Journal 5
This paragraph seeks to inform the reader how imperative it is to understand the logic behind transparent immediacy. It explains that under transparent immediacy, the viewer is not restricted to a larger extent on naivety or magical conviction that a representation is utterly the exact of what it represents, but rather immediacy is a name given to a collection of beliefs and practices expressing themselves in very distinctive ways and at various groups and that our mere understanding cannot justify the diversity of these beliefs and practices.
In the paragraph, it is further explicated that all these forms have a common feature which is the belief in some necessary contact point between the medium and what it precisely represent (Bolter and Grusin 33). However, Talbot, Bazin and Barthes base their believe in the quality and importance of photography whereby the contact point is interpreted as that light that is reflected away from the objects and directed to the film for viewing. The reflected light again creates an instant and relative relationship between the photograph and the object. This argument asserts in explicit terms that the immediacy of photography in relation to the aforementioned inventors is basically drawing the relationship existing between the photograph and the object. In another interpretation as asserted by the developers of the absract idea under linear-perspective painting and possibly other painters, it is argued that the contact point is considered to be the mathematical relationship perceived to exist between the intended object and their projection on the canvas.
This is to opine that, the quality and clarity of the image created will to a large extent, be determined though arithmetic interpretation of the distance between the object in focus and the screen where the image is observed. The author as indicated in this paragraph also explains that the logic of immediacy has never at one point or time misled the viewer to an extent of not understanding a painting or a photograph. However, unlike the logic of immediacy an exceptional practice by the name Trompe I’oeil does completely the opposite by making a fool of the viewer for a short while (Renoir).Tom Gunning, a film theorist argued that what is perceived to be the logic of transparent immediacy could be of relevance and help at least for the filmgoers of the earliest films in the ancient times. He further argued, despite the fact that the viewers of at that time were very conscience that a film of a train was not really a train the viewers could still wonder at the difference between what they knew to exist in reality and what their eyes could see by then (Jenkins 44). The theorist’s claim could be justified by the fact that the kind of techhnology used during the ancient time was not well developed and unlike the audience of today, the logic of transparent immediacy has taken root and is quite evident due to its wide application in the reasoning of today’s filmgoers.
This is why, the paragraph further unveils the fact that the viewers did not have the logic of immediacy and this dictated their being perplexed by the discrepancy betwixt their knowledge and what was happening. There was a sense in which the audience believed in the reality of the image whereby the theorists were prompted to underwrite this belief since the Renaissance. As the end of the paragraph, the view or the perception of immediacy as tackled evident in the preceding sentences which is referred to as being “naive” is considered to be an expression of a long awaited and craved desire of ages and a vital complement of the double logic behind remediation.The fundamental point of the above analyzed paragraph as far as the argument about remediation made by Bolter and Grusin is concerned is majorly based on the essence of the logic of transparent immediacy. As depicted in this paragraph, it is a vital tool or process for remediation.
A clear and concise understanding requires the viewer to create a clear relationship between reality and what one is viewing either in painting or a photograph (Renoir 23).
