Preface: De-Marging Methodologies, Blurring Media-Texts
10.13125/2039-6597/4424
In this preface I try to briefly illustrate the methodological perspective with which this special issue of Between Journal, edited by Hans-Joachim Backe, Massimo Fusillo and myself, analyses the intrinsic complexity of the concepts of inter-mediality, trans-mediality and cross-mediality. The aim of this research is to further extend the field under investigation interlinking directions and perspectives, methods and approaches, to understanding the hermeneutic dimension of inter-trans-cross-mediality.&nbsp;Concentrating on the complexity of the texts and present-day medial contents, we have tried to contemplate actual methodology, gathering together contributions from different sectors scholars (comparative literature, film, Tv and media studies, game studies, etc.), with particular attention to the innovations brought about by the ubiquity of digital technology and the osmosis between cultural institutions and productive processes.
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Mirko Lino
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Inter-mediality; Trans-mediality; Cross-mediality; Convergence; Narratology; Film and Media Studies.
Preface: De-Marging Methodologies, Blurring Media-Texts
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2020-11-21
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Mirko Lino
2020/11/21
10.13125/2039-6597/4424
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2039-6597
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Inter-mediality; Trans-mediality; Cross-mediality; Convergence; Narratology; Film and Media Studies.
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urn:nbn:it:unica-26944
Preface: De-Marging Methodologies, Blurring Media-Texts
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                        Preface:
              De-Marging Methodologies,
                 Blurring Media-Texts

                                    Mirko Lino



Abstract
      In this preface I try to briefly illustrate the methodological perspective with
which this special issue of Between Journal, edited by Hans-Joachim Backe,
Massimo Fusillo and myself, analyses the intrinsic complexity of the concepts
of inter-mediality, trans-mediality and cross-mediality. The aim of this research
is to further extend the field under investigation interlinking directions and
perspectives, methods and approaches, to understanding the hermeneutic
dimension of inter-trans-cross-mediality.
      Concentrating on the complexity of the texts and present-day medial
contents, we have tried to contemplate actual methodology, gathering together
contributions from different sectors scholars (comparative literature, film, Tv
and media studies, game studies, etc.), with particular attention to the
innovations brought about by the ubiquity of digital technology and the
osmosis between cultural institutions and productive processes.

Keywords
    Inter-mediality;   Trans-mediality;           Cross-mediality;    Convergence;
Narratology; Film and Media Studies.



Between, vol. X, n. 20 (Novembre/November 2020)
ISSN 2039-6597
DOI: 10.13125/2039-6597/4424
                                   Between, vol. X, n. 20 (Novembre/November 2020)




                    Preface:
          De-Marging Methodologies,
             Blurring Media Texts
                              Mirko Lino


   Inter-mediality, trans-mediality and cross-mediality are terms that
are being used more and more in academic parlance, with various
disciplines (from narratology to media studies, from cultural studies to
production studies, etc.) endeavouring to monitor a series of processes
within convergence culture. A quick glance at cultural production and
ways of contemporary communication, with regard to the expressive
possibilities linked to a capillary dissemination of digital media, will
pinpoint the intense changes at the heart of industrial production and
the organization of knowledge, as well as symbolic constructions of the
imaginary, political and gender identities.
   In fact, the semantics of these three terms rests on a logic founded on
synergy and inclusiveness, implemented by the capacity of the media to
confound and sort out its own semiotic component. In the case of inter-
mediality, several languages merge in a single text, in such a way as to
transform the medium into an intermedium, as proposed by Schröter
(2012), with reference to synergy between the arts. Or in a conglomerate
of varying mediality, a metamedium, such as the computer (Manovich
2001), which has today, in turn, been re-mediated (Bolter and Grusin 2000)
by the smartphone. Another feature of the semantics of integration
concerns trans-mediality, the way in which narration is spread over
several media: narrative elements, characters, events, settings roll by
and are extended in accordance with the limitations and formal
possibilities of the diverse media involved, in order to build up fictional,
multi-articulated worlds. In the words of Paolo Bertetti (2018), we are



