This week’s prominent discussion revolved around the concept of ‘noticing’, with particular emphasis on the media’s intangibility and ubiquitous presence around us. As a result, we were shuffled off to Melbourne Central in groups to notice the instances of media occurring around us and list them, which to me seemed fairly pointless but a decent opportunity to meet some new people.

As the group of us sat at Melbourne Central we rapidly listed the examples around us; the sounding of mobile notifications, the brand names upon the chests of the hurried masses. We quickly discovered that this was an extremely simple task – which made it all the more interesting. The fact that we were so easily able to identify such a large quantity of instances of media occurring around us indicated the dependency of modern societal function on the use and presence of media. While this isn’t a difficult concept to grasp, it’s quite astounding to really think about and recognise. Well, at least for me.

And hey, actually met some people, so certainly can’t complain about the task.

This week, while particularly heavy on introductory information and basics, had me thinking about the nature of blogging and its potential as a means of connecting people. I’m completely new to blogging and have never been particularly been obsessed with any blogs (still yet to submit to the wonders of tumblr), nor have I previously acknowledged why they may be so easy to obsess over. The idea of collective masses honing in on someone’s life simply to keep updated on their day-to-day activities always seemed to be fairly bizarre to me.

But maybe that’s the charm of it all. It takes some pretty impressive networking and social skills to be able to accumulate a mass interest in content that would generally be mundane to most. People are drawn to things that they can relate to; seeing things they can recognise through a different scope. Blogs, I feel, are one of the most personalised and humanised forms of media, as they tend to be without agenda and simply cater to whoever is genuinely interested or entertained. They’re not monitored by media moguls or conglomerates, they’re created by people, for people.

Hopefully through creating and maintaining this blog I will be inspired to follow a number of blogs that catch my interest and consider creating more of my own to connect with more likeminded people.

This week we were given three separate presentations from guest speakers, the first being Anne Lennox who spoke to us about copyright. This was quite thorough and insightful, touching on many different areas of the topic such as fair dealings and rights of ownership, and it was relevant information for us to be considering as budding media industry professionals. It switched me on to the thought that perhaps it is worth pursuing copyright for some of my musical material.

Next up Kyla Brettle, who interestingly works with sounds, served a hot dish of wisdom or two – one gem I found to be of particular note was that we aim to “become one” with the technology that we use rather than to simply manipulate it, forcing us to engage more with what we’re doing in order to reach new worlds.

Finally, Paul Ritchard gave us the rundown of what’s expected of us within the course, largely focusing on the essentiality of organisation in media practice, which is absolutely something I need to work on. While I tend to conduct myself well on set and during production, it’s the pre-planning stages that I often suffer with so that’s something I hope to exercise and develop throughout the course.

Similarly, I experienced my first ‘lectorial’ today – RMIT’s valiant attempt at integrating Newspeak into modern society. It honestly seemed to lean towards being a lecture more than a tutorial and I hope that isn’t so much the case in future ones, it did get to the point where if it weren’t for a camera shutter sound effect on a nearby phone somewhat awkwardly sounding mid-lecture I could very well have descended into a deep slumber.

In studying the reading regarding the cognitive modes of Hyper and Deep attention published by N. Katherine Hayles I was reminded of my typically erratic and distracted approach to study and made the decision to commit to more regular general reading in attempt to introduce more deep attention into my study habits. As I thought of this however I realised all of the mediums of media that I frequently and naturally do commit deep attention to – listening to music, reading into/watching material of particular interest across the internet, editing/producing audio and film, realising that these are each a result of commitment to routine and that I’m willing to deeply attend to them as I would consider them hobbies.

So the crux of it all is that I’ll hopefully condition myself to include more reading into my routine and be able to effectively and quickly read through material without taking regular banana/music/pointless-persistent-pacing-to-avoid-responsibilities breaks.

This marks my debut into blogging territory. Admittedly I dwelt on the layout and colour schemes for far too long before settling on themes not far from the default but you know, I’m serious about first impressions. That being said, I can’t say I’m a fan of how restrictive WordPress is in its layout options, I guess more than anything that just comes down to me not knowing how to operate the thing well enough but I’m gonna go ahead and blame WordPress.

We were introduced to our first project brief – a lo-fi media self-portrait – along with a couple of examples that frankly seemed pretty pretentious and unsubstantial to me. But maybe that’s the point, still trying to work it all out to be honest. Being a messily eclectic person anything I do will probably turn out extremely cluttered and just full of junk, but hey, maybe that runs with the lo-fi theme of it all. Hopefully I can put something together that I don’t lose sweat over and don’t regret later on down the line (it wouldn’t be the first time).

With all that being said, looking forward to what’s in store for the rest of the term! Keen to make some cool things.