Remix/Remediation

Remediation is to take a part of something, or the entire thing, and to recreate it on a new medium. This new medium is usually something more technologically advanced than the previous form of the piece. Remediation is a very popular text technology. A great example of this is Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", which was adapted as a play from a poem. More modern examples of this is any song that borrows pieces from another song, books that become movies, movies that become books, comics that become movies, etc.

Remediation differs in the ways in which it affects a texts message. Many times, I feel, the original meaning of the text can be lost through remediation, depending of course on what part of the original text is remixed. When movies alter characters and changes to books plot, I believe that it is changing the original meaning that the author had. However, I haven't decided if this is a bad thing or not. I think that being able to improve upon previous work is what keeps our society technologically evolving. While sometimes remediations kill the original authors message, a lot of time it reinforces it, and sometimes makes an original text more accessible to audiences.

Walter Benjamin believed that remixing something made it lose its author. Bolter and Grusin believe the exact opposite. They believe that remix and remediation allow for new art to be created, and that its aura is not only retained but improved upon. They believe that remix is a form of advancement, and that original creators should be flattered rather than mad, as Benjamin would have been.

IMAGE AS TEXT

It has been well established among scholars in the history of the field that image is just as powerful a text technology as actual text. Some images can be classified as visual rhetoric, which places emphasis on these images as cultural representation and stimulation, rather than just works of art. Susan Sontag, in her essay "In Plato's Cave", explains that photographs are artifacts of the world around us, past and present. Because a photograph captures something from eternity, it can retain information in a way that reality itself cannot.
An example of an image being used as cultural representation can be found below, in this famous photograph from the Vietnam war:

This photograph uses no actual text, but contains a lot in its essence. This photograph, from the Vietnam War, was taken by a photojournalist. It symbolized for America everything that was wrong with our involvement in the Vietnam war; General Loan, of South Vietnam, is shooting what looks to be a defenseless young boy in the head. This reminded America that South Vietnam too was capable of brutal violence, and that they were not defenseless to Northern Vietnam. And if South Vietnam wasn't defenseless, why were hundreds of thousands of American soldiers dying to protect them?

Roland Barthes explains how image can be a text, and how image and text can work together, through advertisement. He explains that there are three parts of an advertisement:
1. Linguistic message-- actual text
2. Coded Iconic Message--still-life aethestics of the image
3. Noncoded Iconic Message-- what the image actually is

He also explains that advertising images are signifying complexes, and that viewers should pay attention to the exact replicas of reality that photography can capture.

1. Linguistic Message: AXE dual
2. Codic iconic Message: Smooth, rippling effect, sturdy, big
3. Noncoded Iconic Message: cologne bottle falling in water