~”Behind every pair of eyes is a life full of stories”

~”Our Media moves so fast that it’s gone before it’s really even there”

I have been thinking a lot about age and time lately and how important and prevalent it seems to be in society. I think media is so intimately intertwined with the ways in which we know ourselves and our lives. There’s this sort of conflicting electricity between a yearning for the past and a longing for the future. The back and forth fire between wanting to pause time and stay young forever against desiring the unknown and to keep growing and progressing in life. As much as a 21 year old would insist that they never wanted to grow old, if you promised them they could live their 20’s on repeat forever, at the end of the day I just really don’t believe they could want that. It’s why the principles of groundhog day are so frightening.

In it’s own way media has the ability to stop time. Through the various aspects of media in our lives we are able to revel in those bitter-sweet feelings of nostalgia and experience a time physically distant to us.  It is in itself also a reflection of time as purely through the progression of media devices it is blatantly clear how quickly our media technology is changing and growing.

Media has the power to not only prompt memory but to also create a memory and an understanding that we never would have previously known. For instance seeing a picture of yourself in the womb or watching a film of yourself  playing as an infant gives us the opportunity to know and experience ourselves in a time and place that never would have existed to us otherwise. Media in our lives and the lives existing all around us tell intricate and unique stories of the world and of who or how we are as human beings. It says a lot about the human condition.

In my written letter at the beginning of the semester I said how I was deeply interested in exploring older styles of media and how I believed perhaps the incorporation of elements such as skill, patience, and passion into the usage of creating media not only affects us as practitioners but as people. Along with the progression and development of high-tech and fast modes of media our society has become so chronically switched on, instantaneous and expectant. I really believe that the ways and wonders of old media allow us the opportunity to slow down, to appreciate, and to be satisfied with the world around us.

For my final project brief I really want to attempt to tie all of these loose thoughts and ideas together to create some sort of synchronic media that tells a story of life, time, growth, and change and I want to do this through the use of various modes of old and new media. By combining media styles I hope to somehow gauge what the end differences are in terms of the aesthetic and more subjective variances. I want to see how the final product’s look not only physically appears but how it affects it’s viewer feel internally, what feelings or thoughts it stirs and moves.

This whole semester we have looked a lot at how we as humans are drawn to that human aspect present and existent in the things around us. We crave connection, to see and feel the soul in whatever it is we experience in our lives. I believe that media and a sense of story are two such powerful elements in making us understand who we are as people in this world and what or who we want and love in our lives. I think a part of the human condition is the need to feel something and to feel it strongly. It makes us feel alive and there really is nothing much better then feeling alive.