21 April
In week seven’s lectorial, Brian introduced the topic of ‘texts’ in media. What is a text? One quote that was included in the lectorial presentation was:
‘Material traces that are left of the practice of sense-making, the only empirical evidence we have of how other people make sense of the world’
Robert McKee
This ambiguous description is not entirely easy to determine the actual definition of a ‘text’. Considering my personal opinion of what a ‘text’ in media, I would write the following definition:
A determined constructed idea or artefact through media-related mediums that’s definement as a ‘text’ is imperatively dependent on the analytical possibilities of itself
After a brief but broad introduction into what a ‘text’ is, the lectorial moved onto an interesting topic that is familiar due to previous study of it: the semiotic tradition of analysis. Learning about the semiotics of textual analysis in 2015’s Lectorial 7 allowed me to recall my learnings of it from 2013. It is one of those things that is so distinctive – so intellectually stimulating – that your understanding of it never wanes. I learnt about the semiotics of textual analysis in Senior English Extension, where I was also privileged to be taught modernism and postmodernism, psychoanalytic theory, and structuralism and post-structuralism (which was coincidentally also mentioned in the lectorial). ‘Sign’ is the term that has etched itself onto my mind vis-a-vis semiotic analysis. The relationship between ‘signifier’ and ‘signified’ is something that is pervasive across all media ‘texts’. Perhaps I will revisit semiotic analysis theory for Project Brief 4?
Time for Brian to sit down; Jasmine’s turn.
The second half of the seventh Media One lectorial focused on the introduction to sound in media and its ubiquitous nature in everyday society. The first focus on sound and of vital importance regarded the perspective of sound in relation to our ears’ altering of reality, as the ears:
…hierarchise elements of what is represented
This hierarchy of sound can be easily understood through mind-altering substances internal functions on the brain (the legality of which is irrelevant); the ears are at their highest strength in hierarchising sounds.