Press Release 20min. Exercise

HUMANS IN THE AIR!

The Wright brothers are flying.




by: Brianna Miller


 

In Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on December 17, 1903 Orville Wright successfully flew the flyer, an airplane, at 10:35 a.m.


It was a cold windy morning in North Carolina.

"The two brothers, plus several helpers, set up the 60-foot monorail track that helped keep the Flyer in line for lift-off. Then Orville clambered on board for it was his turn to be pilot." The crowed went wild as "Wilbur ran alongside holding onto one wing to help stabilize the plane. Around 40 feet along the track, the Flyer took flight, staying in the air for 12 seconds and traveling 120 feet from liftoff" (Rosenberg).

Fun! Fun! Fun!

Game research might sound like an oxymoron to some people but not to game designers. "There is considerable research and literature in the area of user-centred design. . . A design process can be described as a process that combines information and logic" (Ermi and Mäyrä). Who ever thought to ponder the engineering behind Candyland?

Although the goal, here, is not to delve into the deep inter workings of mastermind game programming, I will be researching America's most popular game from every decade since the 1940's. 

I think it will be interesting to see how America's tastes have changed throughout time. I hope to see a correlation between America's political, economic, and social state in relationship to it's game preference. For example: was monopoly the most popular game in a decade when house marketing, personal finance, and investment hit a record breaking high?  It will also be interesting to consider whether the game was truly a byproduct of its time or if the game was marketed to lead revolutionary ideas throughout its golden decade. 

If there is enough time, it would also be interesting to predict America's next favorite game based on the research gathered and hypothesize as to what kind of game would be the most successful throughout the 2020's.

Ermi and Mäyrä: Game Studies Link

Monopoly: Photo Link

Capstone Project

In the spring semester of 2013, I wrote a book to help native Spanish speakers learn English. The project was unique because unlike ESL it catered to a specific group of people.


In addition to the book I made a website to help share some of the book content. However, I was unsatisfied with the final product. Consequently, as a part of my Senior Capstone for Communication and New Media I would like to re-create a new website for the book. The first time, the site was coded using Dreamweaver. This time, I would like to use WebPages.

I would also like to make a short motion graphics video for the book using After Effects.

Finally, I would like to take the opportunity to learn about book publishing and get the book published.

I could have chosen a private business or an artist to help promote. However, I would have had to research them in order to effectively promote their specialties. I know the book content extremely well, so I feel I will be able to focus the majority of my time on the research and creation of the three goals listed above as apposed to familiarizing myself with a company.

I have never worked with Webpages nor have I ever gotten anything published. I also have very limited experience using After Effects. Consequently, by finishing this capstone project I will have explored three new areas of communication and new media that I could use graduation.

Experience Chapters 8-10

Chapters eight, nine, and ten present thought provoking positions on experience. Although the word “experience” is never highlighted as a major theme throughout the chapters it was an indirect argument for every position stated. Experience is the strong unifying theme for these chapters.

Chapter 8 AESTHETICS, AISTHESIS & SYNESTHESIA

“Why I (still) want my MTV” argues a relentless battle in favor of an aesthetical consideration for television. Chapter eight reiterates that fact that “Television is rarely considered aesthetically”(2).

As one reads more into the chapter, however, aspects of television- more specifically aesthesis and synesthesia- support television aesthetically.

Readers are taught early that “While the word aisthesis has fallen into disuse, in ancient Greek it meant something akin to “taking in” or “breathing in;”  a “gasp” at the wondrous encounter with the world (Hillman, 1993) (6).” This being said, anything that we take in is an aisthesis experience. For someone to watch a music video and be taken back by the shier beauty of the experience would have said to have experienced aisthesis. For someone to experience true aisthesis they would have, perhaps unconsciously, but nonetheless considered television aesthetically. The fact that the viewer reacted means that they would have judged the beauty or artistic value of the piece after their “wondrous encounter.” Because there was an experience, there was also an aesthetic consideration. Although the viewer might not have been taught conventional aesthetics, they were still able to consider the work aesthetically based on their experiences.

Likewise, synesthesia can be considered based on experience or as it was stated in the reading, a perception. Chapter eight discussed the “phenomenon of synesthesia [as] a matter of perception” but it also made the point that “it can also become a phenomenon of expression”(26) An expression such as in language, or in music are often critiqued based on aesthetics so for television to host an experience, or phenomenon of synesthesia it should not be considered any differently.    

