Theory Classes Semester A

03/10/22

In today's lesson, we learnt about the Transmission Model of Communication. In this, we first covered The Shannon-Weaver model, and what all of the words associated with it (Information Source, Transmitter, Channel, Receiver, Destination, and Noise), meant, and how they related to the model. We also learnt that this was made to be a mathematical model, however as we know, communication is not mathematical, as there are feelings and multiple meanings of things, depending on how it is said. We also learnt about the definitions of Redundancy and Entropy, which are how predictable things within a message are, Redundancy being predictable, and Entropy being unpredictable. 

After this, we covered the topic of Cybernetics and Synergy, Stafford Beer (A theorist who worked in this field), and Salvador Allende, who was the president of Chile from 1970-1973, and who worked on Project Sybersyn, which was used to collect data to try to create a more decentralised socialist country.

10/10/22

In today's lesson, we learnt about Semiotics. We learnt about the definitions of Signifier, Signified, and Signification, and how Sign = Signifier + Signified. Within this, we covered words such as Iconic and Arbitrary, which is how closely the Signifier and Signified items are resembled to one another, Iconic being very close, and Arbitrary being not at all similar. We also learnt about the definitions of Denotation, Connotation, and Myth. Denotation being what we can literally know is there, Connotation being what we perceive from something based on the social and cultural constructs that we have learnt, and Myth being similar to Connotation, but with more of an ideologic or stereotyped view.

After this, we covered the definitions of Paradigm and Syntagm, which are sets and chains of Signifiers and Signifieds. We then watched a clip from the film 'For a Few More Dollars' by Sergio Leone, and an episode of 'Ways of Seeing' by John Berger, to understand these topics a bit more.

17/10/22

In today's lesson, we learnt about Structuralism and Post-Structuralism. We looked at the connection between Structuralism and Myth, a topic that we covered in last week's lesson, as well as the views of some people, including Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault. We learnt about binary opposites, and some examples of them, such as Day and Night, or Man and Woman. We also learnt about mediators, the points between these binary opposites, for example, the mediators of Day and Night, could be a solar eclipse, or afternoon, as these sit between and are a collective medium of the different opposites.

When looking at Jacques Derrida's views, we learnt about how he believed that in the world, certain aspects of life were privileged over others, such as talking over writing, and that these other aspects were seen as less important than their counterparts, however Derrida wanted people to see these things more equally, and suggested that although different, both sides were just as important as each other. Also, when looking at Michel Foucault's views we saw something similar, as with his views of how people with mental illnesses are treated. He believed that these people were best treated back in Renaissance times, when they were able to roam free and live their lives, as although they were seen to be different, that was not perceived as a negative view, whereas in more modern times, mentally ill people are institutionalized and treated like they are just crazy non-functioning members of society that need to be hidden away. This can also be seen within the punishment systems in the world, which used to be more public, to allow for riots and retaliation from the public, however, are now more hidden away, so that the torture and punishments cannot be seen, and therefore are harder to be stopped. Finally, we slightly covered Human Agency, which is that we have the chance to affect how our own lives go, and that not everything boils down to fate, or another unearthly over viewer.

24/10/22

In today's lesson, we learnt about Intertextuality. We firstly learnt the definitions of Intertextuality and Text, which are the fact that nothing is created completely from scratch, as something or another in the creator's life would have influenced a part of the production process, and a term to describe artefacts of multiple different forms. We then went on to learn about Julia Kristeva, who was the first person to use the term Intertextuality in 1966, and look at some examples in shows that we have seen. An example of this that we looked at, was in the show 'The Simpsons', and how in one episode, it made a direct comparison to the film 'Psycho', an in another episode, it references a few different films/shows/historical events, including Avatar, Transformers, and the colonization of native lands. We also covered the views of Roland Barthes, who believed that the author's views are not that important, as it is the receiver's views that matter, and Deleuze and Guattari, who viewed knowledge as having a more rhizomatic structure, as it never stops growing and expanding, in comparison to previous views of knowledge growing like a tree and stopping at a certain point.

We then listened to some audio clips, and were able to accurately guess what genre of film the music came from based on our perceived views on sounds, from the other films/shows that we have seen in our lives. After this, we began looking at Appropriation, which is taking something that already exists, and calling it your own either without changing it at all, or very slightly changing it. We learnt how this "hijacking" of work was connected to the Avant-Garde movement, and then looked at some examples of appropriation, including some of Marcel Duchamp's pieces of work, which were mainly just items that he collected and called art, such as a urinal which he named "Fountain", and his rendition of the Mona Lisa.

31/10/22

In today's lesson, we learnt about Marshall McLuhan. We covered his book 'The Medium is the Massage', which was a misprint of 'The Medium is the Message', and how he believed that mediums which extend a person whether mentally or physically, have an effect on the world. We also looked at his views on the senses, as well as the three ages (The Pre-Literate/Tribal Age, The Print Age, and The Electric/Digital Age), in which he has separated the past into. We then looked at the story of Echo and Narcissus, which McLuhan used to explain his theory of narcosis and amputation.

