Art, cinema and post-production, in the book 'The Screen is the Message'

The collective book 'The Screen is the Message. Proposals from Art, Cinematography and Digital Post-Production', edited by Mario-Paul Martínez and Fran Mateu, proposes a reflection on the digital image and its role in contemporary visual culture starting from a question: "is there an audiovisual product today that has not been treated in post-production?"

In dialogue with the famous sentence of Marshall McLuhan (“the medium is the message”), The Screen is the Message. Proposals from Art, Cinematography and Digital Post-Production part of the thesis that not only the contents, but also the screen itself and the “formats of the media”, have been reformulated based on the post-production speeches. In this way, a cultural space has been created in which any image or video, whether in the context of cinema, TV or the Internet, passes through the impositions of digital retouching or even by those of the Artificial intelligence.

The Screen is the Message addresses, from this perspective, issues related to manifestations and the creators that have led to this peculiar panorama of the visual, tracing a genealogy of its production processes from the tradition of cinema or painting, to more current trends such as post-photography, virtual reality or art generated through AI itself. It does this through a series of chapters signed by international authors, which claim the expressive possibilities exercised by post-production on aspects such as documentation and visual memory, technology applied to art, the construction of interactive narratives, or the integration of special effects, among other examples.

In this diversity of voices and approaches, The Screen is the Message takes a transversal look at the ecosistema audiovisual actual, in which post-production and visual effects cease to be a simple means and become the visible face of a cultural transformation. Its first public presentation, with the participation of its editors and several of its authors, will take place on Thursday February 5, 2026 at 7:00 p.m. in the Alicante Institute of Culture Juan Gil-Albert, with free access until capacity is reached.