Media Writing Guna

I discuss my biggest fault in approaching the class in my final assignment. I took that as an opportunity to reflect on some bottled up thoughts that I had, revisiting the core purpose of why I enjoy writing. Reflecting on the course itself and the process, I found this class to be a different form of writing that was in the middle of the analytical, research papers that I hate and the free, creative writing that I loved. We took our own thoughts and ideas but integrated them with outside research on the medium.  I found it to be quite a roller coaster for me. The first piece was the one that I was most distant from (in terms of content at least). I'm not very big on pop culture or news, so writing about it was out of my comfort zone. I had to spend extra time researching since I was so foreign to the current policies and news, only just grasping a level of understanding to be able to whip the piece together. What pulled me through that assignment was integrating it with somethi...

A Reflection on the Student Condition I think to myself at least once a month what it would have been like to go through college and actually take classes for the content. Being a pre-med student, I have valued the grade more often than the message. It's probably a common symptom of the system since we have to keep our GPA at perfection throughout our college career to impress the medical schools. My writing minor was supposed to be my step out of the light, it was supposed to be the classes I took for me rather than for those medical schools. The assortment of classes I took through the minor were supposed to be not for the grade. That's what I told myself. But with every class, I always have that anxiety at the back of my mind. Even though these classes give a freedom that I don't find in any other classes, there are limitations. I used to hate writing for classes. I went to a math and science academy where every History and English class was filled with analytical,...

Final Assignment: Video Game Categorization Course: Video Games as a Medium Professor: Guna Yerrabolu This course is made for students who enjoy playing video games. It revolves around playing video games and then analyzing the experience, so it could still be suitable for students who don't really play video games. A lot of the questions I got revolved around the requirement for 10-15 games. As I presented in the Research Tips and Tricks, this assignment is still feasible if someone does research. The categories don't have to be broad. So if they research gameplay clips or other people's reviews, the assignment can still be completed since the categories that the student generates are of their own choosing. Information Throughout this course, we have observed how medium can shape the message that a video game is portraying. We spent a majority of the class looking at specific video games and analyzing different components that made or broke them. In this proce...

The future of four technological inventions: Trains (Travel) The next step for this would be rather than transporting a set number of people in groups over and over again, you would have a system where each person could travel at their own time through a constantly running system. This takes away the requirements of operators and conductors, takes away the requirements of schedules and relying on the compliance of everyone to run the system. Something like a single person, tube transport that just whisks the individual from one station and deposits them at the target station would function better. However, this would have to have a way to do this without taking up physical space. There is a lot of long distance travel, so having people travel that far would require multiple tube systems. People would have to live in a place that houses all their needs in a closer system, making this more practical. Augmented Reality This is the next step for cell phones. It would take the concept...

Writing on organizing games into categories for a class that worked with analyzing different parts of one game throughout the course. Discuss the main topics touched throughout the course. Provide an example diagram, but say that you can categorize by any aspect of the games (i.e art, gameplay, genre, story arc, etc.). Overwatch -Set Characters (SC) Call of Duty MW2 -Customizable Characters (CC) Planetside 2 -Class Based Characters, CC Realm of the Mad God -CBC, CC Binding of Isaac -CC PUBG -CC Shadow of Mordor - Terraria Crypt of the Necrodancer League of Legends

"It treats the work of art simply as a starting-point for a new creation" This holds the key to understanding Wilde's piece. Criticism, as a form of art, uses its subject as a platform to build from. Wilde seems to be inverting Platonic ideology and applying it to art. With Plato, life is an imperfect representation of a perfect idea. The issue that Wilde had with painting, however, is that it tries to resemble life too much. He believes that art should come from the individual, growing from their beliefs and thoughts. Criticism is how someone experiences the art, expressing themselves in the form of criticism. I agree that if criticism comes from the same internal motivation that drives more traditional forms of art, then it can be considered so. However, this depends on intention. True criticism could be art, but modern criticism is not. Most of what we see nowadays is crafted to draw attention. It isn't a form of self expression but rather a form of income and ...

Excerpt from “The Critic as Artist: With Some Remarks About the Importance of Discussing Everything”       - Oscar Wilde ERNEST. Yes; I see now what you mean. But, surely, the higher you place the creative artist, the lower must the critic rank. GILBERT. Why so? ERNEST. Because the best that he can give us will be but an echo of rich music, a dim shadow of clear-outlined form. It may, indeed, be that life is chaos, as you tell me that it is; that its martyrdoms are mean and its heroisms ignoble; and that it is the function of Literature to create, from the rough material of actual existence, a new world that will be more marvellous, more enduring, and more 17 true than the world that common eyes look upon, and through which common natures seek to realise their perfection. But surely, if this new world has been made by the spirit and touch of a great artist, it will be a thing so complete and perfect that there will be nothing left for the crit...

