In 1964, Marshall McLuhan proposes the idea that sometimes the news or information we seek to find is actually not what we are mainly drawn to. We are closely affected by the actual medium we use to reach this information. Individuals are very sensitive to their environment whether it’s emotionally or physically. The way we understand or perceive things is strictly based on the medium that withhold the news. These mediums and overall environments that influence the way we perceive information we see is media ecology. Through time, we are constantly altering the world we live in, which also means our environments. McLuhan was very influenced by the theory of perceptions that he had encountered while studying at Trinity Hall, in Cambridge. Our media ecology is constantly evolving through different forms such as orally, on paper, radio, podcast, TV and internet. These mediums were also categories in different time periods such as tribal age (all body senses were used to interpret information), age of literacy (interpretation mainly focused on sight), print age (the abandon of sharing ideas as a community), electronic age (sound and touch are central to the understanding of information) and digital age (still in development).  Each one of these domaines has a different impact on the individual withdrawing the information. As years go by, the viewer is actually getting further away from the sources of information that are often altered and changed. Neil Postman, who developed the theory of media ecology, warned the viewer that the distance that separates us from the news could be an easy bypass for disruptive activity. This could often be explained as pushing one side of the story more than the other to hide something from a population (propaganda, etc). In 2018, we could easily say that all our search history is filtered, sold to companies that we might identify with and then who finally bombarde our pages with information they think we need to see for their own interest (product advertisements, etc).

Works Cited:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan

 

This topic was chosen by my group due to our common love for music and how this medium moves us. The theory on how music or specific songs in general can affect our emotional states is still unclear to this day. Many scientist and researchers have done experiments to try to understand this phenomenon but it’s still unclear why human’s can be emotionally affected when in the presence of music. In general, we can easily conclude that some individuals can be drawn to a specific song because of it’s lyrics that relate to a part of their lives. Within our group, we mentioned the impact of the choice of instruments used in the production could also affect the emotional state of an individual. A upbeat song might insist people to start tapping their foot to the beat, but on the other hand, a slower melody could calm the body and help our minds escape de world. We also discussed the fact that if we were to make a project about this specific topic, it would be presented through the model of a museum. There would be different sections in the museum that are decorated differently or that demonstrate different aspects in order to affect the individual differently in all parts of the exhibit.

Other projects:

The first example, we could state is using background music in movies. This is the easiest and most clear experiment that is used by many directors when creating motion pictures. The idea of adding in non diegetic sound (music or sound effect that is not produced by anything within the frame or story) into a scene to increase the emotional level of the viewer is a very interesting phenomenon. For example, in a love story, when the two lovers have to part ways, we could often find that there is a very dramatic melody playing in the background sound track of the scene. Our own project is very similar to this technique because we want to alter the environment of the individual to destabilize his normal state and then disrupt his emotional state with the addition of music.

On the other hand, when universities conduct experiments they are based more on short sessions of testing and then long sessions of Q&A. They test and then extract alot of information from the individuals trying out the study. We would on the other hand let the people experiment more and then at the end ask them one same question for all the sections they looked through in our exhibit. Our experiment would be not as much based on questions but more on living a particular experience.

 

 

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton