Uni as we know it is coming to a close, and it is time for us to realize we’re waist high in shite. With one eye on our homework one eye on the approaching end of semester, and one eye on everything that isn’t school-related to give us some sense of escape, us three eyed freak students all unify and say “help”.
As much as I loved it and how much it got me looking forward for next semester, this weeks lecture didn’t help. I thought I’d be happy about the lack of readings, but as I have slowly began to sacrifice more food, sleep and energy for homework it has dawned upon me that we are fast running out of time.
Still though, I bloody can’t wait for the studios; to actually be creating media, to make a mark and be able to say “yo, I helped make this.” I kinda have to pass this semester first though. Suffice to say it’s going to be an interesting week!
Good luck to all, Merry cramming and remember: caffeine, sugar, and crack are your friends.

I won’t lie, that class got me worried. With the impending due date for PB4 coming faster and faster in its approach, I was a tad worried. After handing in what was admittedly not the greatest rough cut of the audio essay, I was quite frankly shitting bricks. I hadn’t done enough and there wasn’t much time to fix what had been done. But it wasn’t as bad as I had thought. Yes it wasn’t the worst thing ever, but it was a starting point for us. in having a third party view what we had done we were able to realize what was needed to be done; separately the three of us had created what seemed like 3 body paragraphs of an expository essay, so why not complete it as such, and work together to create an intro and complete this shiznit. We were behind and had poor communication, but after that class we slightly more ahead than before with somewhat more decent communication. We were on the rise.

What a lot to take take. I don’t think even Dick Smith could have had something so jam-packed. Up until this point I had completely forgotten about the work attachment for the course, so it was somewhat of a surprise for Brian to say “YO BITCHEZ, Y’ALL GON’ BE IN THE FIELD OF WORKIN’ ‘N’ SHIZ” (slight paraphrasing). Not only do we have to do 80 hours of work and a 1,500 word report, but ALSO actually interacting with people in the industry, (which means talking and being professional somehow), and I’ll be damned if I don’t say that that’s daunting. Should maybe almost definitely be fun.
Oh yeah, we also discussed technology and its progression in society as well as its development in culture, cementing itself as a new grounding on which we found society and progress itself, comparing success to the advancement of technology. It was neat.

This weeks’ readings did a swell job on elaborating on the definition of technology; taking what is seemingly a simple question and turning it into a 500 page headache, for technology is everything; representing the forefront of popular culture and the scientific world, being the latest advancement in equipment (even notions and ideals) that may better society or make even the most mundane task easier. In that, it’s rather difficult to specifically pinpoint what technology actually IS or what it defines. the laptop I’m writing this on? TECHNOLOGY! The phone that keeps distracting me? TECHNOLOGY! That one jaffle maker you remember having as a kid that was amazing but unfortunately broke then all jaffles that you had after were comparatively disappointing? TECHNOLOGY! Even those three dozen alarms that decide to sound in Bowen street every second is is technology. It’s a beautiful world when you look at technology and think “wow, someone actually improved on something and designed THIS”. Then again, there are some days when you look at some things and think “how the Hell was this an improvement!?” or “was this the best they could do?” (seriously, jaffle maker at home… I hate you). Oh well!

Institutions, institutions, institutions.  This is  a word that I had always heard and I always knew but for a long time never really understood, like ‘dichotomy’, or ‘fastidious’  or ‘friendship’. But this Monday I finally got my answer despite being able to read a dictionary for the last 15 years!
I had never realized how much power they held in the scheme of things; being able to shape our day to day lives and how we consume texts. And so like the Dutch controlling the export of diamonds in Africa, so too do institutions effectively control what media we have access to, being the ones who endorse and fund many programs and both make and enforce the rules of the industry, and that’s some freaky, scary stuff, yo. I’m sure there’s much more to this subject than what I’m saying here, but this is merely a brief interpretation.

This weeks readings focuses on the incorporation of social media into everyday life and media itself, incorporated by institutions to to create greater inter-connectivity between platforms and broaden the reach between a product or text. With the integration of advertising and endorsement of media within social media, the way we access and consume modern media has substantially changed; opting to use social media as the main source of customer interaction and preference for advertisement in a bid to expand their viewing demographic, many broadcasting services have either flourished or greatly diminished in power of the last few years. Partially due to their acceptance of change, their reluctance or even their inability due to legal constraints in blurring the line between social and public commercialization.  Having surpassed this initial awkward phase of integration, media based institutions have seamlessly incorporated themselves into our everyday lives with every like, tweet, favourite or hashtag.

I consider video games to be a huge part of modern media, being a highly immersive text, but regardless of my taste in games or my standpoint on them… THIS IS HOW YOU MAKE A GOOD TRAILER. Despite being short, which likely helped it, this was a fun trailer to watch. It showed a great amount of content without revealing too much of the product and it looked cinematically gorgeous.
Some trailers are made to confuse with mystery, some are made to seem intriguing, some are made to be funny, somber, aggressive, fun. This trailer was made to be exciting. (And it’s always fun to have trailers that are cut in time with their accompanying music, I love that, particularly when the music is purposely MADE fort he trailer.)
It may just be the pretty colours, flashy lights, deep tones and textures which I find subconsciously appealing, like war based Candy Crush, but I’ll be damned if I say that I didn’t enjoy this trailer.

This week’s workshop was interesting to me as that we delved into the exploration of media audience as well as the institution that is media now; going through history back to the inception of the printing press and its effects on both media and audiences alike to how media is consumed today. In this, we further went into how are views are changed by media, looking at the Middle East as an example of how coverage of incidents over there from pro and anti-terrorism outlets can assume the existence of both a passive and active audience.
But what about the Western world? Audience participation in media has long been debated as to what effect it may yield, yet we participate in media more ways than most of us realise: television ratings, social media chatter, internet voting, even complaints/aggregation act as hard evidence now that audience has power over media and how we have the ability to change how it is produced. The reception and production of media has changed as that how we access media has changed.

This weeks readings showed how the definition of the word ‘audience’ has changed over the last few centuries; from ‘to give hearing’, a small group of people to bare witness, to the modern term of a mass group of people whom consume texts in various ways, regardless of presence. It was fascinating to see how the ‘audiences’ have changed in relation to the progression and advancement of media.
This got me thinking a few things; what will define an audience in the future? Or have we already peaked in terms of how we are defined? Can we control what we are an audience to?More and more it seems harder to do this as that we are constantly surrounded texts, consuming it both consciously and subconsciously.  Additionally, if we watch something once do we count as an audience? Technically yes – regardless of how long something is viewed for, whether it be on TV or YouTube (or any other viewing platform) viewings are counted, so will this come into account and add onto how an audience is defined?

Food for thought!

Personally, last weeks’ workshop really helped kick off the study for me. Prior to the workshop I was mostly just rummaging through old notes and coming up with what I already knew to write down and see what ideas and concepts I could create, and whilst that did help, I found that I was becoming limited within my field; needing external resources and information if i wanted to get anywhere with this assignment.
Which is why this workshop helped me, all of us really, so much. By actually allocating time to specifically go out my my way to research others’ notes and studies, I was able to see far more compelling arguments, theories and see concepts within those to base the assessment off.

My head hurts. I need to blog more. Get back on this thinking train and put on my conductors hat to go to the destination where poor wording and bad analogies go to die.