"Even today the culture industry dresses works of art like political slogans and forces them upon a resistant public at reduced prices; they are as accessible for public enjoyment as a park. But the disappearance of their genuine commodity character does not mean that they have been abolished in the life of a free society, but that the last defence against their reduction to culture goods has fallen. The abolition of educational privilege by the device of clearance sales does not open for the masses the spheres from which they were formerly excluded, but, given existing social conditions, contributes directly to the decay of education and the progress of barbaric meaninglessness"
I really enjoyed this statement. I am a consumer as we all are. I will spend time comparing and contrasting products to find the best deal and the one that will last the longest. I will wander around a store aimlessly just to get out of the house. I watch films rather than read books. I play video games and goof around on facebook. A life filled with distraction. This time could all be used towards better means which would elevate me in many standings. I am changing some habits and leaving some the same but overall we are creatures off comfort and products of the world in which we were raised. This is the point I think A&H are making.
We as a society crave distraction and the corporations and the government is happy to give it to us. It allows them to keep us under control and uninformed. The ....story A&H are telling is as old as the coliseums. The coliseums were the first spectacle, the first distraction, and the first form of mass media/entertainment. However, there use to be "fine art", art that required skills and a specific technique and it was revered. That has even changed. We used to require skilled actors for plays, then we needed pretty faces for film and now we looks for the most horrendous human beings we can find for reality T.V. in order to live our lives vicariously through them. Despite the fact, that the individual could possible accomplish this life themselves.
The article made me take a step back and self reflect, which is what is spawning these ideas. So mission accomplished A&H.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Week 3
I am writing this early because I have a family event to attend. So I will be adding more once everyone posts and I can read them.
The biggest things I want to focus on in the upcoming weeks are the historical presence of technology and art. The concept of image was another item that we have come across that puzzles me. Many of the issue raised this week were about art and image, which go hand in hand with technology and technological development.
I have read Anne’s (your) responses to my posts and I need to also rethink some of my constructs when it comes to approaching art. I find it funny that I understand how an engine works but how the artistic community functions is still a mystery. Which make me think about how we learn and view the world. I have a very logic based way of thinking. The mechanical world is easy for me to understand. Yet, rather than pursue a job in the engineering field I came over to the English Dept….. Sometimes I wonder WTF was I thinking. I can never find a solid answer for anything and it drives me nuts. Yet, this is part of the artistic process for me…the design process. This made remember something about art and the construction of it.
I have fabricated and created parts for engines and other mechanical devices; yet, I would have never considered them works of art until this week. I had to fabricate a temporary flex coupling for an exhausts system one time. I shredded heat resistant fiber glass; I think it was fiber glass. I then cut a piece of wood to the shape I need and wrapped it in shrink wrap. After that I paper mached the fiber glass around the wood. Once it hardened I burnt the wood out.
Was it a work of art….maybe…..was the process artistic? Maybe….But I did create something that some may not be able to. So I will have to re-think my views on that note.
The biggest things I want to focus on in the upcoming weeks are the historical presence of technology and art. The concept of image was another item that we have come across that puzzles me. Many of the issue raised this week were about art and image, which go hand in hand with technology and technological development.
I have read Anne’s (your) responses to my posts and I need to also rethink some of my constructs when it comes to approaching art. I find it funny that I understand how an engine works but how the artistic community functions is still a mystery. Which make me think about how we learn and view the world. I have a very logic based way of thinking. The mechanical world is easy for me to understand. Yet, rather than pursue a job in the engineering field I came over to the English Dept….. Sometimes I wonder WTF was I thinking. I can never find a solid answer for anything and it drives me nuts. Yet, this is part of the artistic process for me…the design process. This made remember something about art and the construction of it.
I have fabricated and created parts for engines and other mechanical devices; yet, I would have never considered them works of art until this week. I had to fabricate a temporary flex coupling for an exhausts system one time. I shredded heat resistant fiber glass; I think it was fiber glass. I then cut a piece of wood to the shape I need and wrapped it in shrink wrap. After that I paper mached the fiber glass around the wood. Once it hardened I burnt the wood out.
Was it a work of art….maybe…..was the process artistic? Maybe….But I did create something that some may not be able to. So I will have to re-think my views on that note.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Image, Ben and Art
How, instead, is he hoping we'll understand both art but also how art functions, and how art is related to politics?
