Recently I’ve been issued a group assignment in which we must produce a media artefact (sound, film, photograph, artwork or a combination) the only guideline being that it creatively engages and responds to one of five central concepts of Media. Our group was assigned “texts” which resulted in three blank faces and one combined sub-vocal groan of dismay. What do they mean texts? Like SMS? Emoji’s? Surely not classic English literature? I have had enough sleepless nights contemplating the contextual motivation behind Jane Austin’s romantic feminist perspective and god help me now if I’m to remember everything I forgot about Shakespeare when I burnt my notes in the bonfire.
Today though I can rest somewhat assured that we will NOT be unpacking Frankenstein nor comparing its literary techniques to other gothic novels. Indeed “texts” from a media perspective involves film, audio, documents, fiction, non-fiction, both visible and confidential, even extending as far as architectural design. Furthermore, our approach should be one that works closely with the effect of media texts, the intended meaning of the producer and the meaning(s) received by the audience.
From this new perspective of “texts” I can agree when UTS professor Alan McKee said “Texts are the material traces that are left of the practice of sense-making” (2003: p.15)that on a timeline of history various producers, authors and artists have left us clues as to how we can make sense of our society, our context, from an individual or collective perspective. McKee goes further to say that texts are “the only empirical evidence we have of how other people make sense of the world”, but this involves a much more analytical way of thinking, one that I hope to explore throughout this project.
I look now to further engage with the interaction between producer and audience, to perceive how audiences engage with materials and the ways in which this creates cultural and social value. As thus, to effectively analyse, we must appreciate first the ambiguity of media texts – how their meanings can be interpreted in various ways, due to the dissimilarities in audiences formal, social and ideological codes; and the play in the process – the inevitable difference, on whatever scale, between the producers intended message, meaning and evoked response, to the audiences reading, interpretation and understanding. What I most look forward to is finding my own approach to critically analysing semiotics in which I can enhance not only my understanding of a text’s meaning but my understanding of the audience’s reception and how the skills a producer utilises to achieve this.