remediation

Remediation, as Bolter and Grusin present it, is the evolution that media undergoes as it re-contextualizes and then incorporates other forms of media. Bolter and Grusin discuss media as art and media as a means of transmitting information, and in both they suggest that remediation offers a way to experiment with the immediacy and transparency of the medium since we value instant communication and an “immediate relationship to the contents of that medium” (24).

An example of something that has been remediated is the novel or story. Before the printing press, stories were shared orally, and now we have digital “books” in the form of hyperfiction that sort of refashion the way the text is presented and the way the story develops. Where printed books have clear cues about where to start, how the book is structured (pages, chapters, sections) and how to follow the story from the beginning to the end, hyperfiction as it is presented to the reader one page at a time, eliminates this structure of beginning and end, pages and chapters. Instead small portions of the story are connected through hyperlinks, and the story develops differently depending on which link the reader chooses to follow. Hyperfiction allows the author to incorporate images, sounds, videos, etc. in order to tell the story.