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Mirko Lino, Preface: De-Marging Methodologies, Blurring Media-Texts



not referring to methods of inter-semiotic translation (or transposition),
but to the capacity of narration to overflow into several medial areas, in
a dialectic between variety and equality. The logic of synergy and
integration is flanked by the method of cross-mediality, a term which its
semantic oscillates between a wider sense transmediality, and one more
precise which indicates the circulation of the same content throughout
different media platforms (Phillips 2012). Here, the central matter is not
properly referred to the narrative dimension with its ways of extension
in different media, but the storytelling as content which is multiplicated
and rendered ubiquitous and constantly accessible. What has just been
described is certainly a roughly sketched semantic inventory but one
that interestingly outlines the capacity of these three terms to frame a
series of medial objects and complex narratives, in which all the fluidity
and unpredictability of contemporary cultural forms emerges.
   In the face of the reconfiguration of traditional medial forms and the
rearrangement of their contents, there emerges the need for an upgraded
epistemological awareness of the elasticity of the languages under
examination. In fact, one of the most evident aesthetic aspects in inter,
trans, and cross-medial works lies precisely in the ostentation of the con-
fusion and the synergies in play, regarding the insistence on diversity
and specificity, as in the acknowledgement of the continuity and
refutation of a line of thinking supported by the rigidity of systems of
categorization.
   Recently, reflecting in general terms on the relationship between
narration and trans-mediality, Elleström underlined actual synergy and
integration as being among the material components of media and the
cognitive components of users:

         transmediality should be understood as referring to the general
      concept that different media types share many basic traits that can
      be described in terms of material properties and abilities for
      activating mental capacities […] physical media properties and
      semiosis are transmedia phenomena. (Elleström 2019: 5)




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   This inclusive point of view, as described by Elleström, could be
extended to the relationship between narration and media in general,
especially if one thinks of how trans-mediality is often considered one
of the formal possibilities of inter-mediality, and cross-mediality
deemed to correspond to the distributive dimension of the contents. So,
in this way, the three terms lend themselves to interpretation as a single,
yet fluid macro-phenomenon, whilst still maintaining their conceptual
specificity.
   Trans-medial narration, cross-medial circulation in varying forms of
entertainment, inter-medial, all-embracing and immersive artistic
experiences are stimulating numerous critical studies in their attempts,
with their own theoretical and methodological tools, to harness the
wealth, often chaotic, of contemporary narration and medial content.
Concentrating on the complexity of the texts and present-day medial
contents, scholars from different sectors have proposed methods and
approaches to understanding the hermeneutic dimension of inter-trans-
cross-mediality, working on updating previous theoretical paradigms,
or, in other cases, breaking in new theories, by approaching the fluidity
and flexibility of forms, attempting to grasp the deeper meaning of the
innovations and re-coding brought about by the pervasive
capillarization of digital technology and the osmosis between cultural
institutions and productive processes.
   Therefore, from these attempts, there emerges an overall framework,
rather out-of-focus, of the expressive forms at the core of digital society;
understandably, with theoretical tools being continually questioned,
attempts to contain the impetus of complexity and irreducibility, the
multiple experimental innervations that characterize the transitory
nature of forms, cannot help but boast a certain level of indeterminacy.
   The analysis of these three terms cannot exempt itself from taking into
consideration the great and heterogeneous variety of the fields of
application involved and the methodology that endeavours to lay down
boundaries for them. One of the first areas that tried to rework the
residue from the paradigm of synergy in the field of media, was
narratology.



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Mirko Lino, Preface: De-Marging Methodologies, Blurring Media-Texts



   Thanks to the contributions by Ryan, Grishakova, Thon, Elleström
and others, the literary studies have managed to keep a hold on the
opportunity to reflect, in a systematic way, on the inter-relationships
with other semiotic codes, updating the narrative categories to the
digital format (videogames, web-docs and interactive web-series, 360°
videos, etc.), addressing virtual potentiality and the material limitations
of emerging medial technology, as, for example, in interactive media
(Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality). From another perspective,
studies into media have begun to reflect on the whole range of
innovations carried out through affirmation of the digital, by considering
the historical recursion present in moments of transition from an old
paradigm to a new one, whilst checking out relative productive and
economic logic (from vertical to horizontal processes, from franchises to
large-scale media conglomerates). Media studies have broadened the
scope of what is often a deterministic materiality, by starting to consider
media in terms beyond its specificity, i.e. as an assemblage in accordance
with the various types of contents conveyed and diverse uses (Casetti
2015). This feature, as foreseen by Gray (2010), perceives traditional
medial texts losing their own singularity and becoming forms in a state
of continual construction. The result of this re-orientation is reflected in
the loss of centrality of language based media and, ideally in an anti-
hierarchical key, a broadening of screen media studies, geared towards
considering previously subordinate textual forms as constitutive.
   These prerequisites hint at the methodological “bleeding” needed in
order to grasp the deeper meaning of on-going formal and medial
transitions. One of the most striking effects of what has come to be called
the “digital revolution” has been the ubiquity of narration, and its re-
coding in expanded, interactive and rewritable structures. Digitalization
has greatly facilitated the development of hybrid textual constructs,
accelerating the concoction of various medial texts (e.g. the relationship
of continuity between gamebooks, videogames, interactive digital
storytelling), and reinforced the formal and expressive possibilities of
the hypertext - “Link Therefore I Am”, in Mark Amerika’s provocatively
digitalized words in GRAMMATRON (1997), his dystopic digital
gesamtkunstwerk, a quest for the philosophical centrality of the link’s


