Response: “The Medium is the Message”

What thoughts or issues did you have with anything he may have said? Do you agree or disagree? How do his theories relate to current new media? (150 words.)

I agree with McLuhan’s main point on how people oftentimes focus too much on the content and not enough on the actual medium portraying that content. While I was confused reading some parts of this text, I thought that his usage of Cubanism to relay his point was especially useful in helping me to understand. With cubanism, rather than asking what the painting is about, because it is so abstract, the viewer is forced to look at the entire painting as a whole with the different patterns and things going on, focusing more on the medium (the painting) and how it conveys a message. It was a new way to view art and understand art. As for new media, similar to cubanism, I think that digital technology combined with media has continued to reinforce McLuhan’s main point as a lot of new media, in its new forms, brings forth a new change in that it forces an individual to let their senses guide them into interpreting the artwork/media. Some of these new sensory driven art exhibits lets us interpret things a new way.

Choose an artist, designer, or project. Think critically about their chosen media. Explain why they do (or do not) use the appropriate media/medium for their work. (500 words at least…….)

While I haven’t seen her work in person, I remember seeing pictures of Yayoi Kusama’s work and being absolutely captivated. Some of her Infinity Mirrored Room exhibits I think fit well with some of what McLuhan is talking about when he says “the medium is the message.” Recently, there has been a shift in interest towards more experiential and virtual experiences. With that has brought some changes in the way in which art is to be experienced. I find Kusama’s multimedia installations to reflect this. She has an “Infinity Mirror Room” series, which she started decades ago, having created about 20 rooms. Each of these Infinity Mirror Rooms contain installations of her artwork in an immersive environment. Each installation involves a dark chamber-like space that is lined with mirrors. For her 2016 The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away the room had small LED lights hanging from the ceiling that flickered and reflected off the mirrors in the room creating the illusion of endless space. Only one person is allowed to experience the installation at a time, making that person and their body becoming a part of the environment itself, fully immersed. On her work, Kusama has said that her work “[battles] at the boundary between life and death, questioning what we are and what it means to live and die.” Keeping this in mind, I think that Yayoi chose the appropriate medium/media for her work. Even if someone completely new to her artwork was to go into this Infinity Mirror Room, the impact of the mediums (the lights, the mirrors, the room space, etc) used in the installation is significant and conveys a message. If you look at a photo from the installation, all of the small lights give off a cosmic look – they look like a galaxy or a sky full of bright stars. Being alone in this room creates a sense of someone being caught in a universe. The light reflecting off of the mirror extends this idea, creating a sense of interconnectedness and for me, looking at the photo, I imagine that if I was actually experiencing the installation, I too would think about my small existence in the face of a galaxy like space. For me, this kind of media/art that heightens or utilizes one’s own senses really reflect how the medium itself is impactful rather than the content it carries and the medium carries the message itself.