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Less than a week ago, I turned down a job as an electronics technician. The job encompassed television, microwave, and air conditioner repair. It was an exceedingly difficult decision. You see, while I’m proficient in computer repair, biodynamic farm maintenance, carpentry, music, television and radio engineering, beer brewing, bicycle repair, and yes television repair, I don’t know enough about fixing microwaves.
Turning down that job was exceedingly difficult for a man whose business card would simply state his name and the catchphrase “Yeah, I can probably do that too.” All my life my interest has been about knowing how everything around me works at the micro-level, and for years my primary interests have lied in media studies. My all-encompassing fear is simple to understand: how does this self-proclaimed jack-of-all-trades focus himself enough to find his niche in graduate studies?
My first foray into the world of media began when my mother bequeathed her single-lens reflex camera to me in seventh grade. After becoming a devout shutterbug, I was accepted into my school district’s brand new pet project, Communications High School. I was the second class to be accepted into the school, and few things were in order during my first years there. Over time, my friends and I who reveled in television and radio built up both the studios and the clubs that staffed them. Every morning I would dutifully and creatively present such trite material such as “the journalism club will meet in room 204 at 10:30.” If I were to attend the school today, I certainly would not have received the same education I did. The school’s unfinished nature brought me a unique constructionist education that would set the framework for the mode of learning I’ve always seemed to thrive within.
The college I attended was the Park School of Communication at Ithaca College. While at Ithaca, I pursued the studio of audio, where I learned advanced recording and microphone techniques. Throughout my time there I was the handyman on several projects, often receiving calls from frustrated friends in the editing room wondering what tool they were looking for in Final Cut Pro. In my last year I began to study archival techniques and became a teaching assistant for a television production class. While there, I pursued a minor in history, focusing on both Russia and America in the twentieth century.
At this crucial juncture I realize that I must finally distill my being into a concentration. Some may disagree and say that I should continue to branch out; I say it is time for me to consolidate my interests into a coherent whole. I am tired of working this angle, and I wish to finally study theories that comprise the world I’ve dwelled within. With my firm grounding in history, I wish to take part in the upcoming seismic shift in our field. With a mediascape that is converging at a rapid pace, the distribution guidelines remaining amorphous, and the technology doubling in power every eighteen months, it has never been a more exciting time to study the media. (Intel, Moore’s Law) In an age where the internet is poised to absorb the bulk of communication mediums, what options exist for creating strong content that is accessible, professional, and cannot be pirated? What new distribution and revenue structures will form?
The changing mediums also mean changing styles. How will the content of the future be edited together as a whole? The technology of a field always dictates the content. Can anyone imagine what a 24-hour news network would look like before satellite feeds and advanced computer graphics? A great example of one of the stylistic changes brought about by a new medium is the infamous “lonelygirl15” video channel on YouTube. Not only was the channel successful in popularizing itself via viral marketing, it also employed mostly single-camera shots where only the talent moved. In essence, the talent is manipulating the camera’s output to achieve a gestalt, rather than the camera manipulating the performance of the talent. (Youtube, LonelyGirl15)
As a born engineer, I love every aspect of working on any project handed to me. As a young man in New York City with his whole life ahead of him, I have no intention of settling down now and retiring at sixty-five after working the same job. In my time here I hope to work in several fields. I want to share my passion for music by working to help artists record and distribute their music. I want to be a powerful force in grassroots activism through the teaching media literacy. If there’s any time left I want to help make films, both fictional and documentary, with my friends and fellow students.
The New School’s program has provided me the resources and the flexibility to not only explore my goals as a technician, but to have a strong knowledge of the theories underlying the medium. For the longest time I believed that there were two divergent roads: the theoretician and the practitioner. Now I believe that it is a single superhighway, where no work can be fully mastered without understanding the theological underpinnings. As a student of history, it has always been within me to know the foundations of the restless world we live in. In my time at the New School I plan to pursue the study of history with a media-centric bent, forging a mind to understand every milepost on my so-called “highway.” I hope to begin work on a thesis project, but I am not sure just how I will yet pursue this option. Looking through other thesis projects completed by New School students, I hope to create a work that involves several disciplines. One idea I have bounced around in my mind is extrapolating the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words,” having graduate writing students describe iconic photos in one thousand words, and then have graphic artists illustrate the writings to see how close they are to original photo. I have also considered making a documentary of this process.
Ten years from now, I hope to still be doing what I love. While I know many people who came to graduate school after working professionally due to the recession, I’ve always known that someday I will teach. At the New School, I will be able to build the broad knowledge I would demand of myself to teach future generations this art. In Neil Postman’s Technopoly, he concludes that the best way to educate oneself is by knowing the history and underpinnings of any field. (Postman, 186) This is what the New School can provide for me.
To write a concise prediction of my future goals is difficult for a wandering and wondering jack-of-all-trades like myself. Wherever I end up I know that my time at the New School will be academically fulfilling and creatively bountiful.
Bibliography
Intel, Moore’s Law: Made Real by Intel Innovation. Retrieved October 6th, 2009
http://www.intel.com/technology/mooreslaw/
YouTube, LonelyGirl15’s Channel: The Equinox. Retrieved October 6th 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEz0lOecgvU
Postman, Neil (1993). Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology.
New York, NY. Vintage Books.
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