Lecture 6 - Marshall Law

I found this lecture a bit more difficult to sum up into a blog entry. Marshall McLuhan has some very interesting theories. One of his theories is "The medium is the massage". He talks about how the medium is an extension to us, for example a lamp is an extension of our eyes, as it gives us more light, to help us see. Whereas the massage is the effect or impact rather than the content, using the previous example the massage of the lamp is the effect it has on the room and the person (in this case increasing visibility). Anything can be an extension, clothes extend your skin and even your house is an extension of the body (store items, protection and heating etc.) Another theory expressed in "The medium is the massage" is that youth instinctively understand the environment in which they are brought up in which is the reason for the alienation between generations.

Another theory by McLuhan is the three ages:

• Pre-Literate / Tribal Era
• Print Age
• Electric Age (Proceeded on by the digital age)

Before books or speech people would communicate out of gesture and mumbles.

Then in 1450 Johannes Gutenberg's printing press was invented.

Now we have electronic media such as telephones television computing (since 1945).

Lecture 5 - Structuralism and Binary opposition

This lecture was a bit harder to understand than previous lectures. I started to understand the meaning to structuralism. There is no single way of understanding the world we live in, as there are so many ways and theories that help us understand it. We get our understanding of the world based on our cultural background (the way we were brought up by our parents and the things we watch on TV etc.)

People understand things by constructing the meanings from the opposites. By this I mean you can know something by knowing what it is not. For example you know what "good" is because you know what "bad" is.

Binary oppositions are opposites put into categories to help us understand the world. For example:

Good (god)       -          Evil (devil)

Happy                -          Sad

Human               -          Non-Human

Day                    -          Night

The in-between is determined by our cultural differences. By this i mean no one is completely good or evil and neither completely happy nor sad. The best way to understand this is via imagining these categories as a scale.

The Terminator (Cyborg)

In-between the categories there could be more defined categories for instance in-between day and night could be "sunset"/"sunrise". Another example could be in-between human and non-human could be "cyborg".

In a way we can relate to this as cyborg can be defined as an extension to the human body. Not necessarily a machine that looks and acts like a human like "The Terminator". By this i mean the clothes we wear are an extension to us as well as: glasses to help us see, watches help us tell the time and if you have been in an accident you might need to have a metal plate fitted or temporarily require the use of crutches. If people were completely human then they would likely be arrested for being indecent. 

The point I'm making with the cyborg example is that; the best way to understand structuralism when it comes to binary oppositions is to use the categories as a scale and use the middle of the scale to get a better understanding of things.

Lecture 4 - Intertextuality

In the lecture about intertextuality we learnt about how people link media with other media and how some producers/creators make references or copied designs. What I mean by this is a comedy cartoon like Family Guy make references to other media, for example from the film planet of the apes (the first one) you see the statue of liberty blown up and a guy start saying "you blew it up, damn you all to hell!" and in Family Guy Peter Griffin took the foot from the statue of liberty and Adam West quotes the exact same line when he sees this.

"Planet of the Apes (1968)        Adam West sees the statue of liberty's foot that Peter got for Quagmire and says Charleton Heston's big line from the end of the movie" - http://www.planet-familyguy.com/pfg/episodes/84/ITakeTheeQuagmire/

The reference made above is an example of Self-conscious intertextuality. This means the creator designed or made a reference on purpose so that the person interacting with the media may link up the references sort of like a gag. 

Another example of self-conscious intertextuality is Marvel comics copying a villain from DC comics. DC Comics: Deathstroke (Slade Wilson). Marvel Comics: Deadpool (Wade Wilson). DC comics came up with the super-villian first but was original called "The Terminator" (before The Terminator film by James Cameron) then as the James Cameron film was such a success they changed the name to "Deathstroke". After the name was changed Marvel comics released a new super-villian very similar (in name, alias, appearance + attributes) the only difference is the Marvel comics version they made their character more comical whereas the DC version is much more serious. These are both rival comics using self-conscious intertextuality they both have more or less the same super-villian which makes them both better known in both comics for being almost exactly the same.

Deadpool - Marvel Comics              

                                Deathstroke - DC Comics                              

                                                                                                        
The other version of intertextuality is unconscious. This is more or less the same principle, two different pieces of media which is very similar but the creator didn't plan on the similarity. For instance if someone sees a rock and thinks of the moon.

Lecture 3 - Reading Signs

This lecture i found really interesting. We learnt about semiotics. I found arbitrary + iconic and connotation + denotation very interesting. I even used these forms of semiotics to do my essay.

The closer a sign is to what it represents then it is iconic. For example a photograph is very iconic. The opposite to this is arbitrary which is how far away the sign is to what it represents for instance a scribbled down drawing of someone is arbitrary, unless the scribble is uncanny to the person it represents. Iconic and Arbitrary is typically a scale in which to see the sign. For example in the first Legend of Zelda game, all the people where pixel squares put together to make a basic representation of a person, this would be on the arbitrary half of the scale. However modern day legend of Zelda games they use CGI animation for any cut scenes and the game graphics have improved massively making them more realistic and life like making it more iconic.

Arbitrary-------------------------------------|-------------------------------------Iconic

 

The sign itself is denotation. For instance a poster of Rocky, that’s a basic denotation, however connotation is what it mean, what the poster could suggest. The poster for instance could be Rocky holding his hands in the air, the connotation here could suggest victory/triumph. So by seeing this clear poster of Rocky by the way it connotes you can get a suggestion of what the film is like.

Lecture 2 - Communication Breakdown

In this lecture we learnt about communication and how it can be broken down or affected. We were shown some videos as well of a very reptitive video which would then suddenly change after a while making it more unpredictable.

The term noise in communication is referred to as anything that is added into the information before it reaches their destination. For instance talking to someone over a radio crackling is a form of noise which is interfering, even distortion into the sound or disruption is noise interfering with the information. Another example could be trying to talk to a friend in a night club, but the music being too loud and people all around talking can make it hard to communicate and for the other person to hear which is a breakdown in communication affected by noise.

We also went through forms of communication such as redundancy and entropic.

Redundancy is basically conventional information which starts off further communication. For instance it is predictable to be greeted when you enter a hotel, which then leads on to further communication for booking into your room at the hotel.

The opposite of redundancy is entropic; this basically means anything that is unpredictable, unconventional information. An example of this would be if you were reading a new Superman comic and superman was to kill Lex Luthor, this would be out of character and really unexpected making it entropic