Humping The (new) Media Landscape

Reading: Everything Bad is Good For You

Everything Bad is Good For You: How Today’s Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter.
Stephen Johnson

Johnson's book is an argument against a common assumption that contemporary popular culture makes its consumers dumber over time. He advocates for a new set of standards to assess the value of the popular media culture object based on what types of neurological functions video game or television program is allows it’s audience to exercise rather than the moralistic view of what the content of a storyline teaches. "looking at media as a kind of cognitive workout, not a series of life lessons" (p.14)

Through a formal analysis of the narrative structures of television shows, films and video games he quoting such diverse sources as mathematicians, game theory scholars and screenplay writers. Although he includes a personal narrative and perspective to make it more rateable, Johnson primarily takes a systematic approach to investigating the subject. He culls data from many sciences including specific Sociological studies and citing Neuroscience research into how the brain works. He points to several specific studies on game theory and supports his statements with a variety of texts from the established Media Studies and Cultural Theory cannon.

Johnson coins the term Sleeper Curve for thesis that mass culture is altering the cognitive development of young people in a positive rather than negative manner. Because today's popular cultural objects are more complex in narrative structure and form than that of preceding eras the cognitive skills developed by playing a video game or watching The Simpsons, are as valuable as those developed by reading classic literature or other older forms of popular media. He identifies two forms of intellectual labor which occur when playing modern video games: Probing – essentially learning the scientific method via exploring and poking around to builds knowledge with which to make educated guesses about how something works.  Telescoping –  prioritizing and managing sets of tasks that are nested one within the next, building up complete the larger task at hand. These are important skills in today's world that are quite difficult to teach in a linear way. Similarly, modern TV also develops certain skills set in our brains for example, the prominence of nonlinear narratives and multi-character storylines which require viewers to keep track of many ideas at once and do not allow for neatly packaged conclusions.

Thus:

Audiences expectations are changing and so is the type of media they are consuming. We should not underestimate the "work" that the brain is doing when engaged with these films/tv shows/video games. Being merely a spectator in modern culture is becoming the less dominant experience. What seems passive is actually focus.

Yes, there is a lot of junk out there but in comparison to the junk 20 years ago today's junk ain't so bad and the good stuff now is really quite good.

This book admittedly does not have sufficient data to support its precepts properly in a scientific environment and Johnson hopes that the book will actually inspire more empirical research in this area. Regardless, it is a helpful starting point for thinking about what is unique to today's popular media and how to assess its value in a practical way, for example, to serve as a guide for concerned parents. Ultimately, a well informed and open minded  exploration, I really enjoyed it  - will post more personal thoughts when I have time.

The Craftsman notes pt. 2

Because Sennett focuses much of his writing on the historical idea of craft  we may be prone to limiting our discussion to too narrow an approach, and thereby limiting how we are applying these ideas to our work as contemporary media makers. This is why I really appreciate how you are enlarging the idea of "articulate" from literally referring to ability to speak well to what is means to be articulate in our current environment. I feel very strongly that media makers, be they craftsperson or artist (or both), are tasked with the job of telling universal stories in the language of their time (and place, for that matter).  As media makers within a contemporary global media environment, for us to be articulate with mere spoken words is not enough for effective communication.

If we choose not to, and fall prey to technophobia, we allow ourselves to become impotent communicators. I am not suggesting that all media makers must work with new technologies, certainly those who work in a traditional craft form are doing something important by maintaining that history but they are still working in a contemporary environment. I am advocating that whatever the form your work takes you must be aware of how any new technologies relate to your craft and may effect your work. It is our job to understand them and not be fearful of a future filled with new tools and machines that will replace us. The way we make ourselves irreplaceable by understanding these tools, building upon them and finding new uses for them or deconstructing them articulately in our own work.

I enjoyed reading The Craftsman but found myself feeling somewhat removed from the text. With some consideration, I realized that this is because I have fundamentally different ideas about being a craftsperson and my own relationship with the tools I have used for creative communication. I refer to McLuhan’s description of media as “the extensions of man” and any craftsperson can attest to this on a metaphorical and literal level in regards to their tools: just ask a painter to describe brushes, a tap dancer about shoes, a filmmaker about a lens, a cook about their All-Clad pots and so on. As humans we make tools to physically extend our abilities to interact with the world.

