Hi, class:
After I read “Windows and Mirrors”, it inspired me to think a different way that I never think about it before. As we know, medium is a tool to guide us to various world. In this book, the author mentioned “transparency”, it could be simplicity and clarity. However, we usually take receiving messages for granted. When we use the internet to receive messages, read books or newspapers, and watch television or movies, we seldom think about the transparency.
All we see, feel, and touch are media, we through media to obtain what we want. I think “Alice in Wonderland” is a good example. The author of Alice in Wonderland implies many meanings by this story. I believe that most of people read this story when they were children. This story implies a lot of meanings. It focuses on “growth”. The author wrote this story for Alice to teach her lessons of life. Also, this story connotes children psychology. Some of people can not understand what the story what to express. In fact, the plot of this story is like a child’s mind. For children, they do not have standard logic. They exaggerate things that they might not know very well. Just like Alice in this story, she just learned multiplication, but she did not learned very well. When someone asked her, she said four multiplied by five equals twelve. In addition, the author implies the concept of philosophy by describing Alice’s body changed to be big or small unregulated. For Alice, she does not understand who she really is when she faces her body to be big or small. Likewise, People always think about who they are. Even for adults, they have the large ages, but they might do not have the mature minds for their ages.
We can learn a lot from Alice in Wonderland. Those words are windows and mirrors. Readers through windows or mirrors to get what they really need. Similarly, artists communicate what they think in their productions, such as pictures, paintings, statues, films and so on. People use words to communicate. The same way still works on new media, people use the internet to search, read, watch, shop, and communicate, and those are accesses to the real meaning. Also, digital art is the same way. So it does not matter new media or old media, when we feel something by media, we should do not just focus on media, we can try to think the hidden meaning clearly.
Menchun Kuo
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Certainly, the naive way to read the story is to do so in a transparent way, while the more sophisticated approach is to view it as a mirror commenting on language and narrative. But now, can you relate the story to new media?
ReplyDeleteDear Professor,
ReplyDeleteIn the past, there is no Internet, people use words or pictures to translate their imaginations. In other word, the author of Alice in Wonderland tried to use words to present what he thought and his ideas to his readers. Nowadays, things change. We have new media, we can use new media instead of the traditional way. We do not need to write words on papers, we also do not need to waste papers for publishing books or newspapers. We can make a good use of new media, we can post everything online, we can take digital photo and save on our computer. The old way to present is out, new media has new innovation. However, no matter old media or new media, media just like windows and mirrors to show the meanings to audiences.