Culture

digital animation – screen culture – multimedia design - photography – model design & special effects

media histories and culture (4MMF0001)

This Rough Magic

an introduction to media, history and culture

To the dread rattling thunder

Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak

With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory

Have I made shake and by the spurs pluck'd up

The pine and cedar: graves at my command

Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let 'em forth

By my so potent art. But this rough magic

I here abjure.

(Prospero, in Shakespeare’s The Tempest)

The ‘rough magic’ is Prospero’s ability to control nature – to capture it, control it, and astound with spectacle…

It gives us a metaphor for the products of culture – the creative ‘magic’ of contemporary practices of photography, model-making, new media creation, special and visual effects, fine art, animation, film- and video-making, games art, storytelling, critical thinking. journalism, music and sound production, graphjc design… and so on…

Prospero’s medium is his magic staff – you have your own…

Prospero comes to understand his ‘rough magic’ and abjures (i.e. rejects) it – you are hopefully aiming to understand your own forms of ‘magic’ and to embrace them…

This is why Prospero’s rough magic provides a way into this series of lectures and seminars…

This lecture is, in part, an attempt to define the terms of reference in the module title – Media Histories and Culture – and, in doing so, to clarify and explore the aims of the module and its relevance to your creative practice.

The ‘easy’ terms first…

Media

When we think of media we tend to think of newspapers, radio, TV, the internet, and so on. Media are generally understood as technical processes and/or devices involved in acts of communication (informational, artistic, etc.) – or acts of mediation.

Media are… Or should it be ‘Media is…’? One of the...