Summary:
While conducting this exercise, I gained greater awareness of where the media I consume is located and learned things about how they were used in the contexts of those locations. Some media, like signs and logos, I was fairly aware of before the exercise, due to how prominently they were displayed, the frequency in which they are encountered, and the close relation between their location and intended effect. Other media, specifically the integration of media within different mediums, I had not really noticed before, and having done the exercise I was surprised at how frequently this occurs and the variety of ways that it happens. Of the experiences documented above, the forms of integration I found most noticeable were the direct usage of other intellectual properties in other media. This is due in part to the large number of tie-in products that intellectual properties produce (such tie-in movies and books), but also because fan creations also fall into this category of media. The less obvious pieces of media were those that were featured in either critical or subtle contexts. In the example of the article, the discussion in the article did not make it immediately apparent that it technically features a piece of media, and in the case of the licensed music, the media was integrated in a way that served to enhance the surrounding work. On a whole, this exercise has brought to my attention the various ways that media subtly encapsulates other media, as well as the effect that it has on me as a consumer.
