week 3

In this weeks workshop we started talking about the personalization of our blogs and the structure/style conveyed in their presentation. I’m really trying to aim my blog to be more personal, although it is currently very structural I think that- that’s purely a reflection on my personality. I’m generally a very organised person sometimes at points to organised, always arriving early. It’s actually kind of humor to think lately I’ve been trying to be more ‘on time’ to things rather than early as I end up waiting around for quite a bit when I overcompensate for travel time. Besides that I really want to talk about aspect in this blog that generally interest me and link them in with my learning. We’re focusing a lot on our self portrait (short films) at the moment and I’m hoping to create mine in a way that will really reflect my personality. I’ve very interested in film, media of course and changing technology, art, music, spirituality and psychedelics. I take inspiration from the films Ex Machina, Into the Void, Whiplash, and many other new contemporary flicks which apart more as an art rather than a narrative (although all mentioned have complex story lines in themselves the cinematography is what I find more alluring). I’ll probably be focusing a lot on my cinematography so hopefully it goes well, I’ll check in on here later.

This weeks tutorials theme focused upon aspects involved in media making, and although the content watched as apart of the readings delved into the technical side- we as media makers need to learn both technical and practical in order to succeed in modern day society where competition is at an all time high (and probably will continue to grow as the population itself increases).

Now in this post I wanted to talk about something that coincides with increasing technology and also something that interests me, below I’ve shared with you a ‘TED Talks’ that discusses that the issues involving drug addiction are not caused by drugs alone, the main factor that causes addiction is issues such as Isolation, alienation and loneliness.
So in a society where we seem to appear always connected there is a darker side and a stronger disconnection in certain areas. This talk gives examples of how Heroin was used commonly during the Vietnam war but once soldiers returned home and were embraced by family the usage stopped, so how come people with addiction in modern society it isn’t that easy, a simple fact could be we think people are fine when there not, it is the illusion of connection due to social media.

It’s so easy to create a facade, a false front that sometimes we forget what people are exactly like in real life especially if we don’t see them as often as we should. There’s a saying I know that kind of relates to this image representation, “The saddest people smile the brightest.’-Anonymous.
Basically if you want to know if someones okay see them in person and ask them don’t send them a facebook message, It makes me really angry that this has become the social norm, especially around people in my age group. I once had a friend who wasn’t able to ring me up on the phone because she said she wasn’t use to it and it gave her anxiety. I didn’t understand this, go back a decade ago and it would have been one of the only ways to communicate. So social media has literally created a platform of disconnection and ‘depersonalization’ (I can’t stress the latter enough). A facebook profile isn’t necessarily personal in fact it can be the opposite a shop front for what you want people to see you as.
So as you think about why people feel so isolated in a world where we are meant to be so connected make sure you think about what connection means.

Everything You Think You Know About Addiction Is Wrong | Johann Hari | TED Talks

As there was no lectorial this week due to labour day the first post of this week is dedicated purely to  this week’s reading and video, both are discussions by David Gauntlett as he talks about aspects around ‘Making Media Studies’ (also the name of his published book).

In the video ‘Remaking how we think about the Media’ David really talks about “learning with media rather than learning about media”. His views state that generally we move forward rather than looking backward, to make media and move forward rather than describe when looking backward. He wants to refresh people’s views and values on the media by adding a creative aspect. It highlights how things work and knowing how to make a difference and you need to know how things work in order to make a difference in the first place, tying in with the learning with media rather than about it.

The blog post focused on very similar themes but also and focused on Gauntlett answering What kinds of knowledge do we need now? (A question asked by Graham Meikle who is also his colleague).

There were three main points he displayed into dot points that reflected the main areas of knowledge.

• How things work (technical and economic knowledge)
  “You need to know what technological and/or economic systems make possible, what you can and can’t potentially do with them, if you’re going to develop any kind of really informed critique of how things are currently done and the ways in which they should be done.”

•  How things feel and fit (emotional and embodied knowledge)
  “The need to build knowledge about the relationship between physical and material things, and digital items (content and software), and human ideas and feelings.”

• How to make a difference (creative and political knowledge)
  “Come up with brilliant ideas and implement them effectively in the actual world that we live in.”

Reflecting on Daivd’s words we would prefer immerse ourselves in new things compared to learning about them, to go out and do something compared to studying about how it is done. He really talks about the creative homage to media and again the idea of moving forward and not reflecting back to papers in an ever-growing industry.