I have read this article 5 or six times now and still keep finding new things! It is exciting! The way I read it before though was in relation to spectator and art, how art has been perceived due to the medium, not art and politics. This time around the scope is political function.
Prior to mass production of media (books, photos, works of art) everything was controlled by high society. Benjamin refers to them as the cult(671). It used to be you had to travel in order to view a work of art, and you had to have a great amount of funding to commission art. Image and texts were items that allowed for the transfer of knowledge and by removing them from the lower classes the higher classes kept power in their realm. Once, texts and art was mass produced hey lost control over this. Part of the pillar that held them up gave way and the elitist fell down a bit. Once mass reproduction unfolded people were able to communicate quickly and easily, organize and transfer knowledge and power.
But also by controlling and regulating art, like they did with film in Germany and Russia, you can control the perception of society. Not just how they view the world but their position in the world. You can keep them blind and ignorant to their own misery.
So controlling art is just another way of social oppression and a way for politicians to keep power.
Reading “Art” and “Image” in Critical Terms for Media Studies
On your blog, summarize quickly what you see to be the main, overall, arguments of each of these pieces. You need not linger over the details of the arguments. (I may, in comments, push you on developing or supporting your summaries.)
Art was not as difficult as the concept of image. Art has turned into media and media has turned into art each on affecting the other over the course of time. I am over simplifying I know but the art article flowed pretty smoothly. The image article was far more complex. We view the image as art, and the image is captured on a medium, but the image itself is just smoke, a catalyst, and an interpretation from the mind’s eye communicated to and through the hand. The image is what has the power in art because of its ambivalence. In the art section they discussed Duchamp’s Fountain. I have seen pictures of this urinal and I have seen many urinals. They are made from a material, have weight, mass, and texture. There shape though is derived from an image that someone had in their mind, an idea that had no physical status in the world until it was shaped from the image and given physical properties. So we can touch the product and the urinal but we can never touch the image of the urinal is what I took from combining these two sections. …It hard to explain clearly but hopefully I will get there by the end of this week.
I have read this article 5 or six times now and still keep finding new things! It is exciting! The way I read it before though was in relation to spectator and art, how art has been perceived due to the medium, not art and politics. This time around the scope is political function.
Prior to mass production of media (books, photos, works of art) everything was controlled by high society. Benjamin refers to them as the cult(671). It used to be you had to travel in order to view a work of art, and you had to have a great amount of funding to commission art. Image and texts were items that allowed for the transfer of knowledge and by removing them from the lower classes the higher classes kept power in their realm. Once, texts and art was mass produced hey lost control over this. Part of the pillar that held them up gave way and the elitist fell down a bit. Once mass reproduction unfolded people were able to communicate quickly and easily, organize and transfer knowledge and power.
But also by controlling and regulating art, like they did with film in Germany and Russia, you can control the perception of society. Not just how they view the world but their position in the world. You can keep them blind and ignorant to their own misery.
So controlling art is just another way of social oppression and a way for politicians to keep power.
Reading “Art” and “Image” in Critical Terms for Media Studies
On your blog, summarize quickly what you see to be the main, overall, arguments of each of these pieces. You need not linger over the details of the arguments. (I may, in comments, push you on developing or supporting your summaries.)
Art was not as difficult as the concept of image. Art has turned into media and media has turned into art each on affecting the other over the course of time. I am over simplifying I know but the art article flowed pretty smoothly. The image article was far more complex. We view the image as art, and the image is captured on a medium, but the image itself is just smoke, a catalyst, and an interpretation from the mind’s eye communicated to and through the hand. The image is what has the power in art because of its ambivalence. In the art section they discussed Duchamp’s Fountain. I have seen pictures of this urinal and I have seen many urinals. They are made from a material, have weight, mass, and texture. There shape though is derived from an image that someone had in their mind, an idea that had no physical status in the world until it was shaped from the image and given physical properties. So we can touch the product and the urinal but we can never touch the image of the urinal is what I took from combining these two sections. …It hard to explain clearly but hopefully I will get there by the end of this week.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Week 2 Reflection
First, on your blog, address issues related to class "content":
Where do you currently stand in regard to definitions of "media culture" and the appropriate objects of its study?
