Intermediality and Media Historiography in the Digital Era
Intermediality and Media Historiography in the Digital Era

Summary/Abstract: This paper approaches the concept of intermediality as a form of operation, as work in progress. A historiography of intermedia processes, including so called new or digital media would have to unfold in a specific social and historical context. On the one hand, it is closely linked to particular artistic, material, media-related and communicative forms of action; on the other hand, it should always be seen in the context of production of meanings that grow from these actions for a particular historical audience or historical users. In short: intermediality is closely intertwined with particular social and institutional practices. Intermedia research is not that new as we might suppose. Following that statement this article presents a short retrospective of the concept of intermediality, of the axe de pertinence intermédiatique, where its interactions, overlaps and differences with regard to the notions of intertextuality, hybridity and interartiality are re-constructed and the options or advantages of an intermedia historiography are clarified. An archaeology of intermedia processes should not be reduced to a monolithic paradigm of “materialities” or “meanings,” but should rather guide us toward new degrees of complexity in the research of intermediality in the digital era.

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