Final Project Idea

My final project is going to be an interactive performance piece. I am going to give the class complete access to the forms of media I use everyday, my social networking pages, my ipod, my cellphone. I want them to look through and come up with their judgements about what type of self, I perform outside of the classroom through the usage of my media. In order to create a documentation of their thoughts, I am going to ask them to write down their views on my body in order to create a physical representation of my virtual self. I am going to make a spectacle of self.

Sense and the City

I’ve been watching Sex and the City all weekend, its been one of those times and my title made me chuckle. Anywho, the readings this week were fun for me. I don’t really understand why cityplanning and places are included in media studies but they are and doing readings on the subject at least opened my eyes to the type of issues they deal with.

I really enjoyed the Zardini’s point that today especially in New York City, the main focus on contemporary urban space is security. I recently visited the WTC memorial downtown for the first time and I was blown away by the amount of security at the place. It ended up annoying me. After waiting in line and being herded like sheep, everyone had to go through metal detectors and multiple check points to finally get it. I understand the need for some security but this just went overboard. The amount of money (our money as taxpayers) that goes to keeping this place safe is insane! There was no need for 3 checkpoints, one would have sufficed but that is not the world we live in. 

Once you get in, the countless security cameras surround the space. To connect this to senses, it was very odd. I felt like my space was being invaded. I knew I wasn’t doing anything wrong but the countless security cameras and presence made me feel like everyone who was there  was under accusation. It reminded me of being in Egypt, where security guards are present with machine guns at all government run places. The massive show of security creates an anxiety for the people who navigate those spaces.

Sense for me in terms of city spaces are never just limited to the visual. Smell is a constantly on your mind as you move through a city. Having lived in both Chinatown and the Upper East Side, trust me, the smell of those neighborhoods are very different. Smells of a city can alert you to what part of it you are in. It only makes sense for planners and architects to take into consideration all the senses when they are designing something and this revolution of study is a good one to take place. Howes gave a good sense of history and how this sensory study came about. The trajectory from linguistic to pictorial to finally sensory made sense of how the studies reflect the important values that were being held up at the time. I enjoyed how these readings connected architecture to other areas of cultural study and focus at the time.

Internet and gay community

I really enjoyed reading, “Cybertyping and the Work of Race in the Age of Digital Reproduction.” Nakamura’s point about how the internet can whitewash societies is very thought-provoking and true. This was a fact that I never thought about before, racism on the internet. I think this is due to the internets ‘cybertyping’ others as Nakamura states because I am white male, I don’t notice stereotypes that may be offense to others.  Nakamura stated, “ Monocultures are posed here as the opposite of diversity. Ziauddin Sardar characterizes cyberspace itself as a monoculture, the West’s “dark side” and thus a powerful continuation of the imperialist project … where does the hybrid … stand in relation to this?” (pg 325) There is space for ‘others’ to make a place for themselves in the internet world, while the internet does try to make everyone similar because the sense of ‘otherness’ is based in the physical world it can bleed into the virtual world. My example of this is in the gay community the prevalence of using the internet for “hooking up.” Sites like Manhunt and Grinder for phones provide gay men the chance to seek out other men for romantic meet-ups. It is common practice in the gay community to use those sites for this. Gays have found their own way of using the internet; I find that most of my heterosexual friends don’t know of many websites to use that provide them an outlet for meeting people for hooking up. Oddly, enough this ties into gay community history. There have always been common spots that gay men would cruise in order to find like-minded individuals, this was usually done in secret in order to not be discovered. Now the internet has provided the anonymous place where gay men can do that, taking over from cruising spots.  

Stress Events and Power

The readings this week struck an oddly personal cord for me. After reading about the power structures that dominate our lives like family, school and work institutions, I realized, how right those writers are. Here is a list of the top ten most stressful events in someones life from http://healthylivingwithdestiny.com/top-ten-most-stressful-life-events/

 Top 10 Most Stressful Occurences for Americans:

• Spouse Death  
• Divorce
• Marriage Separation
• Jail term
• Death of a loved one
• Injury or illness
• Marriage
• Job loss
• Pregnancy
• Retirement/Change of financial status

Those all deal with changes in those power structures. I just recently received my diploma from my undergrad and went home to help a friend deal with her very ill father. Those events made me realize how people find comfort in having stability in the dominate power structures and once that is shaken, the stress arrives. When we are in limbo states of power, people try to resettle in the structures so dominant forms of hierarchy remain.

Identification Principal

Roland Barthes, Mythologies, was quite the read. I was fascinated about how he broke down wrestling and used it as an example for spectacle. Some of his points got long winded, like when he broke down each wrestling move and what it meant for the spectacle.

