What, When, Where, How, Who?
Media
Introduction, Important Definitions and Related Concepts:
In the arts, media (plural of medium) are the materials and techniques used by an artist to produce a work. The arts is a broad subdivision of culture, composed of many expressive disciplines. In modern usage, it is a term broader than "art", which usually means the visual arts (comprising both fine art, decorative art, and crafts). The arts encompasses visual arts, performing arts, language arts, culinary arts, and physical arts.[citation needed] Many artistic disciplines involve aspects of the various arts, so the definitions of these terms overlap to some degree. The definition of an artist is wide-ranging and covers a broad spectrum of activities to do with creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The normal meaning in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only. The term is often used in the entertainment business, especially in a business context, for musicians and other performers (less often for actors). "Artiste" (the French for artist) is a variant used in English only in this context. Use of the term to describe writers, for example, is certainly valid, but less common, and mostly restricted to contexts like criticism. Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate,")[1] generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activities significance and importance. Cultures can be "understood as systems of symbols and meanings that even their creators contest, that lack fixed boundaries, that are constantly in flux, and that interact and compete with one another"[2] Different definitions of "culture" reflect different theoretical bases for understanding, or criteria for evaluating, human activity. Culture is manifested in music, literature, lifestyle, painting and sculpture, theater and film and similar things.[3] Although some people identify culture in terms of consumption and consumer goods (as in high culture, low culture, folk culture, or popular culture),[4] anthropologists understand "culture" to refer not only to consumption goods, but to the general processes which produce such goods and give them meaning, and to the social relationships and practices in which such objects and processes become embedded. For them, culture thus includes art, science, as well as moral systems. Cultural Anthropologists most commonly use the term "culture" to refer to the universal human capacity and activities to classify, codify and communicate their experiences symbolically. This capacity has long been taken as a defining feature of humans. (although some primatologists have identified aspects of culture among humankind's closest relatives in the animal kingdom).[5]
