Week 2’s lectorial mentioned a famous piece by John Cage called 4’33”.  When it was mentioned that all media students need to hear the piece as a ‘ride of passage’ I was thinking somewhere along the lines of:
Media is so broad, what single composition could possibly be so monumental that it’s needed to be touched on in the second week of our degree? Beethoven?  Tchaikovsky?  Lady Gaga?

Nope.  It’s a 4 minute and 33 second piece of complete silence which is a totally genius concept because it forces you to become aware of every little sound in your surroundings.  We ‘listened’ to 30 seconds and to be honest I don’t think I could take the whole 4 and a half minutes due to my general animosity towards silence.  I think I would’ve been straight up uncomfortable being in the audience who first saw the performance of a man who sat down, turned to the piano and sat there in silence for the length of a song before taking a bow and leaving.  He was trying to get across the point that silence does not exist.  Sound is everywhere and media is everywhere.  Which was the gist of this weeks lectorial; Media is everywhere.