I think most of us are still on shakey ground but formyself I belive:
Media Culture is the affect Media has on a society, or lack of media has on a society. It shapes and changes the world in which we live for better or for worse.
How would you describe methods appropriate to "media culture"?
I think any method is ok but I think ethics are a huge part of this field. You have to be ethical! Without Ethics the world is lost and our views are distorted.
Where do you see your own interests fitting into these approaches thus far (or not)?
I will keep what I learn he in mind when I move forward in my chosen career. I do not see myself becoming a scholar by any means.
Then address aspects of taking this class online:
How is working on the wiki going for you?
It is slow. I am still a bit gun shy since this is my first semester at the M.A. level. I am the first in my family to attempt such a feat so it is not like I have a whole lot of guidance when it comes to acedmia. So I am err;ing on the side of caution as for now.
How is course discussion going for you?
Like all other classes. People wait to the last minute and so I have to as well. Little vexing but I am use to it. The discourse is good though.
Where do you currently stand in regard to definitions of "media culture" and the appropriate objects of its study?
I think most of us are still on shakey ground but formyself I belive:
Media Culture is the affect Media has on a society, or lack of media has on a society. It shapes and changes the world in which we live for better or for worse.
How would you describe methods appropriate to "media culture"?
I think any method is ok but I think ethics are a huge part of this field. You have to be ethical! Without Ethics the world is lost and our views are distorted.
Where do you see your own interests fitting into these approaches thus far (or not)?
I will keep what I learn he in mind when I move forward in my chosen career. I do not see myself becoming a scholar by any means.
Then address aspects of taking this class online:
How is working on the wiki going for you?
It is slow. I am still a bit gun shy since this is my first semester at the M.A. level. I am the first in my family to attempt such a feat so it is not like I have a whole lot of guidance when it comes to acedmia. So I am err;ing on the side of caution as for now.
How is course discussion going for you?
Like all other classes. People wait to the last minute and so I have to as well. Little vexing but I am use to it. The discourse is good though.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Charts n what not
So after going reading the articles this week I feel like a bit of a dill. I never trusted charts as a form of media because I believe a lot of public media is corrupted because other countries show what we won’t on the new. But could they be showing what we won’t to incite fear? Control their people?
The implications made by my paranoia and distrust are due to my experience with the media and the media culture I grew up in. So I guess rather than be A typical and critical I need to be more open minded to the media I am producing. A lesson I should have learned from myself last semester.
The implications made by my paranoia and distrust are due to my experience with the media and the media culture I grew up in. So I guess rather than be A typical and critical I need to be more open minded to the media I am producing. A lesson I should have learned from myself last semester.
Readings For Week 2
Crogan (Tracing the Logics of Contemporary Culture)
Poster (Global Media and Culture)
Liebler (Media Culture: Cultural Studies Review)
Jongbloed (Global Indigenous Media Review)
In the articles I found a few words with interesting terms that I am going to try and weave into the
Wiki tonight or tomorrow.
Words of interest
Cosmopolitan
–adjective
1.free from local, provincial, or national ideas, prejudices, or attachments;
2.of or characteristic of a cosmopolite.
3.belonging to all the world; not limited to just one part of the world.
4.Botany, Zoology . widely distributed over the globe.
–noun
5.a person who is free from local, provincial, or national bias orattachment; citizen of the world; cosmopolite.
Node
–noun
1.a knot, protuberance, or knob.
2.a centering point of component parts.
3.Anatomy . a knotlike mass of tissue: lymph node.
4.Pathology . circumscribed swelling.
5.Botany.
a.a joint in a stem.
b.a part of a stem that normally bears a leaf.
6.Mathematics. knot ( def. 12 ) .
7.Geometry. a point on a curve or surface at which there canbe more than one tangent line or tangent plane.
8.Physics. a point, line, or region in a standing wave at whichthere is relatively little or no vibration.
9. Astronomy. either of the two points at which the orbit of a heavenly body intersects a plane, especially the plane of the ecliptic or of the celestial equator. Compare ascending node, descending node.
10.Linguistics . an element of a tree diagram that represents a constituent of a linguistic construction.
