Accessed 05 February 2021].
Meyer-Lorey, R., 2019. Death Stranding: Is It Really a New Genre?. [Online] Available at: https://gamerant.com/death-stranding-genre-new/ [Accessed 05 February 2021].
Stallbaum, J., 2015. History of the Rotoscoping Technique - Brattle Theatre Film Notes. [Online] Available at: http://www.brattleblog.brattlefilm.org/2015/09/11/history-of-the-rotoscoping-technique-2-3231/ [Accessed 05 February 2021].
Yahoo, 2014. A Brief History of Motion Capture in the Movies. [Online] Available at: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/a-brief-history-of-motion-capture-in-the-movies-91372735717.html [Accessed 05 February 2021].
Your Dictionary, 2021. Hypermediated Meaning | Best 1 Definitions of Hypermediated. [Online] Available at: https://www.yourdictionary.com/hypermediated [Accessed 05 February 2021].
"it must be of greater significance, relevant and provide a more honest experience at the time of exhibition and with borrowing from that which came before, it becomes the new standard"
Interesting take, and one I'd never thought about before. I guess it depends on what you are aiming for; evolution or revolution.
I take remediacy at its literal face value. The prefix "re" meaning "back" or "again". But thinking logically, there must be some point at which a new media is simply that. A new media. And then at some point there will be some kind of remediation of that new media.
Thanks. I enjoyed reading that.