Technologies of engagement: how hybrid networked media is not (just) remediation

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses how networked media via the Web is providing the realisation of media hybridisation that began when genres and formats became functions of software. Beginning with an overview of how media formats came together during the twentieth century, the paper argues that the Internet now provides a distribution system that allows for the hyper-hybridisation of media formats alongside more fluid two-way participation than the previous broadcasting and mass distribution models. The paper will look at examples from the author’s own recent work – ongoing video streaming activities with the Royal Shakespeare Company, a ‘virtual gamelan’ for the London Symphony Orchestra, and the Temporal Chaos installation. The paper concludes that our traditional media forms are in a phase of ongoing disruption, which transcend merely updating existing media forms for a digital online era.

KEYWORDS:

• Hybrid media
• software studies
• Internet
• digital content creation
• online
• participatory culture

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

James Morris has a PhD in Communications from the European Graduate School in Switzerland, a Master’s in Media Arts from the New School in New York, USA, and a Bachelor’s in Social Anthropology from the London School of Economics. He is Subject Leader of the BA (Hons) Web Media Production course at Ravensbourne in London. He has worked extensively as a technology journalist, including spending five years as editor of the UK’s leading computing magazine, PC Pro. He also runs a successful commercial video and online digital content production company, T-zero Communications Ltd.

ORCID

James Morris http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5792-1415