Meta-reference is a category of self-references occurring in many media or media artifacts like published texts/documents, films, paintings, TV series, comic strips, or video games. It includes all references to, or comments on, a specific medium, medial artifact, or the media in general. These references and comments originate from a logically higher level within any given artifact, and draw attention to—or invite reflection about—media-related issues of said artifact, specific other artifacts, or to parts, or the entirety, of the medial system. It is, therefore, the recipient's awareness of an artifact's medial quality that distinguishes meta-reference from more general forms of self-reference. Thus, meta-reference triggers media-awareness within the recipient, who, in turn "becomes conscious of both the medial status of the work" as well as "the fact that media-related phenomena are at issue, rather than (hetero-)references to the world outside the media." Although certain devices, such as mise-en-abîme, may be conducive to meta-reference, they are not necessarily meta-referential themselves. However, innately meta-referential devices constitute a category of meta-references.
Manet, The Balcony
Self-reference is a concept that involves referring to oneself or one's own attributes, characteristics, or actions. It can occur in language, logic, mathematics, philosophy, and other fields.
Drawloom, with drawboy above to control the harnesses, woven as a repeating pattern in an early-1800s piece of Japanese silk. The silk illustrates the means by which it was produced.
A self-referencing work of graffiti apologizing for its own existence
Self-referential graffiti. The painter drawn on a wall erases his own graffiti, and may be erased himself by the next facade cleaner.