For Partner: Gloss -Summary -Most Important -Structure -Question to start For Others: -Some talking points to bring up in discussion Sarah C Alex Khan Sam DeFrank Nate Ferrari Mark Duncan Christopher Stoeffels -------------------------------------- Mark Duncan Summary: -Halo 3 -Experiences playing alone -Community the developed from the game -Specific features of the game that drew the writer to it -Other people's experiences Most Important: -The personal experiences Structure: -Introduction -What brought the writer to the game -The specific aspects the writer likes -The community that stemmed -Other people's experiences Question: -Does the ending where the writer brings in other people's experience distance the reader from the writing since the main focus for the majority of the piece was on personal experience? ------------------------------------------------- Sarah C -What is 11 O'clock -Didn't realize that Killer Quest was...

*So I took this exercise as changing her content into a new form rather than translating the ideas and applying them to a new concept...oops* -Reading an entry only to reflect and seeing what she remembers and what she doesn't -Writers are a breed of their own -The notebook is for her -The memories are manifestations of imagination and emotion of the time -Bite-size memories -Can return to the moment in your life In this exercise, we have to translate the book into a modern format. I have summarized what I felt are the main points throughout the piece above briefly. Now to create the translation. Interestingly enough, the notes above are a translation in and of themselves. ----------------------------------- "My Notebook is mine" Why did I write that? Do I still remember it? Writers are a breed Privacy for me My memories are stories Fused with emotion We are all unique Bite-size portals to the past We forget too soon --------...

The way that the author reflects on what the notebook means to her is where I truly connect with this piece. The 'lies' that the author writes are what make the notebook hers. As I discussed in class, the only writing that I like to do comes from my experiences and what is on my mind. I have never written a notebook. I mostly write fiction short stories, which are a mix of my imagination and my thoughts. I find her lies are just the meshing of her life with a story, essentially the same concept of what I do in my writing. The whole concept of notebook keeping reminded me of my girlfriend. She has always kept journals to ground her emotions, especially in times of sadness. I found it quite interesting to see some of the pages that my girlfriend could not remember what they were talking about. She draws memories or phrases or bits and pieces of anything that make the memory that she wants to show. Reading Didion's piece, I kept drawing parallels to my girlfriend's stori...

The Top 5 Games I Loved 5. Pokémon Light Platinum (Rom Hack) This game makes its way to the top five list not through any ground breaking new features or genre defining developments, but from how it kept me sane through my freshman year of high school. Most people have not heard of this game, functioning as a modified version of Pokémon Ruby Version playable on the PC. The creator of this game meshed graphics from other Pokémon games and included a large inclusive list of Pokémon from all generations that could not be found in the traditional games. The amount of content packed into the game allowed me to keep playing for weeks, most of which occurred during class.  The school I attended for my freshman year of high school had this 'fantastic' idea of giving each student a laptop. There were monitoring programs and restrictions, but when during a lecture, the teacher's attention was diverted. Since it was my freshman year, I was stuck in the introductory classes,...

"a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention" -H. Simon This quote ties back to one of the fundamental schools of thought relating to Marshall McLuhan's 'Medium is the Message'. As we move into the age of visual electronic media, there are so many distractions present that we start to lose grasp on what we are looking at. Any website is filled with ads, sponsors, links to other places, and just a lot of bs that diverts your attention from what is there. In the context of the ICA, I felt that the exhibit I focused on fell victim to this a little. Cecilia Vicuña has so many small sculptures that create a feeling and vibe throughout the whole exhibit, but it makes it hard to try to focus in on one. Your attention is pulled from one to another, making it difficult to really take in each part for what it is. Unless you had the time to go piece by piece, the initial glance is much more detrimental with so many 'moving' parts. I spent an hour focus...

Halo: Combat Evolved https://sacredicon.blog/halo-posts/ I think that this will be a good source to fashion my assignment 3 around. I went through this blog and  the first post  was about the initial impact of certain campaign missions in the game and how seeing them again makes you reminisce. I chose this blog immediately after reading this post because when the author described those moments, I was pulled back to the childlike amazement I had when i was younger. The specific times he chose were the same ones that ran on loop in my head, the same ones that every time I played through the campaign I would get chills. It's posts like this that people who understand the game can truly appreciate and get a grasp of how much the author really cares about it. Blog title: Sacred Icon What are the visual/formatting features of this blog's home page: This blog is not entirely dedicated to Halo. It has sections for Star Wars, Star Trek, and Doctor Who too. The homepage gives...

