Week 4

Digital media is just the storage of all media in the world.  The entire world is connected by one system call the internet and with that system, anything can be sent and received in a matter of minutes.  Media has been around and changed especially after the invention of the printing press, but the global internet has changed it completely in all ways more than any other device.  Every piece of media is not on the internet and can viewed by anyone with access to the internet.

Because of this, there is a rise in notoriety from the internet.  Everything can be accessed. Anyone's work, art work, music or film.  There is a problem in copyright issues including the fact that someone can downloads a movie or music for free instead of paying for it, which is illegal, and has been a problem for musical artists.  Because of the digital age, every person can access any music and take it for themselves.  I don't know how much money is put into the purchase of music discs, but there are some bands such as the Avett Brothers who encourage the free download of music, because what is worth the money in their opinion is their live performances.  The band Radiohead placed their CD on their website and asked people how much they wanted to pay for their disc and that is how much they could pay.

Creativity is less defined in my opinion now days.  There is not much original work as anyone can just take footage off youtube or any other site and put it together with something else in a video or photoshop file so that it can look cool with other pictures.  Is this creative?  There are many who think so or just use this as a tool for playing around with friend's pictures, but I don't believe it is a serious art.  If the Mona Lisa painting had been just a compilation of many other pictures or paintings, instead of Da Vinci's hard work at painting, it wouldn't be as notable now days.  Art is suppose to be original instead of taken images put together in order to act like it is original.  A good use of photoshop and taken media is for propaganda.  It can be used to make signs or promote someone who is a key figure in society.  Or exploit someone's failings to gain aid by other people who would see the edited picture.  

Framing

This week I learned about framing situations.  I was given an example that really reflected how I feel which involved driving.  When ever I am driving on a high way, I normally come across a "scoundrel" that stays in the left lane, or fast lane while going slower than the speed limit and I get aggravated, because I am sure they understand they are going slower than they need to be for the lane and have not gotten over.  During this period I am also trapped from the other lane because someone who is going at regular speed is in the right lane blocking me from going around this "idiot" and I seem to focus on the fact that this is a personal attack on me.  While driving this past afternoon I came across that very situation and I framed the situation differently.  Maybe the person going absurdly slow for the fast lane has been traveling for hours and he or she seems to forget their speed and zone at just concentrating on going straight which happens to me often over long distances.  Maybe this is an older person who is scared of the "speed demons" such as myself and don't think to get out of my way.  I framed the situation that way and it calmed me down.  It was no longer and attack on me, it was just a normal person with different circumstances than I was used to.

Framing is used in advertising also.  Advertisers understand society even more than the people themselves. They have mastered how people look at things and are able to frame certain advertisements so that people will emotionally connect with the AD.  For example, car commercials used to just advertise the name, now everyone owns a car and commercials have to be mor creative.  They started to film movies, especially BMW, that were placed on the internet and starred famous actors for the appeal.  I looked at advertisements on my own outside of the PBS documentary to test my own knowledge.  I took a look at the two leading computer competitors which are Personal Computers (PC's) and Macintosh.  PC's are much more affordable and user friendly so they take advantage of that and advertise how much more affordable they are to the public and easy to use.  Macintosh advertises that it doesn't crash as much as PC's and are more advanced and "hip" for younger people as the look of the computer are more appealing with the white/black thin laptop.  The two competitors still lead in the industry today.