Coleman's work, particularly his slide-tape pieces, is the perfect illustration of "reinventing the medium." By the 1990s, slide projectors were obsolete, a forgotten remnant of mid-20th-century business and education. Yet, Coleman harnessed this obsolete "" in a non-traditional way. He used projected slides with a voiceover soundtrack, creating works that were neither film, theater, nor traditional photography. This hybrid, born from an outmoded technology, allowed him to explore the slippage between image and sound, memory and present perception. For Krauss, Coleman's work isn't simply mixed-media; it is the creation of a new medium by adopting the technical support of the slide projector and generating a new set of artistic conventions around it.
In her later work, particularly in Perpetual Inventory , Krauss identifies other artists who have "reinvented the medium" by persevering in the service of "strange new apparatuses" often adopted from commercial culture. These include:
The ultimate "automation of the image" where the machine dictates style. rosalind krauss reinventing the medium pdf
Krauss’s text offers a way out of this aesthetic aimlessness. By her logic, digital art or AI art cannot achieve significance simply by mimicking older forms (like generating an "oil painting" via a prompt). Instead, digital artists must find the specific limitations, errors, and structural boundaries of the digital apparatus itself—such as data corruption, algorithmic bias, pixelation, or code architecture—and transform those elements into the rules of a reinvented medium. Key Takeaways from Krauss's Theoretical Framework
Using the slide projector, Coleman creates a "differential" between the static image and the cinematic, questioning the medium of projection. Coleman's work, particularly his slide-tape pieces, is the
By the 1970s and 1980s, the rise of Conceptual art, installation art, performance, and institutional critique shattered these boundaries. Art became "post-medium." Artists mixed materials indiscriminately, and the traditional definitions of painting and sculpture seemed obsolete.
To move beyond the "outmoded" and "positivist" definition of a medium (which usually refers only to physical materials like canvas or oil paint), Krauss proposes the term "technical support" Definition: This hybrid, born from an outmoded technology, allowed
Instead of using digital animation, Kentridge uses charcoal drawing, erasing and redrawing to show the passage of time.