Chapter 9 THE REVERSIBILITY OF EXPRESSION AND PERCEPTION

Chapter 9 stated that “Perception itself is never finished; it gives us a world to express; to think only through partial perspectives”(2). This was extraordinarily interesting because most people would argue that their perceptions were affects of their experiences. A child raised in a household with fifteen other people will certainty view sharing, dinnertime, family, and being alone differently from an only child in a house with one parent.

The statement expresses that unless a child could have experienced being an only child while simultaneously experienced living in a household with fifteen other people, then the child’s perspectives will always be partial. “The relationship of expression and perception is doubled and reversible, and is a foundation not only of aesthetic formations, but of cultural conceptions of the relationship(s) between human and world.” (15)

Just as a human is partial, so is technology. If a child tried to live both experiences, they would miss the fullness of both. “The poetic acts of video are used for enframing and objectifying images, if we act as if we have exhausted the possibilities of experience even for a moment, we will have missed the communicative world for a momentary conception or ideation of that world.  We will have missed the communicative world for an objectified, lifeless and dead world.”(11)

Not only is technology itself partial, but the way we perceive it is partial as well. The author wrote, “the visual surface of music television is so enveloped in music that my sight sinks into the visuals as if they were waves of sound—in depth”(12) Interestingly, his entire experience is changed not only by the intentional perception the music television editors are displaying, but perhaps also because of his personal experience with music. If he could not hear would he have perceived this differently?

 “Twentieth century art has, to a large degree, brought forth the displacement of perspective as central to the representation of reality.  Questioning, in particular, its spatialization of knowledge, and its propensity to measure all things linearly.”(20) For so many years art had to be perceived in a specific manner, then artists such as Picasso brought his perceptive of art and expressed his experiences. When Picasso expresses himself through his perspective of art, and puts it on display it is as if he is taking out his eyes- his experiences of the past, and handing them to people gazing out saying see what I have been through. Do you see that heart ache? Do you see that political mess? Do you see the beautiful women?  Since he expresses his experiences with his eyes, they become so much more clear to people who have not seen what he has seen.

An extensive part of this chapter is dedicated to the movement of a camera with the deliberate intention of revealing the countless ways to portray an experience on television. An experience can zoom, rotate, swirl, pan or repeat itself, and so can a camera. Television can be the eyes to any experience. Whether a viewer agrees with Picasso's painting, or a music video at least they can begin to experience with someone else’s perspective.

Chapter 10 FROM LOGOS TO ECHOS

Chapter 10 says that “Every technique,” Merleau-Ponty suggests (in Johnson, 1993, p. 129), “is a ‘technique of the body (2). Everything we do in body is an experience, and so technique would also have to be partially dependent on experience.  

All of the senses are stimulated by different experiences. If we smell cookies, for example, we’ve experienced the smell of cookies. Music video, and television are an experience of sounds, vision, and perhaps even a feeling if the speakers are rocking the room. Although we know logically that there will be music playing, and people on television it is our experience of the event that makes music visuality more echos from logic. “Echos describes the mode of televisual/video address as a multimedia presentation which draws on sight and sound, writing and speaking, orality and literacy, hearing and listening in its overlapping and interpenetrating presentation of images, words, sounds, music, and so on” (6)

If I understand this correctly a logical evaluation- you see a guitarist, a crowed dancing, and you hear music and an evaluation of echos would lead you to believe that the man is playing the music that the people are dancing to. Echos combines the three experiences into one experience. Two visual, and one auditory experiences are logical but Echos is the sum of the whole experience. The logic is necessary, but the big picture is, well, the big picture. “Musical visuality is an aural-visual aesthetic in which music and dance become the logos of video, the logos of images.  I have suggested, moreover, that with this technique perhaps logos has given way to echos, and in the following I wish to deal more thoroughly with this suggestion”(2-3)

Together

Experience is certainty a connective theme throughout the three chapters. Aesthetics, aesthesis, synesthesia, reversibility of expression, perception, logos, and echos are very different topics, but under the experience of television and art, they seem to relate very well.

photo:http://images.google.com/search?as_q=guitarist&tbs=sur:f&biw=1159&bih=703&sei=YfNZUbH0INPK4APW44GYDA&tbm=isch#imgrc=_NRDS7k65WvizM%3A%3BTzNMmolQTxvE4M%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fupload.wikimedia.org%252Fwikipedia%252Fcommons%252Fb%252Fbe%252FAn_electric_guitarist.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fcommons.wikimedia.org%252Fwiki%252FFile%253AAn_electric_guitarist.jpg%3B1024%3B685

Visual/Audio Music Video

Chapters five, six, and seven are concentrated in three different aspects of music video; however, the chapters reveal the collaboration of audio and visual in creating music video. Neither audio nor visual is represented as a dependent, rather as a complete whole working to enhance a new form of art.

