The Medium Alone is Not Enough: An Archaeology of Diffused Entities and Illusory Spaces

Art Style | Art & Culture International Magazine Abstract “In recent years, a material, elemental and environmental, approach to media seem to be in the center of a whole series of developments in media theory,”1 Antonio Somaini pointed out wishing to indicate that media have to be considered in their material embeddedness, in their environmental dimension, and not exclusively as technical means. Starting from this assumption, the article analyses different historical stages of the relationship between the materiality of the medium and its representation. The transformative impact of old technology on the medium starting with the experimental photography and film practices of the 1920s and 1930s toward performative film work of the 1970s, revealed a growing fascination with surface projections and how they identify light as a medium that form space. By contextualizing the problem of the medium (space, light and time) within the history of surface projections, I explore how projections structure the perception of space to argue that this insight can challenge the very notion of materialism in relation to the medium. The aim is to demonstrate that medium’s concern with the dissolution of its boundaries challenges the notion of materialism and thus affect a deeper divide between materiality and representation. I will conclude by demonstrating that this work paved a way to numerous innovative architectural experiments in connection with surface materiality: from their application in scenography to the modern surface condition of facades and contemporary practices that concretise the surface tension of the media as the training ground for spatial contemplation.Art Style, Art & Culture International Magazine is an open-access, biannual, and peer-reviewed online magazine that aims to bundle cultural diversity. All values of cultures are shown in their varieties of art. Beyond the importance of the medium, form, and context in which art takes its characteristics, art is considered the significance of socio-cultural, historical, and market influence