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 notionof ‘remediation,’ which serves a historical desire for immediacy.CounteringMarshall McLuhan’s fear of the narcotic state that the user of a medium canenter when becoming a closed system with the medium; reversed remediationoffers a chance to wake up the viewer. It creates a state of critical awarenessabout how media shape one’s perception of the world. (Art)works that employreversed remediation destabilize remediation mechanisms, by making mediavisible instead of transparent. It makes critical awareness possible because itlays bare the workings of media instead of obfuscating them.
Hypermediacy, themultiplying of technologies, is the central operational method for bothremediation and reversed remediation. In remediation, hypermediacy is used toenable a seamless transition between different media in order to render allmedia transparent. This soothes the user into immersion. In reversedremediation, hypermediacy is used to display the incongruities between media inorder to frustrate immersion. This fosters critical awareness. For example, inEvelien Lohbeck’s artwork noteboek, this happens when one wants tomanipulate a drawn duration bar but suddenly realizes that an analogenvironment is inserted into a digital environment. One’s attention is thuscalled to the irreconcilable incongruity between different registers of media.