Chapter 5 Style

Part of chapter 5 expresses the understanding and critic of music video based on social phenomenon and movements.  Although the author never used these words, there is an idea of music video as an ill constructed- thoughtless mesh of shots used simply to please the audience. However, music video is far more than an ill construction. In chapter 5 the author explains that “visual presentation of music television is not free-floating, as it has been conceived, but follows a musical logic. "(14)

" The “vision,” or better the audio-visual aesthetic, of music television is indeed an institutionalized vision. " (21) This being said, music video can be identified as its own art.  Throughout the chapter style was identified as something that had its own ideologies; that sought its own purpose; that could be simplistic or complicated, and could choose its own audience. As a form of art, music video certainty possesses its own style because it embodies all the characteristic of style.

Since music video is its own art, than we can deductively reason that it is not an enhancement of audio since it exists as its own creation. Just as music video exists as does music and video separately. Therefore, the visual aspect of music video is no less important, than the music itself.

Chapter 6 The Persistence of Vision

Chapter 6 explained the importance, and impact of vision. “Phrases like, “seeing is believing,” and “I see what you mean” reveal the significance of this visual bias as they the seeing to knowing.  And in the process make vision the epistemological sense” (2)

There was a significant movement from orality to literacy, that trained new generations to think of vision as the epistemological sense; however, music video tosses their audience back and forth from one sense to the next. The visual complements the audio; likewise, does the audio complement the visual. “MTV wants to be understood with both ears and eyes open.  Moreover, the visual, as has been hinted at in previous chapters and as we shall see in the following, does not dominate music video” (9) Chapter 6 refers to the Guess advertisement as a prime example of this co-force where the audio would work off the visual, then press back to being the less dominating force before pushing the visual back as the prime stimulant.

 One of the most interesting statements is that while we have these senses being simultaneously stimulated each of the sense are actually releasing two deeper aspects: “With the sense of sight the idea communicates the emotion.  Whereas with sound, the emotion communicates the idea, which is more direct and therefore more powerful (Alfred North Whitehead, in Lateen, 1994, p. 4)” (1)

Chapter 7 Realism and Hyper reality 

Chapter 7 spoke about audio, and visual in terms of how viewers are suppose to view the work. It also mentioned the difference between how we perceive each of them, and their relationship in that perception.

“As tele-visions of music, these shows construct particular relationships between music and visuals, sight and sound, audio and video;  these relationships follow, for the most part, the codes of televisual realism”(2)

“the music video does indeed constitute a new relationship between sight and sound, and create a new way of visually presenting music performance” (3)

TV is rarely recorded live, most TV is prerecorded, and shown with an intention of looking live."The camera attempts to render itself neutral by acting like a body, by giving the viewer a vision that resembles embodied sight. "(5) However, when the audience hears a drummer, but does not see the drummer hit the drum, then their perception of their TV reality seems less real because the audio, and visual do not align.

Chapter 7 states that “The visuals articulate the depth of the music, and, at the same time, the music articulates the depth of the visuals”(21) Therefore, when one becomes less real, or more real, than the other becomes just as real as the first. For example the chapter explained that if the visuals are moved toward the drummer, for example, than the audio levels of the drummer will be heightened. Although the drummer never got louder, the audio for that particular instrument will because of the visual focus. Conversely, bringing up the audio levels in post-production can direct the audiences attention to some instrument to make it seem more real in the visual. 

Although style, persistence of vision, and reality cover different aspects of music video, they all showcase the individuality of audio, and visual as well as their combined force in music video.“As the visual performance does not translate the musical performance, the music video offers the television viewer another mode of television viewing, one that draws from the experience of television and music” (32)

Gender Press

Of all the advertising concepts that we have delved into I think that gender in media has been one of the most fascinating aspects to explore. Generally speaking, we all have an understanding of the way each gender is portrayed in the media; however, we do not understand the depth of the images that we constantly see nor the impact those images have on our daily lives.

Johanna Blakley: Social media and the end of gender, The Codes of Gender, and Killing Us Softly 4 are phenomenal presentations concerning gender in media. The three highly recommended videos unravel the reality of this thesis:

“The strangest thing about seeing an advertisement is that we think it looks normal.”

