Media Exposure (Field Exercise 1.1)

I usually watch a video or read the news after I wake up, with a bowl of cereal or some other breakfast item. Today, a Let's Play video of the horror game Until Dawn was on the menu. Because of AdBlock and other things I didn't encounter any advertisements and could get straight to the desired content in a few clicks.

I also check my rss feed of webcomics in the morning. Today, The Property of Hate happened to update. 

It's good to check out Facebook every once in a while to keep myself updated on the happenings in my social circle. God knows I don't have the time and energy to actually participate in all (any) of them.

The next chosen media of the day was some reading for another class. It's on a subject that interests me, but the writing can be dry sometimes.

Online chat services are great. It's probably the most interactive media I use, right after video games. Since I prefer to communicate through written/typed words anyway, I find the Facebook chat very convenient.

I slipped the cardboard off the cup to check out the advert below. But I only did it because of this assignment. Usually I would definitely have ignored whatever was below the cardboard holder and tossed the cup without a second thought. But because of heightened sensitivity to media and printed content a side of this cup is now here.

On the way to the Andy Warhol museum, we found a few other instances of art hanging about the streets. This one apparently flashes patterns of red dots depending on the phone signals detected nearby. Or something like that. I didn't actually read the label.

The Andy Warhol Museum shop. Sometimes it is easier to enjoy the shops rather than the actual art pieces, because here you can seriously contemplate the prospect of actually owning something. There were a number of novelty items here, it was great. But overpriced. The price tag on media can change like that. We would have taken photos of the exhibits themselves, since they were more thought-provoking, but photography was not allowed. It's just as well. Some of the works there were rather inappropriate.

I remember an artist who expressed that transportation vehicles and the like sometimes don't seem like real places, because they are never the destination, only the means - and when you occupy these transient pockets of space, it's as though your mind enters some kind of nonexistent haze as well. There's nothing to do there, so the attention shifts, and as a result buses like these aren't actually "real" places, not like your home, school, or the froyo place down the street are. 

It's a romantic notion, but they're wrong. Places move all the time.  The whole world moves. Besides, there's an advertisement on this bus. What more endorsement could you require?

When you can scroll through a list of items, the advertisements and deals are the first thing to disappear from the mind. But not today. Today I spied the usual deals on the Kotaku site, and looked at it for what it was. It was alright.

It was an interesting day, all in all. I'm not sure what I learned, but I feel certain I learned something, if only because I was more sensitive to media than usual and the experience felt enlightening. Sometimes you might know things, but it takes the experience to really understand them. 

Well, there was something that maybe wasn't ever really a conscious thought before. It seemed that although I could access the media I really wanted online, or just on my computer, once I stepped outside there were all manner of media I didn't expect and wasn't particularly interested in encountering. Perhaps it has more to do with the sites that I do visit online, or the advertisement-blocking programs that I run, or other things, but for that day that's what it seemed like to me. 

I'm not really surprised at the amount of media I encounter everyday. After all, most of it is media that I'm looking for. In fact, one could say that I live from media to media. If there was a film of my life, I'm sure much too much of it would just be footage of me sitting at a desk, peering into a bright screen. It might sound sad, but I've worked a few weeks at an office, one of those filled with cubicles, and all day long the people there stare at screens, working. Nothing compares to that, I think. It's not so much the fact that we're looking at media as the types of media we're looking at that's important.  

I think media really is the modern form of social event. There have always been things create simply to occupy time or thought, be it festivals or celebrations or just a really good book. Technology changes the wrapping but people are the same. Because of technology I can filter the content that I consume with pinpoint accuracy, whenever I like. There are so many options now.

This is why I'm wary of studies and researches that like to talk about how media has changed human nature, or the great social environment. They never seem to consider that what we have today is closer to what everyone is actually like, and that all the limitations before were like little obstacle races people jumped through to be a part of society. Certainly etiquette and mannerisms in the past seems more needlessly complicated than the ones today.