Reflections on medium specificity occasioned by the symposium 'Digital Light: Technique, Technology, Creation', Melbourne, 2011

Abstract

Drawing on discussions at a symposium held in Melbourne in 2011, this article describes the reactions of artists, curators and software engineers to the varied transitions between analogue and digital media. The authors argue that both the ‘post-medium condition’ mooted by Krauss and the ‘Death of Cinema’ theses of film scholars like Rodowick and Mulvey miss critical issues in these transitions and over-emphasize others. We make the case that there are more continuities than often recognized between analogue and digital; that transitional forms like video have not been analysed sufficiently; that software studies needs to be backed up with hardware studies; and that there is a new role for medium- specific criticism. We argue that, in the current state of digital resources for production, distribution and display, each work needs to be analysed in its specificity, rather than ascribing universal qualities to imaginary abstractions such as ‘digital media’.

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