New Media Final: Smother

In The Medium is the Massage, McLuhan observes a society in which the increasing prevalence of news media all around us creates a sense of "allatonceness" so that "we now live in a global village...a simultaneous happening" within which everybody is constantly aware and reminded of events by others' reactions to and discussions of them. Because news surrounds as at all times, we become numb to the constant barrage of tragedy... that is, until something is so horrific or touches us so personally that it becomes impossible to either ignore or escape the incessant coverage. This video illustrates the initial unseeing, unfeeling attitude an average consumer of media puts on in order to wade through day-to-day horror, until the reality of the messages begins to seep in and awaken the human feelings underneath.

While this video specifically focuses on Dr. Ford's testimony in September and the shared feelings of anxiety and disgust that many experienced during this time, it is my hope that the message of this video can be translated to any other tragedy which the news and social media hyper-focuses on until the drama becomes "old". I feel that the use of hands creeping along in stop motion with the added whispers of the headlines creates the disturbing and smothering sensation that I was hoping for, but I would be interested to continue to play with the other sounds I use: the crinkling (recorded from when I crumpled all of the hands into a ball) and heartbeat- perhaps there are other sounds which would produce a better sense of anxiety while also showing a certain triumph as the mask and headlines are ripped away.

Something Is Happening Reflection

Setting up this exhibit was an exciting and interesting process for me, having never actually set up a physical gallery space myself previously. I enjoyed the team effort and being able to all find a way to contribute to the execution of the event. It was so rewarding to have all of our effort pay off in a room full of beautiful photos, and I enjoyed planning out the best ways to display everything as well, so that even though all of us had different projects, the photos seemed to flow in a dialogue with one another. The process of reaching an exhibition-worthy collection of photos was an interesting one as well, and I think it was good that it was paced over the course of the term so that we could really get to know our photos and create the best collection we could.

The Beatles and McLuhan

During my research of the Beatles and their relationship with McLuhan's ideas, I found that not only their actual musical methods, but the very phenomenon of the group themselves aligned with a great deal of McLuhan's observations throughout The Medium is the Massage. In the technical sense, the Beatles made use of the burgeoning "electronic age" which McLuhan discusses to create their sound which at the time was new and exciting. The presence of electric instruments to amplify sounds and new ways of recording music so as to include special effects gave the Beatles a presence which also leant to their ability to grow in fame and popularity through "allatonceness." By commanding a presence in print, radio, and on the still-growing medium of television, the Beatles were able to sweep the world into a communal sense of Beatlemania. At the same time, the fab four were able to launch themselves into the world as a unique phenomenon by being McLuhan's definition of "anti-social"- in other words, going very much against the grain of society to explore musical possibilities. Their song "A Day in the Life" is a sort of acknowledgement of the sense of "allatonceness" which comes from the presence of media and sound constantly in our daily lives, and exemplifies both how the Beatles used the electric age to their advantage musically, and how they went beyond the norm to break social boundaries.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usNsCeOV4GM

Balancing Act

Solitary

In McLuhan's words, "Myth means putting on the audience, putting on one's environment."Here, I have put together an environment that balances quietude, peace and introversion with noisy extroverted joy. This to me is a mythical balance which I can never quite find- and this montage of sounds represents that elusive balance. My moments of introversion are represented by the purring of my roommate's kitten curled up beside me one afternoon while my roommate was out of town, as well as quietly lapping waves which I recorded at my relatives's cottage on Kangaroo Lake in Door County. This is where I lived during the past summer while I worked, and the cottage represents some of the most extended times of solitude which I have ever experienced. I was completely alone sometimes for weeks, until relatives would come visit the cottage for a weekend getaway. It was both incredibly fulfilling, and distressingly lonely at times. In stark contrast to that lonesomeness, this past weekend I stayed at the cottage, but this time with several of my friends in tow. It was almost surreal having their chaotic noise filling the empty cottage with warmth. I captured an impromptu session of song, and our rhythmic sloshing through leaves on a nearby trail to represent this feeling of  clamor and companionship. This past weekend was a mixing of the worlds I try to balance- I escaped the bustle of campus life, yet brought a little of it with me in the form of my friends who gave the cottage light. At the same time, I managed to find time for myself to simply stop and listen to the waves. Hopefully, this sound clip shows that balance that is so hard to achieve.

