Bolter and Grusin's "Immediacy, Hypermediacy, and Remediation"

Immediacy: Bolter and Grusin state that immediacy as it relates to computers would require them to have interfaces without recognizable tools so that they would be more natural. The user would then come into an immediate relationship with the contents of the medium. However, how is it possible for the interface to be interfaceless? Would everyone really be comfortable with this? Computers must have tools such as a keyboards and video games must have controllers. I like the idea of photography as an Albertian window, a singular window the into which the viewer sees and becomes immersed.

Hypermediacy: One idea about hypermediacy that really struck me, as one who studies art history is that of representations within representations and artists representing the world made up of multiple representations such as Velasquez's Las Meninas. How about Manet's The Bar at the Folies-Bergere? For there are certainly multiple representations of the barmaid from different perspectives in the painting. In addition, Bolter and Grusin mention the idea of collage and photomontage as hypermedia - for they rearrange pre-existing media. Images are often taken out of their original context to create new meaning.

Video Screening 8/28/07

Jem Cohen's Lost Book Found was an interesting film about a man trying to live in the city. One question that continued to pass through my mind as I watched the movie was: Is this film autobiographical in reference to the narrator? In respect to the city? Or, is this autobiographical in reference to the narrator in respect to the city and the composition book belonging to the man who was a grate-fisher? It seemed that after the narrator read through the lists contained in the composition book, he took this sort of mindset when approaching his experience of the city. In a sense, the notebook became the lens through which he viewed his life in the city. The narrator made a decision, seemingly arbitrarily, that changed his worldview thereafter.

Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"

I am interested in the concept of the aura as it relates to art. The aura being "the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be." How is an artist able to communicate something personal while maintaining a certain distance from the artwork? I think this distance allows for the viewer to more easily create meaning for himself or herself. When viewing a reproduced image of a painting, the aura is not present as it is when viewing the original artwork. Benjamin further uses the idea of distance to compare the painter to the cameraman by using a similar analogy of the magician and the surgeon. The magician heals by maintaining a certain distance between himself and the patient while the surgeon heals by penetrating the distance between himself and the patient. The work of magician/painter maintains the aura while the surgeon/cameraman penetrates the aura. While it may be easy to answer which way one would prefer to be healed, it is not so easy to state whether painting or film making creates a "better" or more complete image of the original.