As with my previous posts, ideally I would have liked to come back immediately after class and type of my thoughts without the degradation of time, but here we are. When at the Institute of Contemporary Art, I spent the initial 5-10 minutes walking around the exhibits. I've always been on the edge of my opinions on the genre. Most of the times, I look at something and see what the artist is trying to do but don't see what the point is of capturing it like they do. I get what they are trying to do, what they're trying to show, but I just never had a liking of the medium. I've even given the ICA a chance before, going with my girlfriend, but it didn't really make much difference for me. That being said, having to spend time in the museum made me see another side. It didn't change my liking of the medium, but it did show me that I didn't give it the time that it deserved. Contemporary art demands more time than others for me, having to see through the initia...

02/07 Idea: Video Games -Halo, obviously -League of Legends -Call of Duty MW2 Each of these has it's own story, so where do I go with this? 02/12 I'm now thinking about doing a top ten list now after spending some time reflecting on the blog. The choices that the author of the blog I read were not superficial. He explained what each meant to him and why he chose them. You could see how deep the choices were, making it more relatable for me. ADD DA VINCI NOTEBOOK IN CLASS PIC 02/14 Originally, I was planning on doing a top ten within the Halo game, but after the meeting, I came to the conclusion that a top ten Video game list would provide a larger look into my life (as you assumed was the approach, which I liked so much more). I started putting together a list: 1. Halo 2. League of Legends 3. Age of Mythology 4. Call of Duty MW2 5. Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2 6. COD Black Ops 2 7. Digimon Rumble Arena 8. Pokemon Rom Hack (Find specific one I played)-->...

My parents never really let me play video games. They probably thought it rotted the brain. I was always scared to ask them for a new game, and only got to play maybe one or two hours on the weekend. It was my uncle from Australia who first introduced me to video games. I was young, and he was so cool. All my peers were playing these rated M shooting games while we were in middle school, and the one time I got to go over to a friends house we played Halo. I don't even remember how I convinced my dad to buy me Halo: Combat Evolved for the PC. But this was the first game that I loved. I'm from a small farming town in the middle of the cornfields. While my parents kept me indoors to study or do after school programs, the other kids were out playing in the streets or over at each other's houses. The popularity that my intelligence brought faded fast after elementary school. The cool kids became those that were attractive and did sports. Friendships seemed to disappear as new...

What Do You Notice? This piece is one that takes a lot of current events and research and applies it to the topic at hand. There are sources and articles that are referenced that give the feeling that this is not one person's opinion but rather a common mentality. I found this much different that my current post for Assignment 2 because I veered more towards a self-reflection on my topic. This article used external examples for the most part while mine worked on examples that I had experienced. What Do Others Notice? I think there is some evidence of political stance that seeps in with the original discussions of Trump. I am very a-political and don't care much for one's beliefs, but if someone was opinionated in regards to politics, they might find some friction right off the bat.

Cecilia Vicuña: About to Happen I feel like I barely understood what the exhibit was supposed to represent from the writing. The words they used seemed unnecessarily complicated and inflated for the purpose. I just rolled my eyes after reading some of the sentences. I guess from the bulleted list I did get a general idea of how she was approaching her art, and what it was supposed to represent for her, but the two paragraphs before just seemed like generic, wordy bs to me (like someone trying to hit a word count and typing every word in a thesaurus). Slow Criticism: Art in the Age of Post-Judgement The premise behind this piece is that time is no longer spent when analyzing art. The author says that there is a whole world that is being missed as we now simply look with a fleeting glance. I agree with that, of course. The issue is just the whole world revolves around speed. We really don't spend much time on anything. The faster the better nowadays, revolving around insta...

Flipped Classroom: Success in Theory, Failure in Practice The worst learning experience I have ever had.  Education at the collegiate level is riddled with public lectures. A teacher in the front of an auditorium talking to hundreds of students straight from a PowerPoint. This format is the target of a large amount of criticism, ridiculing it as dissociating the teacher from the students and reducing the 'teaching' of the teachers to a text-to-speech robot reading from the slides. The critique of the norm has brought a wave of 'new' approaches to teaching, including the flipped classroom. The  concept of flipped classroom  is built from the idea of introducing students to the content before class and utilizing the time that would have previously been for teaching to work with the content that was learned. Let's use one of my Biology classes as an example. Before coming to class, we were expected to learn the material from reading a text book. In general, thi...