Project Proposal

I’m considering making a media project based on music and it’s relationship to a person’s mood... I would show my group of students to be aware of how a song or beat provokes emotions. I’d make a playlist of probably five songs, depending on how much time I was given with the children, and I’d ask them to either use descriptive words or draw how the music made them feel. From that preliminary question I’d follow up with “what about the music or beat made you feel different… for example the quick tempo making someone feel anxious?”. I’m not sure if the classroom will have a stereo or a way I can play the music or not…

Or

I could construct a handout that they can complete all of which relating to the future and how the predict changes amongst themselves and society as a whole. This project would be expanding upon the idea from one of our past blog posts about the “next big thing in the media”. An example question could be, “What does the phone of the future look like and what aspects would be beneficial to the design?” As for an answer the students may choose to either draw what it would look like or use words to describe their design, whichever option they are most comfortable with.

Media and The Body

For some bizarre reason when we were told to find an image that reflected "Media and The Body" I thought of a type of dance, or performance art... synchronized swimming. To me the sport is very old hollywood and that is what drew me in at an early age. I actually have competed in synchronized swimming competitions for eight years and stopped early on into high school. I think that it is one of the most graceful sports and in order for the performance to really stand out it needs to be coincide with the music exactly. The swimming positions need to mirror the music so much so that when you see a performance it seems like you are watching the music play out.

I chose an image of Esther Williams who is iconic for the sport as well as MGM films. She actually trained my first coach, Rosemary. The sport is less known then it's prime but it will always have a little Hollywood glamour to it.

Keeping things cool

I feel like the next “cool” thing will be a more exclusive society, people will be more focused on self advancements but not so much as a community. One thing that is kind of disheartening to me is how bookstores are closing nation-wide and reading, as a whole seems to be on the outs. I suppose reading is not dead per say it just does not have the same magic feel to me when I read text on a screen. So I guess reading as it once was, or the format has expired but digital reading is at a high. I can see this as a positive attribute to society because people, especially the younger population, take their ipods, ipads, and e-readers everywhere. This makes reading with a vast library easily accessible and accessibility will encourage reading as a behavior. Another thing that’s encouraging about all of this is that I can already see the progress on making reading cool. The other day I was watching something on hulu and a commercial for audible.com came on. The advertisement was selling reading as being easy and convenient because the novel, essay, or whatever material can go anywhere.

I don’t think this is too new but I definitely get the majority of my news and pop culture from the internet. Instead of looking at a magazine such as US I go to sites such as, Perezhilton.com which started as one site but now has many sister sites, like fitperez, pereztv, and even a site for pets. I like that I can pretty much find whatever is the common interest of the moment and from there browse other nonsense. Today I actually read an interesting article on perezhilton that talked about theatre and acting with robots. I personally think the acting would seem very cold and ineffective since the droid or robot has no memories that mirror any emotion… so what could they feed off of. I do agree that it was pretty cool seeing both a human actor and a robot working together but it seems very science fiction to me too… the sci-fi that has something go wrong! Hah.

Here’s a link to the article that I referred to,

http://www.switched.com/2010/11/13/geminoid-f-robot-actress-japan/?icid=maing