"The medium is the message," wrote the patron saint of Wired Magazine. The meaning of this seemingly paradoxical statement penned by Marshall McLuhan in 1964 has surprising relevance today: the artificial extensions of our minds and bodies (media) carry with them significant cultural and societal implications (message) regardless of any particular content or information they might transmit. This may seem elementary to some contemporary readers, wary of always being asked to take context into account, but McLuhan's words bear revisiting not only because of the pace with which we introduce and integrate new and powerful technologies into our lives, but also because we still tend to view medium and message as distinct entities, having nothing to do with each other.

Local technologist and sculptor Paul DeMarinis has long been interested in the tension between the literal message (say the text of a book) and the message embedded in the medium (what books did for the production and distribution of knowledge)--McLuhan's ideas reverberate throughout DeMarinis' work. In fact many of his pieces can be seen as an embodiment of McLuhan's media theory. Which is not to say DeMarinis' audio/visual/sculptural works are a conscious or practical deployment of Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (the book in which the famous phrase first appears), rather they are a sort of wordless concrete poetry that, like "the medium is the message," appear as rhetorical conundrums. DeMarinis has a knack for combining obsolete, often forgotten, technologies with the most recent innovations and unlikely elements such as fire and water to create sensorially engaging works that often draw uncanny parallels between light, sound and motion; and between the past and the present, tracing a less than linear route through the history of communications technology.

Installation of Firebirds at Singuhr Horgalerie in Berlin, Germany, 2004.

This is an area of our past in which we seem particularly amnesic. Perhaps it's the lack of physical evidence--the tendency for the interface and containers of technology to disappear along with the technology. Much of DeMarinis' work mines this past and leverages our short memories to explore how the medium of transmission can alter our perception of what is being transmitted. Two past works stand out in my mind as exemplary of DeMarinis' idiosyncratic approach that is at once nostalgic and forward-looking: The Edison Effect (1993), a series of laser-scanning devices configured to playback antique musical recordings on 78 rpm phonographs, wax cylinders, and holograms; and Firebirds (2004), a series of gas flame speakers (yes, speakers!) housed inside birdcages that magically transmit recordings of speeches made by some of the twentieth centuries' most influential leaders.* In McLuhanian terms these works not only highlight the message embedded in the medium but also point to the archiving of audio/visual material as a significant medium in its own right--creating an artificial memory that increasingly substitutes for our native capacities.

Early Media Goes to the Movies, Part 1: Weekend - Traffic Jam Panorama (detail), 2008.
Digital print on archival paper; 13 x 20 inches

In his recent work, now on view at the Braunstein/Quay Gallery, DeMarinis continues to explore the medium-as-message dialectic in inventive ways. But the results here are somewhat less successful than previous efforts. The bulk of the show is given over to a series of works under the umbrella, "Early Media Goes to the Movies"--a collection of prints and devices that employ both new electronics and pre-cinematic technologies to examine (isolate, slow down, deconstruct--all apply here) three scenes from the film Week-end, Jean-Luc Godard's now classic satire of bourgeoisie life from 1967. While familiarity with Godard and the film isn't absolutely necessary for engaging with the work, a little foreknowledge is beneficial. (Having never seen the film I went to the internet and found several reviews and synopses, and a very degraded version of the famous traffic jam scene on YouTube.) While this constitutes a hole in my cinema history it's also a weakness in the work. But the relative obscurity of Godard isn't really the problem here so much as the overall cerebral and fragmentary quality of the show. Godard was a relentless experimentalist with his film making, constantly challenging the conventions of narrative cinema, disrupting the suspension of disbelief, and generally expecting his audience's participation in resolving the meaning of his films. So the slyness and irony of DeMarinis taking apart Godard's structuralism is not lost on me. It's just that the chimeric synthesis of elements and visceral connection I've come to expect from DeMarinis' work is lacking in this exhibition.

Early Media goes to the Movies, Part I: Weekend - Action Musicale Music Box, ed. 1/3, 2008.
Mixed media;
34 x 13 x 7 inches

That said, one piece transcends its fragmented content or rather, reconstitutes it to form a new whole. Early Media Goes to the Movies, Part 1: Weekend - Action Musicale Music Box like the title suggests, is essentially a music box, if a strange looking one, outfitted with a viewfinder that illuminates when one touches the hand crank. As you turn the crank you can watch the mechanical score--a perforated digital image of the barnyard scene from Week-end (two uncut 360º pans)--scroll slowly by. The melody is Motzart's Sonata in D Major, the same as that played by the pianist in the original scene. This piece alone seems to achieve what the others in the room are striving for: a startling transformation of content as translated from one medium to another, and a poignant reminder that our world and our thoughts are shaped at least as much by form as they are by content.

Early Media goes to the Movies, Part I: Weekend - Action Musicale Music Box (detail)

Also included in this exhibition is Hypnica, a series of three talking metronomes that create an out-of-synch chorus of hypnotists' voices. Paul DeMarinis: Recent Work will be on view at Braunstein/Quay Gallery through October 4th.

* An early press release for this exhibition promised a new gas flame speaker piece featuring the speeches of Chairman Mao. I was disappointed to learn upon arriving at the gallery that it had not been completed in time for the opening.