Poster uses the term cosmopolitan in his articles and it raised more questions for me while reading the article than not. To be cosmopolitan (free from prejudices in general) is incredibly complex to think about. Throughout the article Poster show how the internet is seemingly free space is under constant scrutiny and constraints by the government and/or the private corporations that have purchased sites such as You-Tube and MySpace. Poster seems to view media studies through a sociological criteria and how the government and privates spheres shape those societies. Poster also implies that technology is a runaway machine that cannot be stopped. Poster is all over the place though from politics, to culture , to everything in between. So poster seems to show the diversity of Media Studies and how it can be a universal lens to critique many different lines of culture and media.
Crogan’s article provided me with an anchor point for other ideas. I had a class the summer before last on the ethics on nuclear war. That explained how the development of the star wars program helped bring about nuclear treaties. So that was interesting to put next to Crogans article because it shows how much society has benefited from nuclear product, and not just nuclear power. This articles is also along my lines of thinking, and Mitchell/Hansen’s, it looks at the beginning source of technology and watches it come forward through time. It does focus on one singular source of technology though rather than media per say. The development of the Sage program is one of the things we do owe our current communication abilities to and directly shaped how media and different mediums developed.
I had trouble with the media reviews. The Jongloed seemed to argue alongside/for the book being reviewed as where Libler was working against the topics being proposed. What I really took away from these two pieces is that depending on the reviewers stand point they can change the way the book is presented. Either aiding in bring a discourse to the surface or negating it and trying to bury it because they do not believe it is just. It is a medium working against a medium that is distorting media cultural studies the same way Mitchell/Hansen see the narrow views of some scholars affecting it.
Poster (Global Media and Culture)
Liebler (Media Culture: Cultural Studies Review)
Jongbloed (Global Indigenous Media Review)
In the articles I found a few words with interesting terms that I am going to try and weave into the
Wiki tonight or tomorrow.
Words of interest
Cosmopolitan
–adjective
1.free from local, provincial, or national ideas, prejudices, or attachments;
2.of or characteristic of a cosmopolite.
3.belonging to all the world; not limited to just one part of the world.
4.Botany, Zoology . widely distributed over the globe.
–noun
5.a person who is free from local, provincial, or national bias orattachment; citizen of the world; cosmopolite.
Node
–noun
1.a knot, protuberance, or knob.
2.a centering point of component parts.
3.Anatomy . a knotlike mass of tissue: lymph node.
4.Pathology . circumscribed swelling.
5.Botany.
a.a joint in a stem.
b.a part of a stem that normally bears a leaf.
6.Mathematics. knot ( def. 12 ) .
7.Geometry. a point on a curve or surface at which there canbe more than one tangent line or tangent plane.
8.Physics. a point, line, or region in a standing wave at whichthere is relatively little or no vibration.
9. Astronomy. either of the two points at which the orbit of a heavenly body intersects a plane, especially the plane of the ecliptic or of the celestial equator. Compare ascending node, descending node.
10.Linguistics . an element of a tree diagram that represents a constituent of a linguistic construction.
Poster uses the term cosmopolitan in his articles and it raised more questions for me while reading the article than not. To be cosmopolitan (free from prejudices in general) is incredibly complex to think about. Throughout the article Poster show how the internet is seemingly free space is under constant scrutiny and constraints by the government and/or the private corporations that have purchased sites such as You-Tube and MySpace. Poster seems to view media studies through a sociological criteria and how the government and privates spheres shape those societies. Poster also implies that technology is a runaway machine that cannot be stopped. Poster is all over the place though from politics, to culture , to everything in between. So poster seems to show the diversity of Media Studies and how it can be a universal lens to critique many different lines of culture and media.
Crogan’s article provided me with an anchor point for other ideas. I had a class the summer before last on the ethics on nuclear war. That explained how the development of the star wars program helped bring about nuclear treaties. So that was interesting to put next to Crogans article because it shows how much society has benefited from nuclear product, and not just nuclear power. This articles is also along my lines of thinking, and Mitchell/Hansen’s, it looks at the beginning source of technology and watches it come forward through time. It does focus on one singular source of technology though rather than media per say. The development of the Sage program is one of the things we do owe our current communication abilities to and directly shaped how media and different mediums developed.
