Terminology and Approach
‘Intermedia’ and ‘transmedia’ are broad terms that encompass many types of artworks that strategically draw on different media. While not synonyms per se, they both reflect a creative position, not a genre of product, and as descriptive terms avoid defining the work according to traditional categories of artistic mastery (e.g. painting, music, cinema). Intermedia artists maintain the flexibility of viewing and working in the world from an ‘in between’ stance—hence the prefix ‘inter,’ while a transmedia position represents a commitment to working expansively and synthetically ‘across’ the lines that separate one medium or one discipline from another. Another way of thinking about both intermedia and transmedia is as “appropriate media,” where the media used to realize a project are inseparable from the project’s content and concept, with all elements chosen intentionally to work as a whole.
Some of the works that I will show you in class could just as easily be called ‘new media,’ a more familiar term that generally refers to artwork made using digital technologies and, to a lesser extent, other electronic devices. The term ‘new media’ has been criticized for fetishizing the ‘newness’ of computer technologies at the expense of considering any cultural significance beyond novelty, and as computers become increasingly ubiquitous, the newness of new media seems questionable. The label ‘new media’ also tends to exclude many fine contemporary art projects that are made without using computers or other electronics at all.