A Note on “Demediation”: From Book Art to Transmedia Storytelling

This
article discusses two opposite meanings of the concept of
“demediation”: on the one hand, the very specific and strongly
materializing reading given by Garrett Stewart, who coined the notion in
an essay on book art qua visual art; on the other hand, the general and
more intuitive reading of the term, as sometimes used in the broader
debate on digital culture as immaterialization. Putting a strong
emphasis on the (broad) notions of materiality and medium-specificity,
the article offers a critique of certain immaterializing tendencies in
transmedia storytelling theory, while ending with the brief presentation
of an example (the collaborative network Général Instin) that
tackles, within the framework of ghost theory and dust theory, the
dialectic relationship of materiality and immateriality.