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video-graphics and the aesthetic enhancement of the hypertext. The role
of digital media has contributed to fostering the conspicuous emergence
of a trend already present as a watermark in many medial texts from the
last century, that of becoming a fleeting element in the face of univocal
categories, incapable of being diminished by theories from previous
conceptual systems.
   The endorsement of a digital culture pursued a dual course as regards
method: on the one hand, the novel features at the heart of digital
storytelling were conceived in a euphoric atmosphere that gave rise to
the rhetoric of newness; this was geared towards concentrating on the
distances and rifts between old and new media, and pushing forward
towards imaginary future horizons in our relationships with the
technological interface. On the other hand, however, the critics aimed to
retrace the recursion of certain “rifts”, re-framing the digital and the
paradigm of convergence within medial transitions that had already
occurred during the last century, rediscovering the historical-cultural
moment in which old media were “new”. Works such as the one by
Thorburn and Jenkins on medial transition (2003), by Angela Ndalianis
on contemporary neo-baroque (2004), by André Gaudreault (2008; 2009;
2011), Tom Gunning (1986; 2006) and Wanda Strauven (2006) (to name
but a few), regarding medial experiences merging into “cinema of
attractions”, endeavour to reflect not so much on the rifts as on the
continuity with previous medial experiences. In this way, a medium is
re-framed in its material component as well as its “virtuality”, i.e. the
manifestation of its expressive possibilities in relation to material
limitations.
   From an archaeological perspective, by interweaving the past with the
present of not only the medium, but also the formal construction of the
narration that it bears, one is permitted «to see how spreadable media
extend, reorient, and reimagine existing historical trajectories in the
industrial production and consumption of culture» (Johnson 2013).
Contemporary production, bought off by promises of immersive and
interactive solicitations that are ever more involving and complete in
sensory terms, discovers an attempt, in the sphere of experience, to
establish the most thorough approach possible to the studying of inter-


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Mirko Lino, Preface: De-Marging Methodologies, Blurring Media-Texts



trans-cross-mediality. In fact, trans-medial narration, inter-medial
works and cross-medial circulation of storyworlds hint at a deeper
desire, rendered possible by present-day medial configurations, i.e.
experiential totality. This is based on the disintegration of distances, no
longer those between various media, but on their ontological perception
of the worlds they are building, on the moment in which fiction
(virtuality) and reality (materiality) settle on a space of common
perception      and     signification,   oriented    towards     reciprocal
interpenetration and emotional continuity.
   All this provides extensive food for thought, which this issue of
Between aims to investigate and highlight through a lively exchange of
ideas. This editorial work does not aim to track down and fix absolute
categories, nor does it aim to render excessively limpid (to the detriment
of profundity) the disposition of the objects of study analysed thus far;
it does aim to attempt to figure out the nature and significance of some
inevitable theoretical blurring and indeterminacy. In order to achieve
this, the special issue editors have tried to contemplate actual
methodology, whilst fearlessly gathering together contributions that
propose medial objects and approaches that may well differ
considerably from each other; the aim is to further extend the field under
investigation, to interlink directions and perspectives, in such a way as
to illustrate the conceptual importance of inter-trans and cross-mediality
in our understanding and relationships with the imaginary, with
expressive forms, and the knowledge with which to orient ourselves
amidst our multiple refracted visions of the present.
   The papers in this issue come from ICLA Research Committee on
Literatures/Arts/Media (CLAM). Established in 2018, as a result of the
converging research fields between the University of L’Aquila and the
University of Tartu, the CLAM deals with the new roles and the new
configurations of literature in global polymorphic imagery, including
the dissemination of literary techniques (narration, empathy, point of
view, various rhetoric strategies) in every aspect of contemporary
culture. Since literary texts are becoming a part of a complex galaxy of
media, languages, cultures, the aims of the CLAM are geared towards
investigating the comparative tradition of inter-art studies, and offering


