This week’s lectorial had us discussing the reading by David Gauntlet.
Gauntlet plainly states and believes that Media is something that we are all actively involved in, it’s not something we sit back and analyse, but something we do by creating, collaborating and networking.
‘It’s about learning with media, rather than about’..

A do and tell, rather than a show and tell.

The exert on page 3 resonated with me in particular, given my background in design, Gauntlet gives us an analogy between exploring ideas through design research, an area I’ve been immersed in for a few years.
For example, an exhibition I designed last year took months and months of trial and error before landing on a final design. Budgets had to be considered for not only the final product but the initial testing on top of it.
The same is said of media, successful marketing campaigns and block busters didn’t materialise overnight – ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’.
Many failed attempts precede every succession and it’s those that persevere and don’t let failure push them back that are the motivators and influencers of today.

The second half of the lectorial had us take to the streets in groups of 5 to destinations around the Melbourne, allocated to us to Brian.
Our group set off down Bourke Street mall and collected various media examples we found from varying perspectives.
Branding and media was everywhere we looked, on the ground, in the sky, at eye level, right in front of us, on us – for those of us wearing branded clothing (adidas).
It was inescapable once you switched yourself on and realised just how inundated and overloaded we are on a daily basis.
What’s even more scary is that the majority of it slips into our subconscious and we’re not aware of all the exterior stimuli and we think that we’ve gone into H&M merely because we ‘chose to’ or because we ‘needed something’ – we were drawn in probably through an advertisement we saw a month ago, or a ‘tag dag’ we saw walk by us with the branding hanging out, or through conversation with a friend of ours who said they went there recently.