The blog as digital collage

Digital media, or hypermedia, confronts us with the possibility to create a montage of different media elements together, such as text, graphics, animations, sounds, or videos. The process of collage is taken one step further, where the elements put together have different natures. The digital environment is hypermediated in the sense that it multiplies and re-arranges media forms.

Furthermore, in blogs, the elements that are put together are many times shared by other internet users. A picture appearing in this blog may be taken from another blog, or website, and particular pieces of text may provide 'windows' to jump to other spaces within the Network. This process of 'collage' combines both 'thick' self-created digital content with 'thin' direct references to pre-existing content. The result of expressing oneself in this medium is that the expression is constituted by links to other people's expressions.

In this blog, I use the software for generating blogs from blogger.com, and the images used are taken from other sources in the Net. At the same time, as part of my discourse, I provide links to other places around the network. The blog fully acknowledges not only the medium, but the relationships implicated by the medium. The blog does not exist alone, but only with respect to the wider Web. When I express myself in this medium, I gather different sources that constitute and make the finalized piece possible. The collage uses different types of media from different sources, or locations.