Post-convergent

Post-convergent literally means "after convergence". Convergence is similar to 'merge'. Different entities, such as two different rivers, may merge at a certain point. Than these are converging. In convergent state they go as one entity in post-convergent, after merge, state. Some authors recognize the merging of media as converging of cultures in contrast to technologies, Henry Jenkins being an example. It is the period during the development of a medium in which, having incorporated all of its "parent" media, is used for purposes beyond those of the parent media. Marshall McLuhan famously said that any new medium contains all prior media within it.^[1] He used instant replay in American football as an example. Until the advent of instant replay, televised football had served simply as a substitute for physically attending the football game. A viewer could watch the game at the stadium or on the television at home and see the same order of events. However, instant replay was something a viewer could only see on television and thus marked a post-convergent moment in the medium of television.

Real time 3D MultiUser Virtual Environments (RT3D MUVEs) are an example of an early 21st-century post-convergent medium. This is based on the premise that they converge prior existing media into a new media and represent complex matrix of interdependent relationships among such media elements as sound, vision, network, time, interactivity, and other prior technologies. In this view, no individual media element comprising 3D MUVE's exists without the others and all affect each other, albeit not equally.

Although this complex system contains many types of media, a user may choose to focus on only a single aspect, such as streaming an audio file. More commonly, users approach RT3D MUVE's as a matrix of multisited relationships, thereby acknowledging Alain Badiou’s criteria for art.^[2] The potential for a rich engagement within and between agents within a medium that is best characterized as Gilles Deleuze’s network of relations between differential velocities that are not distinguished by form or functionality and Anna Munster’s differential relations between embodiment and technics, in which both artist/composer and user become nodes in this interdependent network, satisfying Luciano Floridi’s test of successful observability and backward and forward presence at different Levels of Abstraction.^[3][4][5]

In the technical sense, RT3D MUVEs are post-convergent because they are capable of containing, displaying and reconstituting all forms of prior media. In the conceptual sense, these environments are post-convergent because they exist subsequent to the convergence of media that occurred from the late 20th and early into the 21st century, such as Web 2.0 and mobile culture, and characterised by Henry Jenkins and others as convergence.^[6] This is not to say that this phase of pre- and post-convergence is unique to RT3D MUVEs, or even digital or networked media specifically, rather it is an ongoing cycle throughout the history and development of media.^[1] In this sense, the notion of post-convergence is simply a reference to artwork that occurs after such convergences and specifically seeks a virtuosic engagement with the medium itself. McLuhan calls these accelerations, which call to mind Deleuze’s Spinozan kinetic relationships of differentials, as well as Munster’s dematerialized representation and digital embodiment, Hayles’ self-reinforcing cultural patterns, Haraway’s messy engagement, Matrix’ cyberpoetics, and J. David Bolter and Richard Grusin’s remediation, all of which can (but is not required to) be usefully applied within Floridi’s formal telepresence model of successful observability and backward and forward presence.^{[1][3][4][7][8]}

References

External links

• Adam Nash, 2007. ACM International Conference Proceeding Series; Vol. 305. Proceedings of the 4th Australasian conference on Interactive entertainment.
• Justin Clemens and Adam Nash, 2010. Seven Theses on the Concept of Post Convergence.