Some remarks on media and the fallacy of representation.
Also for Archaeography - the class
Notes from Michael Shanks
- a challenge to the common notion is that a medium is a means to an end. Not just to invoke McLuhan's point that the medium is the message. Rather to challenge the separation of form and content, substance and expression, reality and representation.
- I call this the fallacy of representation (or the expressive fallacy) - that media primarily express or represent
- this challenge to typical Cartesian dualisms does not erode our notion of reality but makes it far more robust because it focuses on active perception and knowledge-building - active engagements with the world
- we need to elide the distinctions between signifier, signified and referent through a focus on their respective and distinct materialities (this is a media archaeology)
- a close corollary here is a challenge to the notion of a convincing illusion as in the concept of "virtual reality". Because VR often assumes the radical distinction between real and represented worlds. Instead we need to be far more savvy with the concept of "virtuality" and connect it closely with our understanding of materiality and engagement
- so archaeological use of media is not some matter secondary to the discovery of the past, for example, as in the publication of finds. Media, as modes of engagement, as practices of mediation, are essential moments in archaeology's relationship with the past
- the close relationship of media with infrastructures and standards amplifies this active mediating and material conception of mediawork
- media are thus design environments, where, for example, archaeologists take up what is left of the past and translate/(re)mediate
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