Initiative | Michael Firus

Media Audit: The Train

Unless it’s your very first time, you probably spend the majority of our commute glued to that kaleidoscope of information: the mobile handset. But if one’s newsfeed was hypothetically all caught up on, maybe one would start to notice the multitude of other mediated information sources around and outside the carriage: All station signs along…

Media Audit: Oakleigh Train Station

Every university day, I find myself in this little corner of the universe. It can be a place of frustration, but sometimes this negativity can be transformed into constructive reflection. Que the Media Audit: Advertising posters Directional signs and upcoming train display. (shutter speed causes deleterious effects to LED displays) LCD Display Last-minute…

Textual Analysis: History, Wider Context and Importance

Textual analysis is something that is done to some extent constantly and everywhere. Alongside humanity’s development of written language, the need for mutual understanding between the communicator and the communicant grew. At least this was how it most likely was early on. As the idea of culture developed and people began to formulate more and…

Media Audit: My Desk

My desk is a place of concentration, procrastination, entertainment, panic, serenity, research, curiosity, technology and clutter. Generally though, distraction is not what I’m going for. However, it is interesting that even in my innermost sanctum there is a crowd of persistent voices. This is a media audit of my desk. Myki and wallet logo…

Sounds of the Environment

When you think of a particular place, what is evoked? For instance, if I told you to bring to mind your High-school library… what would you recall? For me, it was the distracting noise that the door made whenever someone opened it. It sounded like someone was scraping carpet with a hairbrush. But I was…

Experimental Film

Experimental film is a rather difficult area of cinema to define. These, however, are its general characteristics: Experimental films are deliberately nonconformist and usually independent of the commercial elements of film-making. Usually instead of a story in a conventional sense, sentiment, mood, or viewpoint are used to construct meaning. Some examples: Ballet Mécanique (1923–24): Ballet…

Sound – Not Just Heard?

With all the discussion on the importance of sound, I began to wonder what a member of the deaf community could contribute to the discussion. My sister, Caroline, is 13 and has been profoundly deaf since birth. This means that she can hear almost nothing of the things we take for granted unaided. She can,…

Sound affects (not effects)

When someone has the same notification tone as you do, we all occasionally experience a split second where it seems that it must be us getting an unexpected message. Some of us are even on the way to checking the screen before realize that we aren’t quite that popular. This first-world problem intensifies with the…

Trailer: Holy Motors, Leos Carax’s tentatively categorized fantasy drama is one of those films. One of those films where no one is completely sure what on earth is going on. This is because the film explicitly rejects any sort of logical structure or definitive interpretation. However, my opinion on the issue of the films interpretation…

Mediated or Nay?

I’m pretty sure the notion has passed through everyone’s mind at some stage. Whether subconscious or deliberate, we’ve all made up our minds at each moment which we prefer. To communicate in front of a living, breathing human or to be on the other end of kilometers of radio waves and copper (or fiber…