day one down.
Since the term ‘network literacies’ was introduced into my vocabulary last week, I have admittedly spent a whole lot longer contemplating its possibilities in the safety of my own head, rather than making the effort to really give it a shot out here on the great wide web. Sure, its partly laziness, but right now I’ll call it fear of the unknown – as the process of starting uni and this new media course has been the ultimate unknown for me. My whole life I’ve spent a maximum of 20 minutes walking to school. Suddenly its an hour and a half of public transport at some ungodly hour, shuffling in the midst of the thousand-strong UNSW crew at Eddy Avenue, stealthing down lecture theatre stairs to snake a seat 20 minutes into my first ever ARTS1090 show…
Yep, yesterday was pretty full-on. For the majority of the morning I felt severely undercaffeinated and no further enlightened as to what I’d signed up for in the next 3 years. Following a blur of speed-dating-esque tutorials, dodgy sushi, ridiculous queues to exit the book shop, crazy Indian lecturers, a shitload of stairs and two crowded buses - I was finally crashed out on my couch again, letting the gratuitous violence of Underbelly drown out the steady buzz of thoughts threatening to spontaneously combust the nether sections of my brain.
Phew.
Exhale.
The room was very quiet. I walked over to the TV set and turned it on to a dead channel – white noise at maximum decibels, a fine sound for sleeping, a powerful continuous hiss to drown out everything strange.
‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ kept my eyes from closing permanently on the bus home, and that particular paragraph seemed worthy of sharing – speaking of using the TV to temporarily escape a more exhausting reality.
Of course I wasn’t spinning out on a deadly drug cocktail in a Vegas hotel with a machete under my pillow in case my acid-tripping attorney escapes from the locked bathroom.
But the concept is the same, is it not? TV has such a domesticated role in our world that we use this media to feel at home, to reacquaint ourselves with the familiar, become absorbed in another realm in which we can feel safe. When the wider world becomes indeed too wide, we shrink into the comfort of our favourite shows and well-known characters. The same for books -clearly, with my public transport escapism – and of course the internet realms of facespace and mybook.
Its kind of interesting that all these forms of media, which we know have such huge potential to broaden our minds and challenge us to venture into areas of the globe we could never reach physically, and even areas of philosophy and communication that were previously impossible – all this potential expansion and yet we can still use it to retreat into our own corners, our own personally customised comfort zones.
I guess its what Matt was getting at in the Week Zero lectures, that we can choose how we utilise these new technologies: to retreat or to expand; stand still or explore. Waste time thinking about what I could blog about, or just get out here and do it! So there you go, I gave it a shot. Instead of resigning to the single weekly posts for our ARTS1090 readings, I’m posting a ramble of thoughts that hopefully link in some way to what we’re all doing here.
I swear I’m not just procrastinating from the actual readings…