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a medium-aware analysis of various hybrid genres, from the most
widely-studied to new media: musical theatre, theatrical performance,
filmic adaptations, TV series, graphic novels, computer games, video-
art, video-clips, advertising.
   In accordance with the research objectives of CLAM, this issue also
includes a lavish special section (focus) devoted to Dante’s Intermedial
Reception, edited by Caroline Fischer and Mattia Petricola, and the
interviews to Lars Elleström, chair of the board of the International
Society for Intermedial Studies (ISIS), edited by Massimo Fusillo and
Mattia Petricola, and to Motus theatre company, edited by Doriana
Legge and Mirko Lino.



                             Works Cited
Bertetti, Paolo, “Transmedia Archaeology. Narrative Expansions across
    Media Before the Age of Convergence”, The Routledge Companion to
    Transmedia Studies, Eds. Matthew Freeman, Renira Rampazzo
    Gambarato, New York-London, Routledge, 2018: 263-271.
Bolter, Jay David, Grusin, Richard, Remediation. Understanding New
    Media, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2001.
Casetti, Francesco, The Lumière Galaxy. Seven Key Words for the Cinema to
    Come, New York, Columbia University Press, 2015.
Elleström, Lars, Transmedial Narration. Narratives and Stories in Different
    Media, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
Gaudreault, André, Cinéma et attraction: Pour une nouvelle histoire du
    cinématographe, Paris, CNRS, 2008.
Gaudreault, André, From Plato to Lumière: Narration and Monstration in
    Literature and Cinema, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2009.
Gaudreault, André, Film and Attraction: From Kinematography to Cinema,
    Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 2011.
Gray, Jonathan, Show Sold Separately. Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media
    Paratexts, New York-London, New York University Press, 2010.
Gunning, Tom, “The Cinema of Attraction: Early Cinema, its Spectator
    and the Avant-Garde”, Wide Angle 8, 1986: 63-70.


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Mirko Lino, Preface: De-Marging Methodologies, Blurring Media-Texts



Gunning, Tom, “Attractions: How They Came into the World” Cinema
    of Attractions Reloaded, Ed. Wanda Strauven, Amsterdam,
    Amsterdam University Press, 2006: 31-40.
Johnson, Derek, A History of Transmedia Entertainment, 2013:
    https://spreadablemedia.org/essays/johnson/index.html#.Xy6v2igz
    bIX (last accessed: 14/09/2020).
Manovich, Lev, The Language of New Media, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2001.
Ndalianis, Angela, Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary
    Entertainment, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2003.
Phillips, Andrea, A Creator’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling: How to
    Captivate and Engage Audience across Multiple Platforms, New York,
    McGraw Hill, 2012.
Schröter, Jens, “Four Models of Intermediality,”, Travels in Intermediality:
    ReBlurring the Boundaries, Ed. Berd Herzogenrath, Hannover,
    Dartmouth College Press, 2012:15-36.
Strauven, Wanda (ed.), Cinema of Attractions Reloaded, Amsterdam,
    Amsterdam University Press, 2006.
Thorburn, David, Jenkins, Henry (eds.), Rethinking Media Change: The
    Aesthetics of Transition, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2003.



                                    The Author
Mirko Lino

        Senior lecturer at University of L’Aquila – Department of Human
Sciences, where he teaches History of Cinema and Cinema and Media.
Among his publications the monography L’apocalisse postmoderna tra
letteratura e cinema. (The Postmodern Apocalypse between Literature and
Cinema 2014). He is one of the editors of Imaginary Films in Literature
(2016) and Sex(t)ualities. Morfologie del corpo tra visioni e narrazioni
(Sex(t)ualities. Morphologies of the Body between Visions and Narrations
2018)

        Email: mirko.lino@univaq.it


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                              The Article
Date sent: 30/10/2020
Date accepted: --/--/--
Date published: --/--/--



                      How to cite this article
Lino, Mirko, “Preface: De-Marging Methodologies, Blurring Media-
Texts”, Transmediality / Intermediality / Crossmediality: Problems of
Definition, Eds. H.-J. Backe, M. Fusillo, M. Lino, with the focus section
Intermedial Dante: Reception, Appropriation, Metamorphosis, Eds. C. Fischer
and M. Petricola, Between, X.20 (2020), www.betweenjournal.it




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