Media aesthetics examines five basic aesthetic image elements that provide the aesthetic materia—the raw material—of cinema, television, and computer-generated images: light and color, two-dimensional space, three-dimensional space, time-motion, and sound. In comparison to semiotics, which is useful but limited to the decoding of messages and deconstruction of texts, the theoretical concepts of media aesthetics enjoy a greatly expanded use—the construction of messages and media texts. The aesthetic fields, rather than their specific elements, ultimately determine the degree of clarification and intensification of the screen event and the resulting meta-messages that establish the context for their interpretation by the audience. Meta-messages set the perceptual agenda for the viewers. They are created not by explicit narrative but by the more elusive aesthetic production variables. The control of light and shadows, commonly called lighting, is therefore one of the major aesthetic components. Despite the craze of making television screens larger and larger, their relatively small size is a true aesthetic asset.
