Mediated Artifacts

I think the mediated artifact assignment really made people realize how much we are being manipulated. The entire semester we have been hearing from Janelle about how prevalent manipulation is in our society, but this assignment made us pick out specific examples, and therefore recognize its full extent.

From class, the mediated artifacts that stood out to me were Megan's shirt and John's pictures. Megan's shirt reminded me of Martina's blog post last week, which I could relate to. I think the idea of the significance is labels has a huge impact on high school and college students. As for John's pictures, I never thought about the notion that they are just another source of manipulation. But, it makes so much sense; the image is what the photographer wants you to see, and is manipulated to present a specific image or idea. This also relates to any type of art, like paintings or drawings, poetry, music, and literature. The finished piece has been carefully crafted to convey something specific to the viewer or reader. This just furthers the idea that many things in our society have been manipulated or are manipulative in some way.