Fibreculture Journal (Jun 2015)
FCJ-177 Television Assemblages
Abstract
Television has become a multiplatform medium that houses content on a number of different sites and devices that encourage new forms of engagement. This new digital environment has transformed television from a closed system, where programmes are transmitted to a television set for viewers to tune into, to an open system that produces new television connections and configurations. Drawing on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, Latour and current media theorists, this essay turns to the concept of assemblages for theorising this new interactive multiplatform television environment. Thinking about multiplatform television through the concept of assemblages offers a means of exploring how television devices, texts and media are reconfigured or modified so as to display new functionalities and capacities. It also enables us to consider the way television culture can be deterritorialised and reterritorialised through new connections and in doing so introduce new qualities such as interactivity and reciprocal determination.
