On Tuesday, I went to a studio workshop class for Media students further into their degree to get a better understanding of what to expect. It was a class about documentary film making, and it was very, very interesting. It was concerned much more with the philosophical aspects of media than I expected, rather than the actual creating of media projects, though that was obviously still an integral part of the class.
What I was drawn to was a point the tutor made, which was we need to be concerned with what things do, rather than what they are. This was further extended to talk about the fact that the artifact (or piece of media created) imposes meaning on the producer/creator, and not the other way around. For example, a director is only recognised as a director, if they have actually directed a film. Someone who claims to be a director but hasn’t actually directed any films, isn’t really a director at all. It was interesting to think that the media that we create, actually imposes its own meaning onto us, rather than the other way around.