Here is part of the argument for a materialist view of medium:

• the term ‘medium’ has usually referred to an institutional agency of communication, such as TV, or the materials and methods used in the production of an artwork, such as oil on canvas

• digital fungibility, the fluid manner in which visual material, for example, is turned into animation, photographic print, painting, digital video grab, movie, photographic transparency and so on, means that specific agencies and materials/methods are increasingly less important as a way of distinguishing and understanding cultural/communicative works

• this directs attention instead to forms of mediation - the ways people engage with cultural works and thereby with those agencies which make and distribute the works

• this notion of Modes of Engagement offers a more accurate and useful way to categorize the format and placement of cultural works in public and private arenas

Here are some comments on digital media from myself and Cliff McLucas (architect and scenographer/dramaturg for Brith Gof).

We note some features of The Digital:

• the interchangeability and easy juxtaposition of what were previously separate material media;
• the absence of predetermined outputs;
• the generation of new creative environments;
• the generation of new associative arenas;
• the relentless de-structuring of relationships in the media industries;
• the challenging of ‘hierarchical’ structures by ‘geodesic’ ones - single linear and dendritic patterns and relationships replaced by networks;
• the proliferation of modes of ‘authorship’;
• the proliferation of modes of ‘publishing’;
• the proliferation of modes of ‘reading’.

The Digital allows the gathering of moving image, still image, music, text, 3d design, database, geological survey, graphic detail, architectural plan, virtual walk-through etc, into a single environment. These may be infinitely manipulated and re-mobilized without loss in that space. The eventual output as video, photograph, CD ROM, DVD, paper based print, web page, broadcast, archival database, live event, exhibition, site specific installation etc, is in no way predetermined by any factor in the original material.

Numerous characteristics of this environment - cutting, pasting, undoing, reformatting, layering, and so on - define an entirely new and creative arena in which even the simplest of tasks becomes less predetermined and more speculative. Even while working with complex visual and sound environments, these characteristics help to create a working space that can be much more investigative and more creative. Digital networks notoriously create the possibility of new associative and collaborative arenas, new ways of moving ideas and communications around. Potentially this raises issues about differences of power and influence between center and periphery, between the urban and the rural. There is increased potential for small-scale and locally-based 'artisan' and 'non-industrial' modes of operation. The 'virtual', as an extensive and sophisticated cultural space, may move into competition with, or parallel to, the 'real world'. The Digital may imply a re-negotiation of the relationship between the global and the local.

We suggest that these features of The Digital create what we will refer to as an expanded and 'poetic' space.

The Poetic is a key concept in our endeavors. By poetic we are not referring to a kind of ephemeral and personal way of writing, one belonging with ideas of subjective inspiration and expression. By poetic we mean the combining of materials (here, as described above, in the digital realm) - materials from different sources and of different orders, in such ways that they resonate to create meanings within the spaces of their combination as much as in the elements themselves.

Media and ‘modes of engagement’

The choreography of previously diverse materials through the digital realm inevitably breaks down the structural properties of what have been commonly referred to as 'media'.

The term ‘medium’ has usually referred to an institutional agency of communication, such as TV, or the materials and methods used in the production of an artwork, such as oil on canvas. But the fluid manner in which visual material, for example, is turned into animation, photographic print, painting, digital video grab, film, photographic transparency and so on, is less and less important in defining the 'medium' of the product generated.

Instead, and in celebration of Roland Barthes notion of the 'death of the author', the way a reader or viewer is engaged by those agencies which distribute cultural works is an increasingly significant factor in any attempt to mark the difference between given works. Hence we propose that the notion of Modes of Engagement might offer us a more accurate and useful way to categorize the format and placement of cultural works in the public or private arena.

Crucially, these formats are not being driven so much by subject matter or discipline (one concern of The Academy), nor the material or form (one concern of The Studio), but by an interface or hybridization of distributing institutions, individuals, families and social or professional groupings. We propose, therefore, to adopt four schematic working categories for the media productions in The Three Landscapes Project (this is what Cliff and I were thinking about when we wrote all this during an archaeological field project in Sicily back in 1999):

• those that we experience 'in the privacy of our own homes' - such as the website, the interactive CD-ROM or game, the sound CD, and most printed materials;
• those that are experienced 'in the company of ones family and friends' - such as television and radio;
• those that are experienced 'with colleagues at the school or in the workplace' - such as the formal lecture, demonstration or multimedia presentation;
• those that are experienced 'in the public arena' - such as the billboard, the exhibition, the public performance.

In addition, the decision to adopt this way of characterizing 'media' will place us in confrontation or, at least, in conversation with some powerful generators of cultural meanings - the media industries and institutions. A component of the study will therefore be to track the negotiations, at conceptual and administrative levels, with such organizations. The gatekeepers in the distribution and mandating of cultural authors and their productions are the commissioning editors, the business managers and the commercial analysts of these institutions. Our study must embrace them and their attitudes.