Week 3 - Art, Entertainment and Entropy.

After reading the article by Wallace Stevens, I have come to realize a few more things about how media has affected our way of thinking and perception. Stevens raises an important question of how media lacks insight and is merely a tool for entertainment. Media does not hold the same value as before because it lacks meaning and is more focused on what society wants. Which leads to the idea that art and media are different. Media doesn't evoke feelings or thought the way art is suppose to and thus lacks the same value. Instead we view new media as a way to instant gratification without questioning its value or meaning. I do believe part of the reason we do not value media as art is because media lacks the "aura" of art.

With this in mind, new forms of media such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, I believe Stevens critique would not necessarily fit. I do admit there are MANY useless tweets and statuses but there are also the few that have evoked change. There is art within YouTube, I think more than on Facebook and Twitter. Facebook and Twitter seem more to be useless forms of media in terms of art as they do not allow for as much artistic expression, but they do offer a medium for artists. Many artists now hold Facebook pages and such to reach their fans, and even one of my own favorite artists posts inspirational statuses up on a constant basis and I feel that counts in a way as artistic expression. With YouTube, I see more artistic value and emotional involvement. People use these types of media for self expression and Stevens idea that media lacks value holds some truth, but also lacks insight that new media can also be turned into artistic mediums, if one chooses to do so. I do not deny the fact that there are a lot of useless material on sites such as Facebook which lack value and partly conform to the idea of what we find socially acceptable.