Response to Windows and Mirrors (Chapters 7-9)

Terminal Time is a series of six-minute videos about cultural contexts and how they define our history. It is interesting to see that the videos’ requires audience participation. The audience indicates their answers to questions by applauding. The audience participation creates an interactive experience and therefore the audience is involved with what is happening on screen. When someone goes to the movie theater to see a movie, they are strictly watching someone else’s vision playing out on screen. Terminal Time gives the audience the opportunity to express their beliefs and prejudices. The author mentions Plato’s allegory which is the opposite lesson of Terminal Time. For Plato, we are not defined by our cultural contexts; instead, we can stand outside all contexts and understand a higher truth. I wish I could agree with Plato, but I believe that the majority of people are very influenced by their cultural contexts and by society’s “expectations” of who we should be. Even though I have never seen Terminal Time, it seems to have an inspiring message. According to the author, the video offers a message that makes us aware of our ideologies and inspires us to change – to make us feel less comfortable with our own narrow views. It will help people acknowledge the multiplicity of possible ways in which history can be written and read. Terminal Time sounds like something worth watching, and I think I will.

            The Art Gallery and Before and After talk about how art continues to help us understand that information itself can be and should be an experience. Every digital design must convey a message to its viewer. Digital designers and artists will have to accept the “new” in new digital media. Times are changing and the new digital medium can be seen as a technological revolution. People like, Janet Murray are very interested in a visual narrative that combines elements of film and artificial intelligence to control the appearance and behavior of virtual characters. I think that would be interesting to see what she can create.