Remediation Project

Marshall McLuhan - Understanding Media

Published in 1964, McLuhan's well-known study of media theory provides some useful information for my remediation project. Specifically, McLuhan's concept of hot and cool media.

Television is a "cool" medium, requiring greater user participation. The viewer must actively involve all their senses for viewing television is a highly sensory experience. Print media, including newspapers, are what McLuhan referred to as a "hot" medium. Newspapers may offer the user large amounts of information, but at a low sensory level with less user participation required.

One of the major challenges in my remediation was to try and foster a high level of sustained involvement in a medium that is primarily passive. How to adapt a television series into a series of newspaper articles and still maintain user interest? I tried to achieve this by adapting the major storylines from the series that would have an element of sensation and would grab the attention of the reader. I would try to capture with words what the television series would capture with graphic images, dialogue and music.