Response: McLuhan & Truax

Truax

I’ll start with Truax since that’s the easiest. This work came across as just a bit dated, but it was still very relevant. I like how he gave a pretty objective discourse and explained alot of facts. I learned a little bit about sound theory here that I didn’t know before.

I found his idea of “schizophonia” to be a bit amusing and really interesting. I’ve never thought of my relation to sound in that way before, but I have thought alot about how background music and ambient noise affects mood and performance. Some people do their best work in a quiet environment, but I find the quiet rooms here at school to be entirely too discracting!

McLuhan

MchLuhan, seriously, I didn’t like a major part of his message. I get what he was trying to say that with the medium being the message, but I still think it had a wrongness to it. In my opinion, the message is the message. That the medium can also be a message or influence the interpretation of the message. Like writing a note on a piece of vellum vs a piece of toilet paper can set different tones or tell you something about the person who wrote it.

… and really that was my only major gripe with his writing. I really liked the rest of it. His writing style was quite sharp and his examples were to the point. His hot and cold stuff I found a bit amusing as well. Something interesting I saw while reading was his point on ballerinas dancing on their toes and the exclusion of male figures from ballet. I had a conversation last night where we were discussing how male dancers were kind of mocked as being too feminine in their movements.