Fionnáin reviewed Travels in intermedia[lity] by Bernd Herzogenrath (Interfaces: studies in visual culture)
Review of 'Travels in intermedia[lity]' on 'Import'
2 stars
Some good individual essays, but this collection of academic studies on 'intermediality' (a term that the book itself finds hard to define) is more like a compilation of disparate and sometimes unrelated ideas than a complete study. Many media seem sidetracked or belittled by the authors, most of all visual art.
The first two chapters give a definition for 'intermedia', arguing essentially that such an idea has always existed and that there are no 'hard borders' around media; this idea is quickly undone by the following chapters that place hard borders around each media analysed.
Three essays stand out - WJT Mitchell's Realism ad the Digital Image is a nice study on photo-manipulation; Julia Meier carries out an interesting study on contemporary music's media-blending (via contemporary philosophy) and Jay David Bolter has a strong final chapter on politics and social media.