In the workshop, Rose and I talked about photos she took on Friday of close-ups on human skin. We talked about how we were going to present them in a video by placing the photos in groups of three between white flashes. The video will be placed on a website along with all of the photos. We discussed with Mr. Rowlands the potential issues of people’s different perceptions i.e. porn vs art. We elected to ignore these worries and let people who see the video think what they think.
In the lectorial, we were given a lecture on “institutions”. We also got a talk by Paul Ritchard on work attachments for the next few semesters.
Institutions
- term from sociology
- concern with organizing structures of society
- social, cultural, political, and economics relations
- principles, values, and rules that underlay these
e.g. “Marriage” as a social institution. It is governed by a set of rules and expectations – certain values, legalities, religion, culture, and of it being widespread and communally recognized.
Media Institutions:
- are enduring
- regulate and structure activities
- are “collectivist”
- develop working practices
- employees and people associated are expected to share values
- public is aware of the status
We were then told to, as a group, to brainstorm the institutional characteristics of Facebook, Newscorp, Google, and Community Media. My area focused on Google.
After this activity, Raul Ritchard talked to us about work attachments. We were encouraged to do multiple attachments so we have more to write about for our 1500 word report (not on this blog, better to do it on a private word document or google drive) and to quickly fill up the 80 hours. He hopes it will be somewhere that we will actually learn something and not just filing papers. When we do an attachment, the admin people send in a form to the employer for the supervisor to fill out and return (if the attachment happened recently, and not months beforehand). We are, thankfully, completely covered by the RMIT insurance policies so we don’t have to worry about injuries or mistakes but we are still encouraged not to make mistakes).
I decided to book an appointment with Mr. Ritchard for 8:15 on Wednesday the 13th of May to see if he can help me find an appropriate attachment (preferably near where I live). To get him to approve an attachment (before contacting an employer and before he sends forms to the employer) we just e-mail him the general details of what we want to do and he says “yes” or “no”. Hopefully I can find something good and soon to get the 80 hours over and done with.