Media Specificity

Before the word 'media' came about it was referred to as medium. Medium is a material or technical means of artistic expression whereas media is the communication of devices and channels of communication used to reach mass audiences. Medium specificity is all about the artist being able to bring out the qualities that are unique to the work of art.

Marshall McLuhan explains that it is not the content, it is the carrier that creates meaning. Depending on what medium you choose can give a completely different meaning to your creation. Which is similar to what John Lassester once said: "Never in the history of cinema has a medium entertained an audience. It's what you do with the medium" It's basically saying that whatever you create from the medium makes it what it is. You cannot just rely on the medium to be the best that it can be, it's the story, the visual effects, the production.

As soon as technology became advanced enough, they have become memory extensions for everyone, photography, tv, computers. Electronic mass media has collapsed the space and time barriers in the form of human communication. It now allows people to interact with others on a live and global scale. Media can now extend what we can do. Previously we would have been hindered by certain technologies, but now it's almost limitless. The combinations of media are becoming more frequent, animation and comics relate to one another as comics themselves are set out like storyboards. We are in the age of digital media where you now see disciplines merging with one another, take film and animation for example, before digital technology came about they stayed separate; yet now they have combined to create CGI.

Animation you could say, isn't medium specific as it can be created with any medium whether it be on paper, film, computer, either way you will still obtain an animation out of it, something that contains time and motion. However it could be classed as media specific in this modern day as most of the time it is published digitally, which is the same as film and even games. Though games are either on disc or online so there is some slight difference, but either way you have to play them on some sort of platform, so maybe it is media specific. It has got to the stage now where technology is still progressing, yet the forms of media are not drastically changing so everything has their own set place/media form.