{"id":534,"date":"2012-04-15T17:08:05","date_gmt":"2012-04-15T17:08:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edublog.me\/shapingmedia\/?p=534"},"modified":"2012-06-07T10:26:25","modified_gmt":"2012-06-07T10:26:25","slug":"april-15th-blind-spots-and-technical-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edublog.me\/shapingmedia\/2012\/04\/15\/april-15th-blind-spots-and-technical-media\/","title":{"rendered":"April 15th: Blind spots and technical media"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In our last chat-session we talked about <strong>blind spots<\/strong> as an entry point to Pedagogical Media Theory. The main task was to be on the &#8216;lookout&#8217; for cultural blind spots (this maybe a paradox?) that would translate into individual blind spots; and possible ways to challenge or support potentially irritating new perceptions; or turn them &#8216;visible&#8217; &#8211; or &#8216;tangible&#8217;, &#8216;confrontative&#8217;, &#8216;irritating&#8217;, &#8216;exciting&#8217;, etc. Some examples for such blind spots and their &#8216;turning&#8217;-problem would be:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>How can we show a Himba the difference between green and cyan?<\/li>\n<li>How can we show non-disabled people, how a physically challenged person &#8211; with e.g. no vision, no hearing, or no legs &#8211; perceives their environment?<\/li>\n<li>How can we show the global impact of our consumerist western everyday lifestyle on the earth, other people and our future selves?<\/li>\n<li>How can we show the impact of deeply ingrained concepts like money, property, competition, national states etc. on our interpretation of and acting in the world?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Classic PMT-questions would be:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>How can we show &#8216;digital natives&#8217; or &#8216;immigrants&#8217; the respective worldviews of the other group, worldviews they are not accustomed to?<\/li>\n<li>How can we show the cultural influence of a digital-networked medium permeating our culture, both in <a href=\"http:\/\/mms.uni-hamburg.de\/epedagogy\/mmswiki\/index.php5\/Mediology_%28Definition_according_to_Debray%29\">space (communication) and in time (transmission)<\/a>? It is always easier to do this in hindsight, but how about the here and now?<\/li>\n<li>What are the blind spots of established technical media like TV, radio, newspapers, books &#8211; and did they just vanished in their current digital-networked reincarnation?<\/li>\n<li>How can we turn individual insight of blind spots into long lasting or far reaching cultural change?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Besides the technical problems of rendering a blind spot visible, and doing this in a non-threatening way, there&#8217;s always the ethical problem, too:<br \/>\nFirst, do we have the right or the obligation to do so with specific, &#8220;well-running&#8221; blind spots, e.g. <em>why<\/em> does a Himba need to know the different color concepts?<br \/>\nSecond, <em>what<\/em> do we show <em>instead<\/em> of the blind spot? We are, in a way, exchanging one blind spot with another, as the examples of the shift from logosphere to the graphosphere, mentioned by e.g. Christina Schwalbe (see her text in the dropbox), show.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, most designer&#8217;s task is to shift new inventions or new media as fast as possible into a zone of comfort, of ignorance (as &#8220;lacking knowledge&#8221;) and non-perception without consequences &#8211; so we can concentrate on the forms in the medium, not on the medium itself:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/edublog.me\/shapingmedia\/files\/2012\/02\/McCloudScott2008_ExplainingGoogleChrome.png\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-358\" title=\"McCloudScott(2008)_ExplainingGoogleChrome\" src=\"http:\/\/edublog.me\/shapingmedia\/files\/2012\/02\/McCloudScott2008_ExplainingGoogleChrome.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"492\" height=\"329\" srcset=\"https:\/\/edublog.me\/shapingmedia\/files\/2012\/02\/McCloudScott2008_ExplainingGoogleChrome.png 492w, https:\/\/edublog.me\/shapingmedia\/files\/2012\/02\/McCloudScott2008_ExplainingGoogleChrome-300x200.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 492px) 100vw, 492px\" \/><\/a><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Above image is part of a comic,<a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/googlebooks\/chrome\/small_24.html\"> Scott McCloud explains Google Chrome (2008)<\/a>. Did you noticed your browser lately? The web? Your cell phone? The text you are reading at this moment?<br \/>\nCan you &#8216;see&#8217; the established or developing medial blind spot here&#8230;? ;)<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Jenny mentioned in her Chat:<br \/>\n<em>&#8220;I [f]ound out that if everybody could expand their mind without the cultural boundaries of society, probably we would have a personal and deeper experience about anything we see.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>That is, as Noora noticed, a tricky thing, because we need a common vocabulary, grammar, cultural norms etc. to communicate and conceptualise, to turn our everyday life into something expectable, manageable and safe.<br \/>\nI dare say that no participant of the Ayahuasca-ceremenony is always in this state of open consciousness, it is a temporary ritual for taking an outside-view from the personal and cultural medium one is usually bound to; but after the experience one is supposed to come back and change the &#8216;real&#8217; world, and being aware of this latent space of mind. Failing to come back, losing one&#8217;s culture is a risk.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Jenny again:<br \/>\n<em>&#8220;I feel you just need to think how can you transform what you wanna do and how people will experience something different and how can you construct something that will leave a teaching, a message, a feeling.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Does our culture has anything comparable to an Ayahuasca ceremony, to offer a external point of view?<\/p>\n<p>Arts and artists, as shaper and creators of medial forms and their contents, seem to fulfill this function in our society. Maybe you have heard of Bertolt Brechts <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Distancing_effect\">&#8220;distancing effect&#8221;<\/a>, or his idea of turning radio into something&#8230; else. Maybe you have heard of Orson Welles radio broadcast about an alien invasion, that provoked panic on the east coast.<br \/>\nThese are just some examples, where artists changed what an audience could expect from media. These were contemporary blind spots of media that turned visible &#8211; with educational and\/or nearly disastrous effects.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Bertolt Brecht (1927-1932): \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.medienkunstnetz.de\/source-text\/8\/\">Radio Theory<\/a>\u201d (media theory)\u00a0 [XXX]<\/li>\n<li>Orson Welles (1938): <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/War_of_the_Worlds_%28radio%29\">\u201cWar of the worlds<\/a>\u201d (theatrical radio play) [X]; you can listen to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mercurytheatre.info\/\">original 1938 broadcast as MP3<\/a>, if you\u2019re interested.<\/li>\n<li>Dan Laughey (2007), \u201cCantril: The Invasion from Mars\u201d, in \u201cKey Themes in Media Theory\u201d, pp. 6-19 (can be found in our Dropbox) [XXX]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Please take a look at these texts. The task from last time still stands:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Where are our culture&#8217;s blind spots? How can we utilise media to turn them visible, and therefore shiftable? And what do we want to achieve by this?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In our last chat-session we talked about blind spots as an entry point to Pedagogical Media Theory. The main task was to be on the &#8216;lookout&#8217; for cultural blind spots (this maybe a paradox?) that would translate into individual blind &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/edublog.me\/shapingmedia\/2012\/04\/15\/april-15th-blind-spots-and-technical-media\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,18],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-education","tag-blind-spot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edublog.me\/shapingmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edublog.me\/shapingmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edublog.me\/shapingmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edublog.me\/shapingmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edublog.me\/shapingmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/edublog.me\/shapingmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":665,"href":"https:\/\/edublog.me\/shapingmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534\/revisions\/665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edublog.me\/shapingmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edublog.me\/shapingmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edublog.me\/shapingmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}