MP3플레이어의 인터페이스와 시공간성

Abstract

This study is to theoretically examine the nature of MP3 player whose importance is being increased in the so-called "sound-consuming culture". This work is also an effort to overcome the bias of "visual epistemologies" of the approach to communication technologies, and the narrowness of mobile media researches. In defining the characteristics of MP3 player, this study has two presuppositions: firstly, MP3 player functions as a "cultural interface" delivering cultural forms of music; secondly, a media technology including MP3 player is positioned in the relational context with other media technologies. The relational context of media is explained in the terms of three levels of "remediation", connection, and convergence. Furthermore, the nature of MP3 player need to be defined in temporality and spatiality. MP3 player is used as "polychronic" media shaping the unique rhythms of mobile temporalities. And MP3 player articulates the "privatized mobility" which results from the de-domestication of media technologies, and shows the social process of "aestheticizing" the space.