We then very briefly covered 'The Rear-View Mirror theory, and how whenever we go forward, we are looking into the past. Later on, we looked at Hot and Cool Media, and how Cool Media, such as Television and Speech, is more of an entropic and unpredictable media, compared to Hot Media, such as Radio and Print, as this is more redundant and predictable as media sources go. Finally, we looked at Media Tetrads, and how every medium supposedly Extends something, obsolesces something else, Retrieves another thing, and finally Reverses one last thing in the process. An example of this, is how The Car as an invention extends the legs, obsolesces horses as a method of transport, retrieves knight figures, as it represents freedom and adventure, and finally reverses the world into being more polluted, and having a lot more gridlocked traffic than what there used to be.

14/11/22

In today's lesson, we learnt about Utopia and Dystopia. We learnt the definitions of these words, with Utopia being an idyllic, yet non-existent place, similar to a dreamland or fantasy, and Dystopia being a society, which can be in our timeline, or in an alternate time and place, which is considerably worse than how the world is, such as if an apocalypse was to occur. We also looked at some examples of these societal ideas in media, and in examples such as enclosed towns, which although kept negative things out, it also imprisoned the inhibitors from leaving this better world. E.P.C.O.T, made by Walt Disney in 1962, was a similar creation, as an enclosed city that was supposed to be more idyllic that the current world, with underground tunnel systems amongst other things. We also looked at the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is taking up a large portion of the ocean, as the plastic cannot be broken down, and this is causing our world to become more dystopian, as it is becoming worse than what we are currently dealing with, and have had to deal with in the past.

21/11/22

In today's lesson, we learnt about The Growth of the Mass. We began by learning about the One and Two Step Models for the Flow of Communication, and some examples of these, for mass media, such as newspapers/television, and social media/influencers respectively. We then covered Gratifications Theory, which questions how people use media, rather than how media affects people, as well as the old Colosseum fights, which we learnt used a one-step model of communication, as the gladiators would get the final say of whether to kill his opponent or not, from the reaction of the most important person in the stands, who was normally a ruler of some description, sitting in a separate box to the rest of the crowds. We then learnt about Crowds, Audiences, Fans and Users, covering the definition of Fandom, a social culture created by a group of people who are highly engaged with a particular topic, and some examples of this, such as Hugo Gernsback's 'Amazing Stories' columns, the Sci-Fi and Star Wars fandoms as well as Fanzines. 

After this, we looked at the 1950's, when the audience was becoming more of a consumer from TV advertisements, due to psychoanalysis, how in comparison, the audience nowadays is more aware of the tricks that the advertisements are using, making them less likely to fall for them, and the Digital Age. We covered the definition of Participatory Culture, which is how we are moving into a world where anyone has a part in the creation of cultures and societies, as shown in examples such as Wikipedia, which is an independently run website, funded by donations, which can be edited by anyone, Quora, which is a public question and answer forum, and fandoms such as the K-Pop fandom, which hijacked #AllLivesMatter and #WhiteLivesMatter, to make all of the posts about K-pop dances, to take away the messages trying to take the focus off of the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as buying a majority of tickets to a Trump Presidential Campaign Rally, to make sure that the stadium would be empty when they didn't turn up, so that a lot less people would be there to actually support Trump.

28/11/22

In today's lesson, we learnt about Morality, Identity Politics, and Traditions of Censorship. These topics in more recent years have become known as a collective as being a part of the quick growing 'Cancel Culture'. To begin this lesson, we looked at censorship and its origins. We learnt that censorship was widely used within the church, as a way to remove topics that they deemed to be against their religion. We also learnt how in the reign of King Henry VIII, nothing could be published without royal permission. After this, we covered the ideal of free speech, and how it started being believed that people should be able to speak without having their words censored, even if not everyone agrees with what they are saying. We then learnt about how many people used to also burn books, as a way to try and censor them from the world, if they deemed them to be bad, this could be seen when many Beatles albums were burnt, after claims that they were more popular than Jesus, which the people of the churches did not appreciate. Nowadays, however, censorship is more controlled by media councils, as more and more information is available online in comparison to in books, so more films etc. are censored, but more in a sense of age ratings, so that everything can be seen, it is just more recommended to certain audiences.

We were then able to connect these past issues with censorship, with the more modern issues we're seeing with the rise of 'Cancel Culture', in which people (mainly celebrities), are being called out and criticized for any topics that they speak about, which can be viewed as  controversial, and this can almost be seen as the people once again trying to censor peoples freedom of speech, to fit into their standards of what should and should not be allowed to be said.

05/12/22

In today's lesson, we had a Skills Seminar, to teach us how to create an annotated bibliography and how to use Harvard referencing correctly. We covered how we should set out our bibliographies correctly, and what information we need ed to provide within them to produce the best work that we could. We also learnt how we should be creating our references for the quotes that we had to find for these bibliographies. 

After this, we learnt about academic misconduct and plagiarism, including what it is, and how we can avoid it within our work, as this would cause us big problems within our course's duration.