His thoughts on Identification as one of the main principals for bourgeois myth was very thought-provoking.  He main point to me was how ‘the other’ which is people who break from the norm, mess with the workings of the spectacle. So in turn, the spectacle utilizes exoticism. “The Other becomes a pure object, a spectacle, a clown. Relegated to the confines of humanity, he no longer threatens the security of home.” I agree with his point but thankfully today, there are many types of ‘others’ fighting to no longer be regarded as spectacles, best exemplified by the occupy movement. It will be interesting to see how long the occupy movement is co-modified into the mainstream.

Signs and Representation

“Society of the Spectacle” is a great read and there is a thought provoking video too which can be found on youtube. I really enjoy his thoughts on the spectacle. The way, I took his meaning is that there is this shared spectacle in the word which is where we communicate. Since we communicate in signs and representation, there is an anxiety to truly represent your meaning as honest as you can. We do this through making attempts to have honest conversation and in turn we separate ourselves further from the truth. The spectacle becomes the way we do that like advertising and media. When you are able to get as close meaning to your feelings that is when you are able to break through the spectacle. The best way to say it is when you have that moment when you get along with someone or see a piece of art that you just understand and can’t find words for it, that is when you break through the spectacle.

People spend their lives trying to break the spectacle but it is very hard to do because it is all encompassing. We all need the spectacle too because this is how we are able to understand other people. There are some positives to living in a spectacle.

Relationship of Ads and Ad Busters

I really enjoyed the NoLogo reading. I love the aspect of ad busting and find it to be a very creative and provocative art form. The best part of the reading for me is the failure of the ad busting. The ad men use their ideas and create new campaigns off of what the ad busters do. The work that the ad busters do is even re-feed into the system that they are trying to subvert. 

This reminded me of the the readings from last week about how media is handed down to the masses by the elite. My thoughts on new forms of media like Youtube allow for the masses to distribute their own media and takes away from the power of the elite. But as shown in class with Rebecca Black’s, “Friday” even if you are just a regular person if you find success through youtube eventually your work will be sold on itunes or amazon and in turn doesn’t subvert the industry but becomes part of the machine in the end, just like the ad busters work. With these readings and some from my other classes, I am just starting to realize how cyclic the world is and how difficult it is to break out of the cycles that control the media world. 

McLuhan: Content vs. Medium

After reading McLuhan’s, Medium is the Message, he struck a chord with the way I view the media world. I have always focused on the content that is being delivered but never really took the time to see how the medium in which you use, affects the message. The discussion of hot and cold media made very some very good points. There are some forms of media that do force the audience to participate more with medium and content then others but completely separating the medium and content fails to look at the whole picture. This is shown by the articles about powerpoint. In, We Have Met the Enemy and He is Powerpoint,” General McMaster said, ” It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control. Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.”His statement shows the dangers of certain media if used incorrectly. The military has taken powerpoint and used it to simplify incredibly complex situations. From my understanding of the McLuhan reading it would seem to be a “hot media.” There is a large need for audience participation. The audiences needs to draw conclusions based on the bullet-sized information they are given. This creates the problem for powerpoint.

If one looks at and uses powerpoint for a different purpose like David Byrne, the medium takes on a different purpose. Byrne used the powerpoint to create artwork. He used the powerpoint to create work, “that was “about” something, something beyond themselves, and that they could even have emotional resonance.” Byrne took a media form and used it to create something new, instead of presentations, he created art. McLuhan fails to discuss how while the medium can be the message, parts of the message are still dependent on the content. Byrne took a “hot” medium and made it “cool” when looking at Byrne’s work there is a lower need for audience participation and the powerpoint became a tool to create art. The medium is still a tool, it is only as good as the person utilizing it. If the medium isn’t being utilized correctly, the medium and message fail. That is not the fault of the medium but of the person using the tool. A tool cannot be good or evil, it has aspects of both. A hammer can be used to break or to build, it depends on the person wielding it. Understanding the medium and how it sends information is important to understand and McLuhan makes a clear case for that but media can be manipulated to do different things then what was originally purposed. It is important to not forget the importance of content.

Story of my life

Hello everyone,

So I really can’t spill all the details of my life story because I have to save something for the memoir, I’ve been planning on. I grew up in the Catskill Mountains, where I got to see lots of wildlife and drive an hour to the nearest mall. After my humble beginnings, I moved to New York City to get the complete opposite out of life. I just finished my undergrad at the New School and I’m moving right on to getting my Masters. I really wasn’t kidding about the whole marriage thing as my plan a because like so many other people, I have no idea what I want to do when I grow up. I have a part time job and hopefully will be getting an internship soon and that is really all there is to me.