Lecture 9 Media specificity

Lecture 9 Media Specificity 
25th January 2012

• Medium = material or technical means of artistic expression 
• The dictionary defines media as every different communication device which is able to reach mass audiences.
• Media is the plural form of medium 
• Media specificity is the idea that the media associated with an art form, entail possibilities for both constraints on representation and expression. it provides a framework for artists working in that specific Art form

Tufte on Powerpoint

• He argues that Systems such as powerpoint make it more difficult for the person who is delivering the presentation to interact with their audience. Instead of delivering a presentation which connect to a thought process he argues that power points are short and cut thoughts of before they develop, as the slide can only hold so much information. 

Media specificity 
Is a consideration in aesthetics and art criticism. It is most closely associated with modernism, but it predates it. According to Clement Greenberg, who helped popularize the term, medium specificity holds that "the unique and proper area of competence" for a form of art corresponds with the ability of an artist to manipulate those features that are "unique to the nature" of a particular medium. For example, in painting, literal flatness and abstraction are emphasised rather than illusionism and figuration.

Medium specific can be seen to mean that "the artwork is constituted by the characteristic qualities of the raw material." This would probably include the techniques used to manipulate the materials. "Medium-specificity is based on the distinct materiality of artistic media." As early as 1776 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing "contends that an artwork, in order to be successful, needs to adhere to the specific stylistic properties of its own medium."

What are we?

we have specific organs which make us humans and therefore we are media specific, we have organs located at the top end of the body a small mouth and long throat, however we are unable to sense  things often when they are harmful, such as dangerous elements in the air . We are also very inaccurate, due to this specificity  For example there are tools which have been developed to improve and amplify the tools we already have in the body which don't work, such as knife to cut things and glasses to improve vision.