Writing #2

Megan Scherer



                I chose to read "No Dead Air! iPod and the Culture of Mobile Listening" by Michael Bull. This informative essay is about how the iPod changed the game when it came to feeling good in public while creating your own space in public. To break it down the iPod gave people control over their mood through music, their choice to change the mood based off the tune. On top of listening to their own music in public without playing something out loud to cause attention and break the personal space in solitude. Therefore, lending people to create space for themselves in public with the solitude and choice in their music preference 
                One thing I wanted to point out was this quote "What reigns there is actuality, the urgency of the present moment. Since non-places are there to be passed through, they are measured in units of time. Itineraries do not work without time tables, lists of departures and arrival times... Most cars are fitted with radios; the radio plays continously in service stations and supermarkets... everything proceeds as if space has been trapped by time, as if there were no history (Auge, 1995 pg 104)". Personally, I don't think that music helps to pass the time while moving through a non-place. Let's say a train ride that's an hour long, you forgot your headphones, the Christmas radio station is playing, and its the end of November. I personally think that you have two choices, listen in to the music, or tune it out. You can do both, but time will still have the same conceptual feel. It might even drag on longer due to the situation at hand. Leading into my next quote, "iPod use provides users with their own 'unique' regulated soundscape the mediates the experience of whatever space is passed through and regulated the flow of time as they with" (pg 351). I am not trying to get into the nitty gritty, but the flow of time depends on the tempo of the music in my opinion. I truly do not believe that listening to a 30 minute symphony orchestra will make the time on the train any faster, but something with more up beat tempo might help. 

                In the documentary Style Wars, music is used to bring people together, it brings dance, and new ideas to what to tag onto trains. Music helps them find something to do during they day when they can't sketch or paint anymore. Music helps them represent themselves as feel represented. When it comes to "bombing" (painting) train cars its usually done in silence. Usually because they are painting train cars at night and can't get caught, but if they had a choice, would they have changed it? I personally don't think so, because when they are painting trains they talk and focus, they are not trying to slow down or speed up time, they are living in the moment. Having their time to represent themselves, and they keep going back to paint because they never want that time to end. 

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