1. Describe your research strategy. What methods and ideas from the readings did you find most useful?

 

My information for paper was gathered from different articles that I found on the LaGuardia Library website, I used the techniques form They Say / I Say chapters that we read at the beginning of the semester  which helped me to format my paper and I also used a quote from John Berger Ways of Seeing. I liked the format from one of the articles and found that the way they described Iconography had me thinking that yes this is what I should let my paper be based on.

1. What do you take the differences between “hearing” and “listening” to be? Do we make choices about what we listen to? If so, how do we make these choices? What criteria do we use? Do structural features, such as race, gender, or social class, inform how we listen? How so? Are there other structural elements that affect our listening experiences?

There is a subtle difference between hearing and listening, even though some people use them as synonyms. One requires effort, while the other happens without our awareness. Listening and hearing go hand in hand when learning and communicating. Hearing is the perception of sound and does not require concentration whilst listening is the active understanding of the sounds you hear and concentration is required.

It’s impossible to stop hearing. Sound is fundamental to your existence, so you will hear them all day. Listening, however, is temporary because it requires attention and focus that cannot be provided every minute of the day. Therefore, listening becomes a psychological experience.

We cannot pick what we hear but we can choose what we listen to and yes structural features such as race or gender define who or what we listen to. This happens because in certain cultures such as Muslim the husband is the head of the household and the wife listens to her husband only because that is what is done in their culture but if another man has a say she won’t listen because her culture says otherwise. Also when it comes to politics or race if its election time and the democratic party is talking about a important topic the people of the republican party would probably hear the democrats’ speaking but would not listen to them because its not their party speaking and remember hearing isn’t a choice but listening is.

2.  How do Schafer and Krukowski discuss the relationship between sound and space?

Soundscapes are defined by Schafer as an acoustic field of study. He continues to state that “just as we can study features of any landscape, we can isolate the acoustic environment as a field of study as sound is not just defined as music, but as sound in a broad context. Our environment and our own voices create our soundscape e.g. the buses, trains, cabs, babies crying, people listening to music, buildings under construction. All of theses are examples of how we create our own soundscape. While Krukowski  expresses how he feels about sound today and how technology has changed how we hear and listen to each other, for instance when we are in the presence of others we would cancel out each other using our headphones so communication isn’t as thorough as it use to be, meaning that we no longer experience time together. He also states that you can hear the difference in sounds in an empty room vs a room full of people or if you place your mouth towards the mic your voice will sound like if your closer to audience whilst if you move your mouth away from the mic you can tell the difference. Sound is everywhere and we can choose to hear it or listen to it but also depends on why or how your doing so.

 

1. According to Berger, how do “publicity”–what we would call advertising–images influence consumers and why is this significant?

Publicity/Advertising is different as it applies to a way of life that we aspire to or think we aspire to but have not yet achieved. Consumers are affected by advertising because the pictures advertised are enhanced in such a way that it makes us believe that what we buy or what is offering would make our life different from what it already is. Not only our home will be intact but our relationships will be better because of our new possession but in reality we could only achieve that goal if we have enough money. This will encourage people to apply for credit cards despite of interest rates.

2. As he compares oil painting to publicity (advertising) photography, Berger argues that oil painting “showed what the owner was already enjoying among his possessions and way of life;” “it enhanced his view of himself as he already was.”  Whereas publicity pictures, “appeal to a way of life that we aspire to or think we aspire to.” Why are these differences important? What do they reveal to us about the production of images for publicity?

The difference between the oil paintings and the publicity photos is that the oil paintings are normally found in the houses of people with with authority and it is surrounded by gold frames which symbolizes the wealth of the owners within the picture and people around it while the publicity photos are found plastered on the walls or windows of peoples neighborhoods or common place of leisure activities to get the consumer’s attention so they might buy the products and dream to be like the people in the photo but it still excludes them.

 

1. Choose one of the “dreams” he offers or think of your own. How does this dream offered by advertising use imagery to manipulate consumers?

When he speaks about the dream- The Dream of Later Tonight he means that if you buy e.g a Gucci bag or if you wear the best perfume eg Dior, that you will be the best person in the room and everyone would want to have what you have but in reality imagery may be public but dreams are intimate and you bring the greatest pleasure of all to the party and feel special but later when you get home you feel the same way you were before you had all of the special items.

1. Black Lives & Social Justice Movement
2. Anyone can protest for Black Lives matter no matter the status
3. Cops should not be shooting or harassing  people while they are peacefully protesting
4. Although it is a stereotype that black people are dangerous to the cops because of racism that doesn’t mean that they should be killing innocent people out of so called fear.
5. Cops. need to protect themselves incase the protesters become violent.