In the second Lectorial of my first semester here at RMIT, a number of interesting pieces of information caught my eye from both the lecture itself and also the reading and exercise following. A number of questions were raised and answered as media texts were identified as ‘Sites where meanings are generated through the manipulation of materials and codes’. This definition puts emphasis on the fact that these texts, of which there many, do not simply ‘picture’ or ‘reflect’ where meaning resides. Media texts express many meanings to viewers and the general population in many ways, some subtle and some not so subtle. The activity involved splitting into groups and spreading out to different spots in the city to see what different kinds of media there was, and opening our senses to realize that there were a lot more than we first noticed.
Media has changed rapidly from a pre-modern society in which the social world is predominantly experienced through face to face interaction and direct experience to a modern society predominantly experienced through media texts such as maps, shows or newspapers. These new texts are everywhere you look, if you just open your eyes to them. Following finding a large number of media texts/objects in the city, a question was raised in my mind. Is all this new advertising good? or in a world where we are used to doing everything online and flooded with advertising around every corner, can it be bad? In my opinion it is a bit of both, making things both easier and complicated depending on a persons level of thinking. Below is a list of the different mediated interactions/communications which I encounted while assigned to the Queen Victoria Building in the city for the activity.
Up High
– Childrens Book Festival banner, hung on posts
– Strictly Ballroom musical advert board, on top of a tram
– $19 All day parking sticker, stuck on a window
– Security Cameras
On the Ground
– Telstra phone booth, with a free wi-fi symbol
– Graffiti on the ground, advertising a graffiti crew
Mid-Ground
– Recycling bin, promoting cleanliness with writing
– Face to Face worker at riot store
Back-Ground
– Bank Logo(ANZ) placed in store
– Harvey Norman sign behind balcony
Foreground
– Vodafone flag outside floor, enabling passers by to see the Vodafone store without turning there heads
In Your Hand
– Phone
– Google Maps
Before this activity, I and many others would have taken these for granted, but following and reflecting on this I have realized just how many mediated communications there really are. They are hardly noticeable but still manage to get in your head and display lots of meaning such as advertising, educating or entertaining the user. The more you look for something, the more you are likely to find it, and the less care you give to something, the less likely you are to notice and control what you are thinking/seeing. Mediated communications and texts play a huge role in speaking to the user whether they notice and understand it or not. I have attached a number of examples below such as images and a recording displaying the interactions/communications our group connected with.
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