White Noise
Fifty years ago Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase, “ The Medium is the Message” and the lesser known, “The Audience is the Content”. Throughout his career as a writer and academic McLuhan elaborated on these so often misunderstood statements. McLuhan consistently challenged his audiences to discover the effects of emerging mediums and technologies. In discussing the myth of Narcissus, McLuhan pointed out the common misrepresentation in which Narcissus is said to fall in love with himself. In fact, it was his inability to recognize his own image that brought him grief. He succumbed to the same numbing effect that all technology produces if the user does not scrutinize their operators.
McLuhan’s message and challenge remains as critical as ever in this digital age of mass corporate run media.
White Noise is the result of taking up this challenge with 65 children, youth and artists. For the past three weeks we have been exploring the impact of technology and mass media on our lives. As always we started with questions. This year we asked: What is media? What is news? If knowledge is power, how do people who hold power in our society use media/technology to control or suppress information, and knowledge? As always the campers responded with brilliance.
During the first week of exploration the key themes of Beauty, Power, Truth, Fear and Soul emerged. The artists worked with the campers and guides to create scenes in response to these powerful words as our talented Director Tanisha Taitt envisioned the entirety of the play and our Musical Director composed the accompanying music.
The ideas that arose from the themes were challenging as we delved into the powerful unexamined ideas behind the single ideology represented in the mass media. We are grateful to our Global Perspectives speakers Neil Anderson and Shane Inglis, who came in to provide some tools for understanding what we mean when we talk about media as different from the mass media. They each in their own unique ways challenged us to consider the positive and negative impacts of various mediums, particularly the mass media and social media, which bombard young people on a daily basis.
McLuhan’s message and challenge remains as critical as ever in this digital age of mass corporate run media.
White Noise is the result of taking up this challenge with 65 children, youth and artists. For the past three weeks we have been exploring the impact of technology and mass media on our lives. As always we started with questions. This year we asked: What is media? What is news? If knowledge is power, how do people who hold power in our society use media/technology to control or suppress information, and knowledge? As always the campers responded with brilliance.
During the first week of exploration the key themes of Beauty, Power, Truth, Fear and Soul emerged. The artists worked with the campers and guides to create scenes in response to these powerful words as our talented Director Tanisha Taitt envisioned the entirety of the play and our Musical Director composed the accompanying music.
The ideas that arose from the themes were challenging as we delved into the powerful unexamined ideas behind the single ideology represented in the mass media. We are grateful to our Global Perspectives speakers Neil Anderson and Shane Inglis, who came in to provide some tools for understanding what we mean when we talk about media as different from the mass media. They each in their own unique ways challenged us to consider the positive and negative impacts of various mediums, particularly the mass media and social media, which bombard young people on a daily basis.
