What I was going for in this project was to highlight my fears and insecurities (which are highlighted through my photos), and contrast these with my video and audio posts whiich are about comfort, joy, and excitement. The text at the end is where the two ends of my emotions/personality meet, and how they work together.
I’m not sure I like my execution. I had another idea early on which I was very much attached to, however it was too much of a risk and, as my photo pieces show, fear tends to hold me back. This other idea, however, continuously played on my mind while creating this piece, and I think that if I invested more into this idea rather than dwelling on another idea, it would have been executed far better. I was also physically unable to get some of the media I wanted to, and had to use stand ins (such as the shower audio in place of a storm). That being said, I really like my idea and several of the pieces (such as the cat purring audio, the waterfront video, and a majority of my photos).
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This weeks reading was the Introduction chapter from Making Media Studies by David Gauntlett. I found this reading very challenging, despite agreeing with many of the points the author was making. I felt that it could have been structured differently, or even that some information could have been cut out (such as the ‘Origins of this book’ sub-chapter). But the chapter, and the lecture, brought forward some very interesting ideas about the media, such as the idea of it being a ‘trigger for experience.’
In the past, I have been very vocal about media, especially social media, being a trigger for social and political change. Of course, news outlets are also a major player in this game, but I had never considered the smaller scale experiences that are triggered by the media, such as laughing at a funny film.
After the lecture, we were sent out to find as much media as we could in a selected area. My group was sent to Southbank. There was a surprising lack of digitized media outdoors at Southbank. A majority of the media was printed signage, such as street signs, printed advertising, and even brands printed on fashion. Another major form of media was artwork; specifically sculptures. There were also buskers, an acoustic media. Digital media didn’t really manifest until we were indoors (in a McDonalds, of all things). They used digital screens to advertise their products, but also had a missing persons notice and the weather update, which drew attention immediately. There was music playing over the speakers. The McDonalds also had newspapers, a very traditional news communication media, which was in stark contrast to the rest of the modern, eye-catching media.
Despite the contrast between the outdoor and indoor media, one thing that stayed very much the same was mobile phones. Everyone in our group, and everyone around us, checked their phones often. I only checked my phone twice, but that was more due to not having pockets to keep my phone in than lack of want.
In this lecture we looked at hyper attention (characterized by constant changes in attention while performing tasks) vs deep attention (characterized by focusing on one thing for a long period of time). The text, while having some great imagery, was difficult to me to focus on, which puts in me in the ‘hyper attention’ category for this reading. It may not seem like it (because I am trying incredibly hard to sound smart right now) but I am not a fan of sentences in which a majority of the words have more than 8 letters. However this is more likely a product of my upbringing and surroundings. We’re in the golden age of social media. I look at 5 different social media apps in the space of 5 minutes. I can absorb information like a sponge when all it involves is glancing at a headline like “Donald Trump At It Again” or “Beyonce Pregnant With Twins”. But when it comes to sitting and giving all my attention to one thing? That is a difficult task for me. I have edited this blog post 10 times at this point. I just edited it again. Deep attention is hard, and absolutely necessary if we ever want to get things done in a timely matter, or understand history, or study.
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