this reading wasn’t too difficult or hard. it didn’t take long and despite my initial hesitations (ie: procrastination at its finest), i found it to be quite a good reading. it was definitely interesting the way it brought up different connotations and thoughts of place.

the paragraph that explained how place can be culturally dependent really got me thinking. i never thought too hard about it, how to one person syria holds meaning of warzone and danger but to someone else that is home, it’s family, it’s memories. i think this idea that place holds different meanings depending on your culture, religion, race, heritage, political views, social status, etc. can be quite a good basis for creating an interesting media piece as well. there’s a lot you can play with when looking at it from this perspective, in that, you can change perspectives, and you could even, with a lot of planning and fine tuning, make it a very thought provoking and statement piece.

as well as this paragraph, i also found it interesting how we sometimes look at place as solely a physical location – with a latitude and longitude, where there is a definite way of looking at it mentally. such as, being out of place. this gave me thoughts of things such as feeling polarised and not belonging for reasons such as bullying, illness, being gay or transgender, a different race, etc. again, this was an angle i didn’t really expect to be reading about, and it could make for great media too.

overall, i found this to be a really cool reading and it gave me a greater idea of what this course is going to be about, in terms of the media side and the actual ‘place’ side of it.