Although I believe that men and women were created differently, “We don’t come from the womb with proper gender understanding,” we are taught the code of our genders. As Erving Goffman said, “advertising tells us about ourselves.” Women in advertising are often shot “lying down, submissive, sexually available, and dependent. They are often pictured as being unbalanced, dazed, nervous, infantilized, and even dead.  Men, on the contrary, are often shot with a look of self-assurance, strength and a cognitive, yet, unbothered presence.

There are small, yet, distinctive gender dividing postures in advertising for example: women touching themselves, or “showed in a breathless posture, or in a posture being held.” Women are constantly shown touching their faces, torsos, arms, and even feet. However, men are rarely ever shown touching themselves. In one of the video presentations, this advertising norm was shown for the opposite gender. Men were positioned in ways that we would often see women in advertising. They were in powerless positions where they were off balance, or they were photographed touching themselves. It was even stated that the rare occasions these types of images were shown were in gay magazines. The media tells us that unless you are a man in control with a firm, empowering posture, that you are gay. Likewise, it teaches us that unless you are insecure and ungrounded, that you are not really a lady.

Women Olympics http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8156/7607619464_1a2d920954.jpg

In addition to helping us realize that this bias exists in advertising these videos reveal proof of the strong affects these images have on our lives.  The audience is directed to famous women athletes who initially appear to be strong women completely unaffected by the advertising around them. These women had won Olympic medals, and continue to take control. They are women that appear to be redefining the code of gender. Then, we were directed to images of these same women in advertising. Most of them were in limp powerless positions, or in places of power with only sexuality as their weapon. I found these images most disheartening. Our gender roles have been so deeply ingrained that women of great power, talent, and strength are encouraged to come before the media like vulnerable little girls or objects of sex in order to be seen as feminine.

  Jean Kilbourne also made the point that even are clothing sizes teach women to become completely powerless. We have sizes such as 0, and 00. Media teaches women not to exist, but to be there as zero exists but is nothing.  

We’ve been taught that there is a difference between media and reality, but are we making those distinctions, daily? What postures have we learned without making an effort to learn them? How do we portray our genders, and how are they really?

Like Water

Art & Copy is a brilliant documentary about advertising. It explains the mass impact advertising has in the world, today. The visually pleasing documentary aims to inform, entertain, and encourage much like an ad would aim to do.

Art and copy presented mind blowing statistics about advertising and media. In addition to many other figures, the documentary stated that:

·         People see 5,000 advertisements/day

·         People watch over 8hrs TV/Day on average

·         75% of homes have 3 TV’s or more

·         The average child sees 20,000 commercials/year

·         It costs $750,000/30 second commercial on American Idol

·         And that it costs 2.7 million for a 30 second commercial at the Super Bow

When it comes to the vast impact that advertising has on the world, the statistics speak for themselves. If advertising was not important companies would not pay millions of dollars to advertise and if their advertisements were not impacting consumers, than companies would not have millions to spend.  Although seemingly almost unbelievable, the statistics present a much clearer idea of the cost and benefit of TV commercials. After reading these figures, no one could factually claim that commercials are ineffective.

The documentary stated that, “advertising entertains society using client’s products”.  This video entertains too. It entertains society through the use of client commercials, and short stories. The sneak-peaks are both insightful, and fun to watch. Art & Copy said that, “You can manufacture any feeling you want to manufacture”. Throughout the documentary advertising was put in a positive light as though the documentary was advertising for advertising. The fun commercial clips made advertising look fun, and the side story about the man who put-up billboards made advertising look like a wholesome family event. The ad-ons enhanced the video creating a fun, and inviting atmosphere into a world that is generally perceived as cold, and ‘all about the money’.

Art & Copy also appealed to pathos. The documentary uplifted, and encouraged its viewers. “Fear is a powerful depressant”. In order for viewers to walk away from this documentary feeling empowered by advertising and not manipulated, and scared the documentary gave viewers a sense of control, and encouraging words. Toward the end of the documentary the creative and risky aspect of advertising was mentioned. Rather than making creativity and chance taking look bad, the documentary inadvertently, or perhaps intentionally and not obviously said, ‘jump aboard and do advertising with us.’ They quoted Michael Jordan when he said, “I failed over and over and over again and that is why I succeed”, and they said, “The people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones that do.” The documentary used profound statements to build-up its viewers.  Advertising is “not a truth about a product” it is the emotions people think they are buying.  Even if advertising is all a manipulative lie, we want the emotional empowerment this documentary makes us feel.  “When people “People don’t mind being sold to if they understand what is being done”

Art & Copy said that “Everything is an ad like water”. It informs, entertains, and encourages us just like the documentary.