Cheyenne Dalton

Taylor

COM 250–002

22 April 2016

Introduction

My original plan for this assignment was to visit the Student Short Film Showcase hosted in the Hunt Library auditorium. And, I did go but after conducting my observations, I realized the majority of the audience was not consuming the intended visual media. Most of the audience was actually paying more attention to the visual media they brought with them, which were mostly their laptops and phones. Because of this I feel like I did not get enough material to properly do the assignment and that writing about a whole bunch of college students staring at their laps was not the purpose of the assignment. So after rethinking the assignment and other public places based in visual media that I could go to it just happened that a couple of my friends and I went to the North Carolina Museum of Art to visit a couple of their temporary exhibits in February.

A couple days before we decided to go to the museum at random, like usual, we started discussing movies and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” came up as one of our favorite movies and that got me thinking about the iconic scene where Cameron is in the museum staring at an abstract painting and all of a sudden becomes spiritual awaken; which is the inspiration for what I finally decided to do the assignment on: to go to museum and see what people did. Later on I decided it would be interesting to compare how media was consumed based on the type of pieces on display and I figured I would just focus on the the way college aged students (my friends and I included) used media and consumed media was different when thrusted into an unfamiliar environment — the wild you could say. In this case, the wild environment I observed (on two different occasions) was the North Carolina Museum of Art and different parts of — the temporary exhibits and a permanent galleries area. The specific we visited was exhibit was “The World of M.C Escher: Nature, Science and Imagination” and the permanent galleries in the main level of the West building at the North Carolina Museum of Art. By observing how my peers used media and consumed in the same setting but different tonal environments; I learned that digital media is often used to enjoy other media particular physical media — like those in art museums.

Observation

The first visit to the North Carolina Museum of Art was to see the M.C Escher exhibit. All five of us crammed ourselves into a car. The whole ride there was in silence; partly because the radio was on but mainly because all of us where tinkering around with our phones (except for the driver of course) until the car came to a stop into the makeshift parking lot of the museum.

When we immediately walked in the East building where the temporary exhibits are held; we were greeted with silence and a ticket booth lit with the light of the nearby giant windows. After we bought our tickets we walked down the stairs towards a dim lit open space with several openings to individual art installation and or exhibits. Once walking into the actual M.C Escher exhibit we all instantly felt the need to be completely silent, like we could not talk at all while we were in that space. For the the first couple of minutes we stayed in group as we wandered around. We all kind of collectively wonder into the same areas indistinctly staying in view of each other. We were obviously out of our element. I personally wonder around trying to appear like I was look contemplatively at the pieces, but secretly every once in awhile checking my phone for the time. Occasionally we would regroup and lean in close to each other and make a comment in a voice barely a whisper. While I was observing the other exhibit goers, the demographic was significantly older and they all seemed to be getting something philosophical out the pieces they were looking at. Everyone else seem to be staring at the art with great thought, like you see in those stereotypical movies that include an art gallery scene of the sorts. At one point, after realizing that I was not getting the true experience I felt the media was intended for, I lean over to one of my friend and said jokingly that I was to much of a millennial for this. And moments later I caught one my friends sneakily taking a photo of a piece of art for his snapchat story . He was sneaking around because every couple of feet there was a sign that read something along the lines of “No photography” and museum employees in all black wearing headsets keeping an eye of the people in the exhibit room. After a couple minutes in the room we all slowly got more comfortable and started to drift into parts of the exhibit where we could not directly see anybody that was familiar to us and occasional found each other to point out something cool we had saw while venturing on our own and wanted the other to check out.

In the second visit to the museum was to see the permanent galleries in the West building, again with all the same people and coincidently the same car ride experience except for occasional small talk. The venue though in the same area was completely different in many ways. Before entering the M.C Escher exhibit we had to pay for access, but this time we just waltz right in. The West building was vastly differently than the first building. The wall were painted white, the areas were filled with natural lighting and bright overhead lighting. The space was more open and everyone there had more space to move around compared to the walking and standing capacity in the East building.

Unlike the exhibit were the were signs warning you to not take pictures and employees walking around to enforce the rules, most of the art had QR codes and there were little plaque on they wall that gave you instructions on how to your own individual cell phone tour.

As for how we behaved in the area, we we a lot louder and everyone in the group was openly taking pictures to post on their perspective social media. We were not the only ones either, everyone I saw while walking around was actively using their phones and at one point I even saw a museum employee go up to family and tell them about how some the more modern pieces had QR codes.