Mediation Seen through the Sensory Eye: An Alternative to the ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Media Paradigm

The term “media” is problematic, because it is used in several ways depending on the discipline and on the goal of the discourse. For example, in media engineering the meaning of the term media shifts between technical applications of transformations and designation of the data by the channels processing the data—like visual, olfactory, tactile, and other channels. Another way to understand the notion of media is through its ability to present the world by means of signs. In this light the term “sign” is too narrow and could be replaced by the term “medium,” as Peirce has noted. Here, media have been understood as an equivalent to signs, as something more fundamental than technical media.
Following Peirce, we can assume a sign as a medium that tends to represent its object-correlate as a source of an effect, which is the Interpretant. The process of mediation, or in other words, sign action (semiosis), is active all the time. From this perspective, there are no “new media”; rather there is a continuous process of mediating and interpreting signs. Signs can be perceived either by visual, olfactory, tactile, acoustic senses or by mental processes, because there are also ideal signs carried in the mind. Different signs emphasize different sensory channels and different technical artefacts to present them. Changes in technological means or dominance of some sensory channels may not change the actual mediation process. These changes may transform the result of the mediation process or the result may remain the same. In other words, the signs and the interpretations of them are in constant motion; the process of semiosis does not stop. It may be considered possible to halt but even in these seemingly halted moments semiosis still goes on undetected.