Notes from lectures and seminars I took for Mediality to Intermediality Block 1. I wrote these notes to make the content more accessible through bullet points, images, and simplified concepts. I hope this helps you too!
Lessing’s Laocoon: An Essay Upon the Limits of Painting and Poetry:.....................................4
Greenberg’s Towards a New Laocoon:....................................................................................6
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man:........................................................................7
The Work of Art in the Age of its Mechanical Reproduction (1935):.......................................10
Why are film and photography truly the new arts of the 20th century?..................................10
Umberto Eco’s The Open Work:.............................................................................................12
Roland Barthes’ From Work to Text:......................................................................................13
,Lecture 1 (Media Effects: Plato & Aristotle):
What is Medium?
Medium = something standing in-between (the middle ground):
o E.g. Writer text reader.
Something that is a carrier for information…
o E.g. Sound vinyl record loudspeaker.
o something that channels communication in artistic materials, communication
platforms, news media, etc. (medium as an art material)
In this course: media are things that stand in-between other things + channels communication
between us and the world.
o Anything can be a medium but not everything functions as a medium (WJT Mitchell)
Thesis: media are not ‘neutral’ channels; they shape their: (1) content, (2) us, their users.
We can analyze media in different ways in terms of:
o Technologies
o Means of (re)presentation
o Modes of (re)presentation
o Capacities & limits
o Effects & consequences
of the media on individuals and on cultures.
Plato vs. Aristotle on Media:
Questioning the (1) reliability and (2) consequences of media & representation.
o Key concept: mimesis = the representation & imitation of nature.
Both agree that mimesis is present in art, but they approach it differently.
o Plato (idealism): we need to infer from the imperfect and changeable things around us
(essence).
o Aristotle (realism): things change in the world, and their earthly presences is their
essence.
Plato on Media:
Polithea: concerns about media & mimesis.
Plato banished poetry from the ideal Republic for reasons that are:
o Theological: poetry represents gods in inappropriate ways. Gods must be role models,
not weak like humans.
o Moral & psychological: poetry makes us emotional and irrational. It leads us away from
reason and nourishes the emotional part of the soul = bad.
o Epistemological: mediated knowledge (mimesis) cannot provide genuine knowledge.
Plato goes from doxa (what seems to be) to episteme (genuine knowledge)
= Epistemological case against mimesis & media:
1. Idea of the bed = the concept/truth.
, 2. Actual bed = the worldly appearance.
3. Image of bed = imitation (mimesis).
Plato’s Phaedrus:
Phaedrus: concerns about writing and mediated speech (dialectics + rhetorics)
Dialectic (truth) as philosophical method:
o The dialogue
o Exploring truth, assessing beliefs
o Thesis/anti-thesis/synthesis
Rhetorics (speech) as an art of persuasion:
o The speech
o Probability > truth
o An art: requires skill & knowledge
Speech vs. written word: (Socrates’ allegory of Theuth and Thamos).
o Theuth: inventor of writing, writing will help make people wiser, and improve their
memory.
o Thamos’ warning: writing will make people forgetful and uncritical (Plato agrees).
For Plato, writing is undialectical one-sided, unadaptable, prone to misunderstanding leading
to irrational thoughts. It lacks dialogue.
o Phaedrus: writing resembles painting (mimesis) (86).
Writing as image.
Plato’s argument as early media theory, assessing:
o How the medium alters the message.
o What its affordances and limits are.
o What effects it has on users.
We are moving from oral culture to written culture.
Aristotle’s Poetics:
Poetics: Aristotle on mimetic representation.
o Mimesis as naturally human: (1) already observed in children, (2) fundamentally
pleasurable, and (3) didactic.
Study of various art forms differentiated by medium, object, and mode:
Medium Object Mode
= the means used (materials) = what is represented, or = way in which the imitation is
imitated presented
E.g. in poetry: rhythm, E.g. character: inferior, superior, E.g. narration vs. action
language, melody. similar.
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