New Mediums of Media

New Mediums of Media

The word media describes the conveyor of an object of the senses and the understanding of the object through the senses. Media can be further broken into sub categories of multimedia and hypermedia. With multimedia we can not only move from linear to non-linear modes of communication, but can also utilize new modes of communication. With hypermedia we also use new mediums such as hypertext to break from traditional linear models discovered by Ted Nelson in the sixties.

The word also has close ties to the word medium from its latin roots which suggest the words importance as a conveyor from one source through our senses into our brain. However the tricky part is that it has been shown over and over again the ease at which the senses can be manipulated to identify with a false truth. This was demonstrated by Charles Wheatsone and his stereoscope. He was able to demonstrate through the stereoscope that “the eyes afford no dependable reports of objects, and that, in fact “the objects of visions are but mere phantasmagoria of the organ of site.” A powerful statement that evokes thoughts of Plato’s allegory of the cave and dwellers seeing only and illusory world of shadows.

We find out so much more about the process of stereoscope in the article from “phantom to perfect vision.” For the first time we have a recording of history that can be three dimensionally accessed at any time. The new three dimensional image is created by placing similar photos next to each other to force the eye to read both and create a new image. Wheatstones describes this as “depth perception resulted from the mind’s forced coalescence of dissimilar photos.” The difficulty is that this image cannot be recreated by mans hand in the form of geometry and drawings that the mind can associate with as objects. The new form came from nature and a high degree of fine-grain detail for the mind to be lost in. This vision is called binocular vision, seeing two objects at once with the new eyes.

JCR Licklider also realized the limited capacity of our senses as a medium of information and thus proposed a ‘Man-computer symbiosis.” The idea went beyond just tools like the stereoscope to a more integrated system where media and mind become one. An new kind of interactivity with our environment that no longer was an enhancement, but rather a whole paradigm shift through computers and the body. Finally in Laws of Media the very notion that media as a tool has propelled the human being to new heights is challenged. The argument is that the speculative nature of understanding the tools or the environment in which the tools become effective is where the real ingenuity of the media is displayed. Thus it is concluded that it is the artist that is able to move beyond the “servo-mechanistic” quality of the technocrat and harness the power of the tool into a new media to elevate the human condition.