Interpretations of digital exhibition. Assessing the academic pertinence of commercial and political definitions. A case study

Abstract

The principal research question of this study is framed as: Do prevailing, industrially and politically sourced definitions of Digital Exhibition faithfully represent the phenomenon¿s position within the contemporary media theory framework? Within this work Digital Exhibition is defined as: The practice of presenting moving images, either live or pre-recorded, to paying audiences, in public spaces, by means of digital distribution and projection. The majority of established literatures concerning Digital Exhibition are aimed at producing categorical definitions of the phenomenon. These ¿meaning making¿ discourses commonly stem from potentially ideologically affected sources. To address this issue, the author has investigated the political economy of key commentators, and Digital Exhibition has been impartially researched following a ¿case studies¿ methodology; with an analytical framework based upon a series of ¿plausible rival hypotheses¿. These hypotheses include that Digital Exhibition isM ¿ a form of the cinema ¿ a form of television ¿ a new (new media) medium ¿ multiple media ¿ not a medium It is presented that each investigated hypothesis can be argued to be legitimate when employing established media theories as the means of rationalisation. Nevertheless, the author concludes that individual industrially / politically charged definitions still do not provide an adequately comprehensive account as to the wealth of interpretations that can be drawn for Digital Exhibition. The author also presents his own perspective as to the subjective nature of contemporary media taxonomies, and ultimately proposes that Digital Exhibition is not a medium, but is a designation offered to a subjectively defined collection of events made possible through the transmission of computational binary pulse signals.