This concept that Crary builds upon is an inspiring one. When I think of driving a car, or even studying; to attune my full attention towards the one task in front of me, I must block out all the distractions that can take away my focus. But when I place full focus on the one point, my perception of other aspects can be distorted.

In Blesser and Salter’s “Spaces Speak” (2007), this idea of distorted perception is addressed. When considering soundscapes and the experiments that others have done in regards to creating an anechoic chamber; they’ve tried to show the difference one might experience when the usual surrounding aural environment is taken away.

As one steps into the room, their perception is distorted. Hearing nothing but silence, their attention is diverted to the sounds that they normally ignore. The beating of the heart, the rushing of blood; these are usually automatically pushed from ours senses when we focus on the other sounds in our everyday environment. But when in an anechoic chamber, the sudden loss of ambience causes our built-in ‘filtering system’ to become disabled.

What these readings did make me think of is the perception of those who aren’t distracted by their other senses – for example the deaf of the blind. Though these people may have disabilities, it is due to this lack of distraction from their lost sense that they have the heightened perception from the remaining others. In Jessica Wurtz’ “Seeing Without Sight” (2007), she documents experiments performed to determine whether the blind can work better than those without a disability, when blindfolded.

These studies show that even though those with a disability is disadvantaged in comparison to others, their perception is heightened by the sensitivity gained from only relying on one sense.

Stemming from this stream of ideas, I’d like to develop my own individual projects around the thought of losing one of the five senses. It will be interesting to try and portray the differences that can be noted when distractions that normally are overlooked, is removed.

Also, when looking at visual perception, I’d also like to focus on the misinterpretations that can come about when viewing something from different perspectives.

Blesser and Salter note that there are two main perspectives in all spatial experiences that can occur – the allocentric and egocentric. When considering these, it’s also obvious that perception can be distorted by personal experience and context, in addition to simply what our senses might be holding back from us. One’s past can cause the meaning of a situation to differ from another’s. And even if one’s perception is heightened, away from the lack of attention we normally exercise, these contextual differences in each individual can cause such an advantage to be disadvantageous.

The “Inner Eye”, as Blesser and Salter describe, is the catalyst that changes what we get from what we see. It’s not only about the visuals that are presented to us, but the “present combined with the past” (2007, page 49).

So in regards to the individual projects, I’d like to experiment on the use of different point of views to create different meanings from the one environment or object. Not only will visual framing be a major factor, but also the use of diegetic and non-diegetic sounds in accompaniment.

This idea could also be diverted towards the different meanings that particular sounds can cause in different individuals.

Hopefully, with each individual’s personal experiences, this concept of varying perceptions from person-to-person will be effectively portrayed.

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I am basically done with my video! 

Thought i might just record the embedded code here though. So i don’t lose it. Because knowing myself, I will. 

There it is! Looking good? I think so. =]

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Enjoooooy!

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Quality is quite poor. My bad.

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This is another youtube video (I know… I’m sorry), but it’s pretty funny. It’s a mockumentary on Twitter. These people have pretend to set up a new social networking site under the name of Flutter…

And don’t search it on google – I didn’t notice it was a mockumentary before I realised that there wasn’t really a site under flutter.com… my bad. xD

Enjoy!

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p.s. search up on Supernews on youtube as well. theyve got alot of other pretty interesting videos. =]

I just came across this site that has really good photos on it.
I think it’s supposed to be showing 50 examples of absolutely fantastic architectures, but the pictures itself are pretty cool.

I was to be able to do something like that….

Link

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I found yet another interesting video on Youtube in regards to Twitter. (Shows what I do with my spare time)
Man, these videos are everywhere. There’s heaps of these. And this is a particularly hilarious one.

It explores the idea that social networking sites are now taking over our everyday lives. Why do we use these programs? Can’t we all just socially network in REAL LIFE? Do we really know the people who tweet these tweets we get on Twitter?

Are we TOO reliant on such websites?

I laughed through this one. Enjoy.

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I just came across a youtube video in regards to the death of a news reporter. A sixteen year old has allegedly stabbed this well known New York news reporter several times when he was invited to the older man’s house.

This video was describing how both parties met on an online social networking site (i think they mentioned facebook at some stage), before meeting face to face.

My thoughts are, even though social networking sites are created to connect people from all over the country, all over the world; how far should we really take it?
It’s one thing to be social on a virtual level, but it’s another to take this relationship further and become real life friends. We’ve all heard stories about pedophiles praying on children, or simply creepy people that use the internet to spread their vile.
So how much should we trust that stranger we were talking to last night?
How about that person who commented on your blog the other day? Are they really students of UNSW? Or is it a disguise?

Should we really be relaying so much of our own personal information online? On facebook? On twitter?
What turned out to be a good idea (social networking), has morphed to become dangers to society.

What does this say about social media itself?

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It’s basically an article that describes the origins of an icon of twitter. I won’t go into detail too much, since I’ve uploaded the article and it’s more interesting than me simply repeating it’s contents.

But once I read this article, I realised that twitter is BIG. From being totally oblivious to this site’s existence, to finally signing up and thinking “it’s not as great as facebook”; I never really reaslied how popular twitter was!
I always expected twitter to be a bit of a blow over – to be blunt. Maybe something that would come and go.

Never really thought twitter would receive so much coverage and eventually really be the “next big thing” as all media related professionals say.

I guess I’m blabbering. But HEY! Read the article. It’s pretty interesting. =]

[Page One]

[Page Two]

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p.s. i hope this isn’t breaking any copyright codes or anything….