I find the audio and visual medium to be the most challenging part of this assessment because there is just too much to consider. Do I record in a natural environment, with the aircon blaring and my mum yelling in the background, or do I isolate myself from the world and focus all the attention on me. If I go for the former then I am exposing my personal experiences, allowing people to hear and see what I go through everyday, but if I go with the latter then I begin to feel self-conscious of every little sound and expression I make. I would be embracing the camera and revealing every little insignificant factor about me. For a while I couldn’t bring myself to put a camera in front of myself and press record, nor could I listen to my own recordings of my voice. It brought back memories of when I first produced and directed my own short film for school, and made me relive all those cringe-worthy moments I felt as I watched myself on screen perform and act. Seeing something I produced played out on screen in front of my peers was the most mortifying experience of my life and this assessment is just making me feel the same things again, only this time I know that there is only embarrassment and insecurity after I click upload. But then I think about all the fun I had when I did create something I loved. I think about why I chose to follow through with media and film-making and I remember my inspirations in life and what they have accomplished. Florence + The Machine is one of the groups that have encouraged me to attempt the obscure and trial any and every idea that lands in my head, without the fear of backlash preventing me to continue forward. Their music is experimental and incredibly unique to their own type of sound. As professionals who create such intriguing and intensely expressive concepts they show me that it’s possible to do no wrong in this industry. Sure my videos could come out as frivolous and unoriginal, or weird and eccentric, either way it’s how I express myself and my opinion should be the only one that counts to judging how accurate a piece reflects myself.

I’ve included a link to F+TM’s newest single release ‘What Kind Of Man‘ and it is truly one of the most beautifully shot music videos I have encountered in a while. It is Florence in her true raw emotional state and her dancing and expressions showcase to me that even screaming in the sky can prove to be a very efficient way of expressing myself.

4 minutes and 33 seconds is all it took for me to realize that my life is never silent. John Cage’s groundbreaking masterpiece opens my ears to the constant noise that exists around me. In class I noticed the sounds of my peers and their attempts to be as silent as possible, while at home I could hear the TV playing in the living room and my sister talking to her friends on skype about the latest ‘the 100’ episode. It was safe to say that I couldn’t truly experience the magical silence that we all think Cage was trying to achieve, but I don’t believe that could have been his intention at all. Thinking of the context presented his song, the audience couldn’t have known they would be in for a whole 4 and a half minutes of supposed silence. They would have sat there in anticipation for Cage to begin his newest piece and then became uncomfortable and anxious going through all the reasons as to why he wasn’t playing anything. I think they would have been thinking: “Why hasn’t he started yet?” “Is it very soft?” “Are we to sit in silence the entire time?” “Was being silent the song?” and my favourite scenario was “This is bloody rubbish”, but I wasn’t shown Cage’s 4’33” to hypothesize what audiences would be internalizing. What I got from listening to 4’33” was that no sound is still sound, and that almost everything in my life could be recorded to become a piece of my self-portrait. My audio clip didn’t need to be speech, or even audible, it just had to be… there. All I needed was reasoning behind it and it would quantify as a part of me. That’s why I think one of my audio pieces will have no spoken word and challenge myself to find something insignificant that I hear everyday.

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)

How do people read things? Well more specifically how does it differ from person to person. Today’s lesson on Hyper and Deep attention opened the discussion on the way we should approach our reading and learning. For years the education system has been predominantly deep attention based, but with the new generation of technology evolving the way we can access information there has been a significant rise in a hyper attention style of education. For example the use of a lectorial to teach us 1st year students means that the staff in Media 1 acknowledge that the traditional lecture structure wouldn’t be as efficient in providing an engaging and effective lesson than a class that requires the students to be stimulated with various activities and discussion work.

I myself found that I hail more to the hyper attention side of the debate, yet when I do find an activity that interests me I somehow manage to tune into my subconscious deep attention. Although the new age has shifted towards a more fast paced digital era there is still a significant amount of young people engaging in deep attention activities, like watching movies or reading books. It isn’t necessarily forced deep attention, but it does only occur in specific situations and with time this generation will eventually end up growing up to find a balance between the two forms of attention, hopefully.

Personally I would enjoy to hear more on the topic and listen to other opinions on hyper and deep attention. There is bound to be a plethora of other factors that contribute to why some people can only read things intently while others can’t even stare still at a single page for more than 3 seconds. If anyone is interested in some friendly discussion feel free to utilize the amazing comment section.

Meeting the ‘Monday Crew’ awakened me to the big wide world of media and all its forms of content. In all honesty I was unsure why I chose to follow this dream of mine, but meeting everyone else who held similar views on movies and TV shows really helped me cement my decision to take this path. The first assessment seems like a great outlet for all our creative juices to flow through, and it also allows us to express ourselves to our peers without those pesky words getting in the way (although we do need to write 50 words as well). Yet I am still anxious about this year. Everything is new to me and from reading some of the other blogs from the Monday Crew I know I’m not alone. I just hope that we will all be able to leave after 3 years with the skills and knowledge we hoped to get from this experience, and to also enjoy these years together as friends.