Re/mediation

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Mediation is the representation of something in a medium. Remediation is the representation of one medium by another (1). It is the formal logic by which new media refashion prior media forms. The clearest example of new media remediation is the web pages that incorporate the design elements of magazines, books, television, stores, or even past instantiations of digital technology. Think about the simulated experience of turning pages of zines posted to Issuu (2), the broadcasting schedule format of bump.tv (3), and the stylized windows (or even the hosting of radio on a website itself) on n10.as (4) that look like artifacts of an internet and radio media long gone.

Remediation works the other way too, so that in time television shows, newspapers, magazines, and books, stores begin to look more like web pages. Think about the proliferation of boutique cafes in the city and how every one of them looks like the landing page of a website.

Every act of mediation is always already an act of remediation, and since there is nothing prior to mediation, then any grasp or experience of reality is a mediated experience or necessarily a remediated experience.

1 Landow, George. Hypertext. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. Text 2 issuu.com 3 bumptelevision.com 4 n10.as