Beyond the Media Reveal

Abstract

The ‘media reveal’ is a perspective and gesture of art and media-making, theory and writing. It is a staging of continuous surprises – reveals – that always attempt to denature and remove supposed myths and illusions from or behind media technologies and their infrastructures, often highlighting materiality or materialist function, and political economies. Beyond the Media Reveal is a keynote lecture, given at the 2019 RE:SOUND Media Arts Histories conference in Denmark, hosted by Aalborg University's RELATE Research Laboratory for Art and Technology. It is also the title of a peer-reviewed, published article derived from the lecture for the Seismograf journal of art and sound media. Beyond the Media Reveal attempts to characterize the media reveal narrative as it appears in media art, along with the stories media artists tell themselves through critical theory and thinking. Does this gesture expose or depose the always present power structures and technocratic didacticism that often remain? If we sought to go beyond this 'media reveal', what new practices of knowledge should emerge?