The Mediated World

Abstract

As the technology of image reproduction and information transmission becomes more and more instantaneous, so experience itself becomes reshaped, with the ubiquitous screen transforming our sensory involvement with others, and our relation to text and image. As the world becomes mediated, and sensation itself becomes ‘sensationalized’, so our experience of it becomes vicarious, incorporating imaginative projection and simulation, and an ever-present transgressive potential. The notion of a ‘medium’ comes into focus as a surface or terrain that is presupposed by art and technology alike, permitting encounters between subject and object, with the photo taken as example. In the case of mass media, the ‘mass’ is itself best viewed as a medium, making possible both the interactions between, and our very constitution as, modern individuals.