Purposes for using media (new or old): to
- encourage people to feel something
- help people to learn or understand something
- facilitate people to do something.
"The name of the game is content (Billup)."
Important points to remember:
Content is key. However, you must be able
to convey your content in ways that people understand it or
get something out of it. In other words, the message
and use of medium are inextricably linked (as Marshall McLuhan argued).
- According to the "transmission" model of communication,
people use media to create (encode) and send (transmit) messages
that are then received (decoded) by the audience. In reality,
however, messages are always subject to reinterpretation by
the audience. When you create and encode (literally) digital
images, understanding the potentials of various media aesthetics
may help you align your intent with your audiences' interpretation--though
the match will never be perfect.
- The fields of media aesthetics that we're focusing on include the uses of: Light and color Two dimensional space. Three dimensional space. Time and motion. Sound.
Our cognitive abilities and perceptions allow us to manage input from the world around us in a number of ways. Perception helps us
Stabilize the environment. We manage the visual field by determining figure/ground relationships: what's in front, what's in the background; what elements of the field are large and small, left and right, etc. To navigate the environment, we are constantly making judgments about the relationship of elements in the immediate environment.
See Selectively. We pick and choose (rather automatically) from all the available elements in our surroundings what to focus attention on. We may see, hear, and do many things that we're not fully conscious of. (For instance, you're probably breathing right now, whether you think about it or not. The computer screen in your field of vision is clear; the furniture, wall, or window behind the screen is fuzzy.)
Contextualize. We understand things based on the context. We make judgments about the meaning of elements in the environment based on our understanding of context--what should and shouldn't be present; what makes sense and what doesn't. Art can use our shared understanding of context (social context for example) or art can teach us to be part of an unfamiliar context.
Visual media, for example, offers opportunities to break through our traditional and conditioned ways of seeing and understanding the world.
Because the visual has the power to play with our perceptions, it's important to consider what it means to be a responsible and ethical communicator. Does that mean not pissing people off? Nope. You may definitely want to do that. However, since the purpose of graphic displays is to intensify and interpret experience, ethics does mean that you must be aware of the potential impact of your art and responsibility suggests that you carefully consider your message and media.
I was watching a movie the other day that had been released in 2000 in which the protagonist--a talk show host and stand up comedian--was elected president of the United States by accident because of a computer glitch. He was accepted as the president elect until the truth came out. What I noticed was how critical the role of media, new and "old" (TV), became in the situation. At one point in the film, one of the main characters comments about the power of media and perception because information is presented as if it is all equal. The example he gave was that a purportedly news-oriented TV show might feature an "expert" who claims that the WWII Holocaust never occurred together with another who takes the opposite position. Because both positions are given air time, It might seem as though the "sides" are equal--that in fact there is a legitimate debate. The point is that media, in this example television, has the power to create perceptions.
The same might be said of a range of media.