Organizational Unit:
School of Architecture
School of Architecture
2016-11-10
,
Abrioux, Yves
The notion of pure or 'specific' media, which was highly
influential in defining the moment of modernism, had
the effect of foregrounding the expressive possibilities
of any given medium, beyond that of abstract painting
to which the term medium specificity originally applied.
Its continuing relevance is anything but obvious in a
'post media' world in which digital media have developed
the capacity to subsume all other technological media-and
indeed promise, in some readings, to provoke the
disappearance of media (and the human) as such, in
favor of the autonomous proliferation of self-sufficient
data streams. A concept of medium technicity can,
however, be derived from the French philosopher Gilbert
Simondon's analysis of the history of technology, that
allows for an intensification of the capabilities of media
and underlines their continued relevance in an
environment in which binary code is held to reign
supreme.