Lecture notes// Medium Specificity

• DEFINITION...Medium specificity is the view that the media associated with a given art form (both its material components and the processes by which they are exploited) entail specific possibilities for and constraints on representation and expression, and this provides a normative framework for what artists working in that art form ought to attempt.
• Pitching out corrupts within
• Tufte argues that power points make it difficult to communicate with an audience
• A human being is a bio-social being and the subject of social forms of live, communication and consciousness
• Our medium specificity is shaping how things can be done, Our medium specificity is that we are biological creatures. Organic in nature, we have a close genetic connection to the animal world.
• All animals are built in a certain way to perform certain tasks etc...
• The production of music was related to the oscillating hairs in our ears, as humans we re-created the method of this with a needle and wax, creating records etc...
• Medium Specificity - Media associated with a given art form entails specific possibilities & constraints on representation and expression ------ Aesthetics & Art criticism ------ Closely associated with modernism but it pre-dates it ------ TRUTH TO MATERIALS ------
•  'Clement Greenberg' Modernist art. >>>

• In order for a medium to have certain qualities it must be grounded in a tradition that has established these qualities.
• The medium becomes the media which is itself simply an extension of our own physical and mental limitations.
• Technological development reflects existing human neurological development ------ Linked to Photography, Film & Animation.
• In graphics format often rules, it can either be digital or material. Representing the physical point of contact with the user affecting how we receive a designs printed format.
• Type formats live on as a memory of old technology.
• The design grid is a ghost of Guttenberg from 1439.

We're currently living in a digital age. As differences between media disappear the concept of Media & their 'newness' lies in the way they remediate older media.