Because of this I find it difficult to devote too much analysis to a tool or machine separate from the fact that it was created by a human to be ultimately controlled by a human. As an artist, I felt that in creating art works I was creating tools for myself and my viewers. Despite the fact that I have changed the form of my work and process I still feel strongly that media objects themselves are also tools. The works of art that had the most profound effect on me I realized were served as guides that enlarged my understanding of the world. Ultimately such tools can empower us by eradicating fears that keep us from acting honestly and compassionately.

notes On Intellectual Craftsmanship

Reading On Intellectual Craftsmanship, by Sociologist C. Wright Mills (wikipedia), was very helpful for me as I am in the process of determining what I am in graduate school to accomplish. In this piece, Mills sets out to document and explain in a simple and inspiring manner his own working process. There are several points that I found especially compelling and relevant to my own work.

Life=Work Idea of a "social scientist" ones life and work are deeply interconnected

bringing together personal experience with intellectual pursuits.

Surround yourself with your subject (and those interested in your subject). Doing things in your life  that will lead to thinking well along the lines of your work.

Keeping a file to conserve energy and capture fringe thoughts, and small snippets of ideas that once noted may lead to systematic understandings.  Keeping my own "intellectual enterprise organized and under control" has been a major task and exploration for me the past decade. I am looking to school to help me make something of it that is greater than the sum of its parts.I used to keep actual paper files in college but then moved so many times that the file cabinet was more cumbersome than helpful so I turned to the internet for that purpose.

Being overwhelmed by so many ideas - yes, all the time!

Creating a work/research/life processes to help deal with this issue and make meaning from mania.

To trust and utilize ones experience while also being skeptical of how it colors your own perceptions - building an "ambiguous confidence" which can then be justified through the documentation/file.

The file is a way of developing self reflexive habits

To engage in "controlled experience" - Love this!

Inviting Imagination

"Sociological Imagination consists largely of capacity to shift from one perspective to another..in the process building up an adequate view of total society and its components"

A technician is often too precisely trained to see outside of their practice. A social scientist is one unafraid to combine the seemingly disparate or random, with a playfulness of mind and a fierce drive to make sense of the world. "to a technician, new ways may sen loose or sloppy but the social scientist must cling to such vague images and notions, if they are yours, and you must work them out. For it is in such forms that original ideas, if any almost always appear"

Not becoming to rigidly committed to one plan from the start. re-arranging your file to find new connections. having a playfulness towards language. considering extremes. "Let your mind become a moving prism, catching light from as many angles as possible."

Voice

Mills warns against alienating yourself or clouding the meaning of your work in academic prose. Not to fear being considered pedantic or journalistic in style. Write to be readable and tell a story. Focus on your audience and voice. Avoid fetishism of technique.

In closing, he reminds the aspiring social scientist to keep perspective, not to study one milieu after another but to look at the social structures in which all of these milieu are organized.

Reflections on The Craftsman pt.1

For one my Understanding Media Studies course we are reading Richard Sennet's book The Craftsman.

Really enjoying it, an easy but very thoughtful read. About halfway through the book and a wanted to jot down a few things that struck me.

Idea of Craft as Skill + Community

I found it very relevant to this discussion that Sennet calls out the emergence of a more secular workshop coinciding with growth of cities (p.56). This leads right into to the concept of the city itself as a workshop for creativity and research. Something we were asked to reflect upon as we begin graduate studies in NYC.

The urban environment inspires much of my own practice.  My working process was build from my undergraduate studies in photography where I became accustomed to using cameras to document not so much for end product but primarily as a note taking. I have come to rely on a creative process that depends on the accumulation of these notes. I have learned to trust that over time they will result in some greater work of art/ knowledge.

The act of making something as form of thinking.
For some reason there are many cues in culture which deem hand labor and thinking to be mutually exclusive. Why does this persist when anyone who has ever made anything would argue it?

He also talks about the line between craft and art - a blurry one wherever you draw it. What is the value of separating craft from art?

The transition from Apprentice to Journeyman described as a move from gaining imitative skills to understanding the overall structures for leadership. Easily applicable to contemporary work and business management.

Great quote about $ and art:

IT'S MINE! 

-Philip II to Cellini regarding Cellini's protesting the addition of a fig leaf to a commissioned statue of Jesus.

Here is a photo of my tap shoes, they are made out of some other ladies old golf shoes. They have great mojo and they really help me think.

Stupid accurate online quizesesszz!

You're Catch-22!
by Joseph Heller
Incredibly witty and funny, you have a taste for irony in all that you see. It seems that life has put you in perpetually untenable situations, and your sense of humor is all that gets you through them. These experiences have also made you an ardent pacifist, though you present your message with tongue sewn into cheek. You could coin a phrase that replaces the word "paradox" for millions of people.
Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

Stu