I had trouble with the media reviews. The Jongloed seemed to argue alongside/for the book being reviewed as where Libler was working against the topics being proposed. What I really took away from these two pieces is that depending on the reviewers stand point they can change the way the book is presented. Either aiding in bring a discourse to the surface or negating it and trying to bury it because they do not believe it is just. It is a medium working against a medium that is distorting media cultural studies the same way Mitchell/Hansen see the narrow views of some scholars affecting it.
Critical Terms
Questions:
Mitchell and Hansen are discussing "media studies" as opposed to "media culture." How do they define "media" and "media studies"? What matters for them in doing media studies? What do they hope we will attend to in doing media studies?
Notes:
“Media Studies” embraces researchers who study virtual reality environments, hypertext fiction, materialist anthropology and culture, the history of information theory, precinematic devices, the institution of print, and word frequency in Greek literature.” (VIII)
“It seems clear that media as collective singular noun is somehow tied to the emergence of mass media.”(xi)
“Following the morphing of medium into focus for itself: thus media studies can and should designate the study of our fundamental relationally.” (xii)
“one of the most conspicuous features of media studies, considered a singular field, has been its failure to communicate across the borders that divide the technophiles, the aesthete, and the sociopolitical theorist.”(xvi)
“Our aim is to take the field back beyond the “digital revolution” of the last twenty years to its deeper origins of antiquity and early modernity, and to think of media history as highly differentiated both spatially and temporally.” (xix)
Ideas/ Answers:
Media seems to have become a blanketing term to cover any and all mediums in which media is composed. No matter what device is used to present and image, an argument, or a text it still falls under the singular term Media. Yet, under this blanket term a complex world of studies exist that spread across a multitude of fields that may or may not intersect. Yet, given the current state of the world, the internet, and social interaction in general one would assume that these fields of study would have more interaction. This is not the case according to Mitchell and Hansen. As they state on xvi the sociopolitical theorist and the technophiles have nothing to do with each other; even though, the production of technology in itself has shaped the world of socio and bio politics.
By not looking at the work of those to the left and right of them would the researchers, scholar, or philosopher not be ignoring the same things that they are trying to study?
This is one of the points that Mitchell and Hansen want the reader to look at. The other is the development of media studies in general. They want to go back beyond the past twenty years and looks at the development of media studies and look at the history of media. Which is something I am very curious about because if a person and a society is a sum of all of its parts then media then media has played a huge part in the shaping of us as individuals and as society as a whole.
Mitchell and Hansen are discussing "media studies" as opposed to "media culture." How do they define "media" and "media studies"? What matters for them in doing media studies? What do they hope we will attend to in doing media studies?
Notes:
“Media Studies” embraces researchers who study virtual reality environments, hypertext fiction, materialist anthropology and culture, the history of information theory, precinematic devices, the institution of print, and word frequency in Greek literature.” (VIII)
“It seems clear that media as collective singular noun is somehow tied to the emergence of mass media.”(xi)
“Following the morphing of medium into focus for itself: thus media studies can and should designate the study of our fundamental relationally.” (xii)
“one of the most conspicuous features of media studies, considered a singular field, has been its failure to communicate across the borders that divide the technophiles, the aesthete, and the sociopolitical theorist.”(xvi)
“Our aim is to take the field back beyond the “digital revolution” of the last twenty years to its deeper origins of antiquity and early modernity, and to think of media history as highly differentiated both spatially and temporally.” (xix)
Ideas/ Answers:
Media seems to have become a blanketing term to cover any and all mediums in which media is composed. No matter what device is used to present and image, an argument, or a text it still falls under the singular term Media. Yet, under this blanket term a complex world of studies exist that spread across a multitude of fields that may or may not intersect. Yet, given the current state of the world, the internet, and social interaction in general one would assume that these fields of study would have more interaction. This is not the case according to Mitchell and Hansen. As they state on xvi the sociopolitical theorist and the technophiles have nothing to do with each other; even though, the production of technology in itself has shaped the world of socio and bio politics.
By not looking at the work of those to the left and right of them would the researchers, scholar, or philosopher not be ignoring the same things that they are trying to study?
This is one of the points that Mitchell and Hansen want the reader to look at. The other is the development of media studies in general. They want to go back beyond the past twenty years and looks at the development of media studies and look at the history of media. Which is something I am very curious about because if a person and a society is a sum of all of its parts then media then media has played a huge part in the shaping of us as individuals and as society as a whole.
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