Today we had a lecture on media affordances, in particular sound.  I never thought that a whole 2 hour lecture on one a fundamental element of our human body could be so interesting and intriguing.  A whole two hours talking about listening as opposed to hearing.  I love coming to my media classes as I’m always learning new things and meeting new people and it’s great to learn new things from peers.

So, what I’ve taken from this lecture is that our ears are so vital in our lives (of course I already knew that, but I mean in terms of media).  We are constantly absorbing the soundscape around us.  Filtering unwanted sounds and tuning into sounds we like.  It’s like if you stand in a noisy room you can be tuned out to all conversations and only be listening to the hum of voices, but if some one says your name I guarantee you will hear it.  It’s about what we tune into.  Perhaps what entertains or spikes our interest is what our ears will become attentive to and listen into.  If our name is said then of course we are going to be curious.  Sound is a very complex thing.  Wavelengths, frequency, amplitude, pitch, timbre, harmonics, loudness, rhythm.  All these things make up what we hear.  And the brain can chose what is important to listen to or what we need to listen to while only hearing the background noise.  No one could argue the the brain is not impressive.

In media, there are so many types of sound:

• Speech (narration, interviews etc)
• Music (live/recorded)
• Sounds (sound FX, spot sound)
• Noise (unintended)

I’m really looking forward to continuing to study the complexities of media if this lecture is any form of introduction.