https://soundcloud.com/tashi_adriel/warm

Silly

Slow Destruction

In making this photo collection, I struggled initially with letting go of a controlled plan and just allowing myself to go out and find images to create a collection from later. However, once I had begun taking photos here and there and finally went on a walk through the autumnal glory along the Fox river to see what I might find, I noticed a certain pattern which had been hidden before. McLuhan mentions "invisible environments" and how their "groundrules, pervasive structure, and overall patterns elude easy perception." This was certainly the case with the photos I took. Though I had been drawn to the beauty of changing leaves and last blooms outdoors, when I went through my photos I noticed that the ones which were most compelling to me were sometimes darker and often showed things which were discarded, out of place, or dying. I was reminded of the simple trajectory of Autumn into Winter, life into a slow decay, and though some of my photos were influenced by humans, I thought it was interesting to see the hand humans and nature mutually have in causing this slow destruction. I wanted to capture a journey which I could see forming from the 20 photos I chose, and creating the Flickr set allowed me to do so. Though the photo set isn't in the chronological order in which I originally shot, it depicts a walk through a dreary landscape with two main events- the desiccation of a tree by swarms of insects and the discovery of a scene of death- the withered bouquet of wildflowers sprawled on the path evoked a stumbled-across crime scene, and I enjoyed snapping the different angles of its decomposition.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tashikat/albums/72157674241002358

Artist Talk Reflection: Shelby Rodeffer

Shelby Rodeffer introduced us to the reviving art of sign painting and went into detail about her own process of becoming a professional in the field. I especially enjoyed her frank discussion of the challenges she has faced (and continues to face) in pursuing a creative career while also needing to give up a certain amount of that creativeness to make ends meet- Rodeffer talked about the frustrations of having so many creative ideas for sign art and typography, yet having to comply to the wishes of clients when being hired to paint store windows or signs. Rodeffer also had a certain humor throughout the presentation which I appreciated- one of my favorite pieces which Rodeffer showed was a notecard that sneers at the sudden popularity of generic phrases being aesthetically pasted onto household objects until they are almost meaningless. Unfortunately I haven't been able to locate a picture of it, but the notecard is a simple blue one with a fancy cursive script which reads "A pithy phrase carefully printed on archival paper."

http://shelbyrodeffer.com/work/known-unknown/

Something which I appreciated in Rodeffer's talk as well was her honest admittance of sometimes "faking it til you make it." She told the story of her first real commission to paint a storefront window and how she had no idea how to use the materials but powered through until she had a finished product. As someone who always feels as though I'm flying by the seat of my pants, even when I have a plan, I appreciated knowing that other artists who are actually "out in the real world" feel the same way.

Compromise

In this short film, I reflect on our earlier reading and discussion of McLuhan's ideas regarding "seeing as believing" replacing "hearing as believing." I was particularly drawn to these ideas as hearing and seeing have always been compromised for me- I wear glasses and hearing aids, and have heavily relied on them since elementary school. Because of this, understanding what goes on around me is a constant balancing act. While my hearing aids allow me to amplify the world around me in order to understand speech, background noise of any kind compromises my ability to focus on one single conversation, video, or other auditory experience. Similarly when watching films, I always have to struggle between relying on my eyes or ears to understand- often, my ears are not up to the job of parsing out voices onscreen when there are usually other sounds, both onscreen and in my environment, which distract me. Yet if I am watching TV with live captions or movies which have been poorly captioned, my reliance on the words which flash at the bottom of the screen becomes a hindrance once gaps and misspellings create further misunderstanding. 

Because of this, I wanted to attempt to recreate that feeling of sensory overload and confusion in my video. I filmed various friends reading from the passage of the Medium is the Massage which inspired these ideas, but added in background noise from my own hearing aid feedback, muted some of the speech, and kept the running motor of my car as an undertone to the entire video. I chose to start and end the film with the actions of putting in my hearing aids/starting the motor and then turning off the motor and removing my hearing aids to signify the way the world's noises rush in at me whenever I put in my "ears." Finally, I added captioning after making the viewers rely on lip reading to show how much of a reliance can be developed on them, only to garble the text in the next shot so as to point out the frustration of being unable to follow in your chosen (or perhaps forced) way of comprehension.