Eyes Open
Don’t think about cats. Well now you can’t stop thinking about cats probably. Once you’ve thought about something or seen something you can’t just unsee it. It’s like when someone tells you about a very tiny unseen detail in a movie and now everytime you watch that film you can’t help but notice it. Well that’s what happened today walking through Melbourne Central. Once I started to ‘notice’ the millions of tiny influences media had on our environment I couldn’t go back. It started off small, a few bike racks, a tourist taking a photo on a selfie-stick, but then you look up and notice the huge advertisements and the branding war Optus had with Telstra. Once you saw the branding you saw the complete lack of low lighting and quiet. There was just constant noise everywhere you went, especially coming from each individual clothing store or cafe. And then once you get past the lights and electronic ads surrounding you, you realize that this kind of environment can only be home in the busy CBD. All the media was so condensed and contained to such a confined amount of space that it was no wonder everyone was competing with everything else. But you could also notice the abundance of wifi-centric signs, signs asking customers to rate them online, or to like them on facebook. At the beginning of the task I knew I was in for some mobile related artefacts but almost everything was inundated with proposals to go on our phones and digitally appreciate a store. It just reflects how much that technology has overrun our lives and with that media in general. I mean how dependent are we now on our phones, and how much do we sacrifice just for free wifi?
Anyway, some more media related things I noticed were
- billboards
- graffiti
- pop-stores
- QR scanner codes
- branded shopping bags
- minimalist window displays
- security cameras
- poster advertisements
- electronic advertisements
- free wifi signs (a lot of them)