FCJ-182 Middlebroware

Abstract

Software for creating, editing and organising media content occupies a significant place in the contemporary production of culture. Through a combination of scholarship from traditions in science and technology studies, media studies, and the sociology of art, I develop a framework for understanding the symbolic ordering of such software based on the entanglements between objects and subjects through commoditisation. In the first half of the paper, I construct a conceptual framework around ‘middlebroware’ as a means of conceptualising and analysing the processes of symbolic ordering that take place through the design and use of certain kinds of commoditised media software. The latter half of the paper will apply this framework to a case study of Photoshop as an example of middlebroware.

Keywords

• middleware
• middlebrow art
• configuration
• Photoshop
• media software