Bolter and Grusin. Remediation. Understandig New Media

The Remediated Self

Jay David Bolter
Richard Grusin

In Chapter 15, the author analyses the impact of the media on our selves; he states that we have become part of the media we use. We are not defined by the media we use, he said, but we use this as a medium to express our self identity, as well as our cultural identity. In that way “we became the subject and the object of contemporary media” (p.231). The author points out that in different times different media became an “expression of our identity”(p.231), in that way with the access of new media we have new ways to define our selves. With the new technology of the internet, virtual reality, and digital solutions we can define our selves. We recognize and understand new media in relation to the old. The author gives an interesting example: when we use virtual reality, our digital point of view is an improvement or change in relation to and in comparison with the old point of view we had at the time when we were using television or film. We understand media in relation to old media.

When we are in front of media like virtual reality, or tridimensional computer programs, we can place ourselves in a virtual reality and be able to change or alter ourselves. In the case of multimedia and networked worlds, we become connected with others (e-mail, Internet). It remediates the idea of community, like we had identified before with the telegraph, telephone, radio and television. The author points out the work “Psychology” by William James - this analysis of the “empirical self” was produced at the same time the telegraph was expanded, creating a change in the perception of the self. The author points out that this analysis of the self, despite their age is contemporary, and has resonance with digital technology.

Mediation and the Presence of the Self

The author refers to the desire for self-expression. He refers to painting and points out that with painting, that more that a need for reality, we look to establish our place, and presence in the world. In the process, our subjectivity interferes with reality, and then our subjectivity becomes our “reality”. The way to recognize reality is through the presence of self. The author states that the idea of referring to our subjectivity as the way to understand reality is to speak of romanticism, in comparison, modernism focuses on the idea of the responsibility of the self in the search for reality switching the self for itself”.

In relation to self presence, the creators of digital media, according to the author, have embraced both systems. The author explains that the frame is a division between the subject and the object, establishing a distance between those two. In digital media it is possible to transpose that limit and in the case of virtual reality (adopting romanticism) it permits the user to pass through and manipulate the “reality” or the “object of representation” (p.235). The modernist system is used in hypermedia in which the user stays immobile, and the object of representation comes to her.

Referring to the subject of virtual reality, the author defines it as ‘not satisfied with one point of view” (p.235) looking for the place of other participants, other points of view. In hypermedia the subject is defined as a series of movements between applications.

The Remediation of the Body

The author points out that he considers that the desire for immediacy in the visual technologies might be a male desire, so the self with that “desire is gendered” (p.237). The author refers to the feminist Evelyn Fox Keller, who argued that “the Western, male gaze is abstracted and disembodied” (p.237). The author refers to some statements of feminist theory about the complicated relationship between technology and the body in contemporary culture. Donna Haraway, and other feminists, refer to the body as a medium and how contemporary culture tends to merge boundaries between the body, the world, and technology. Through technology the body is reshaped and take on a new identity.

In the case of bodybuilders, women change the image of the body, and society’s expectations about how a female body should look like change. Another remediation for the body is cosmetic surgery trying to accomplish the cultural idea of “natural beauty”, and according to the author in doing this the surgeon realizes the ultimate male gaze. The author refers to the work of artists like Orland, Stelac. Kate Bornstein uses cosmetic surgery and bodybuilder “in an astonishing determination to remediate their bodies” (p.239).