Medium Cool

Abstract

Medium Cool is an international research collaboration that includes Australian, American, German & English scholars addressing the topic of the media, or medium. Today the question of the medium is almost totally subsumed within discussions of the mass media. In this context, it is always regarded as plural. The fact that the mass media constitute such a ubiquitous presence in contemporary life often leads to the assumption that medium or media emerged as a specific issue only with the advent of mass media. Yet the issue of the medium became a central concern of modernist art almost a century and a half ago. Medium Cool seeks to broaden the consideration of the medium by re-examining the consequences of this long history of aesthetic exploration and engagement as well as by scrutinizing the role of the medium in areas as diverse as modernist, contemporary and avant-garde art, photography, cinema, architecture and in the more familiar guises of electronic media including television and computer games.