I entered late in the class but was welcomed with the famous Uncle Sam’s picture

I expected that their might be something that they (lecturer) would want us to do something in the end. Brian talked us about how Media is everywhere around us and that we have been immersed into the technological world. The minute we wake up in the morning, we find ourselves interacting with media. Cell phones, t.v, advertisement, billboard signs and even a stop sign is a particular media text that encodes us a meaning and we as the audience decode and act to it unconsciously or maybe intentionally depending upon how focused are we into that particular text. These texts as told by Brian have been changed from face to face interaction to media texts and digital format. I had to actually think that how many media texts I saw coming from home to university, its strange that there are so many texts that we avoid unconsciously but never stay to interpret it. Brian also talked about the difference of what media and reality is with the example of Big Ben shown in media and what you actually see in real life.

The second part of the lecture was fun, Rachel talked how noticing is important in media and that it helps us in future practice as we may copy or take inspirations from these media extracts. It also acts as a learning agent for a media practitioner. We had a small ‘silence’ exercise’ inspired from John Cage’s ‘4:33’ silence. Rachel asked us to be ‘silent’ for 33 seconds. During that time, I began to notice the sounds of the ambience, Doors bashing, keyboard clicks, chair moving, aircon, projector, coughing. All of these sounds made a composition of its own, so basically, what I thought of silence is not the same silence, there is actually sound present. Its like the same concept as when we say the room is dark but actually there is just absence of light.

In the end each of us were appointed in a group and each group had to notice ‘Mediated Communication’ in a particular area. I was in group 5 so my area was Federation Square. I’ll post in my next blog of what I noticed over there.