Blog Assignment 4: MoMI

Friday, May 12 my boyfriend and I visited the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens. The trip was really interesting, and I didn’t expect it to be as engaging and informative as it was. I ended up spending almost 3 hours there and I still need to go back to experience it all.

We started on the second floor in the Video Screening Amphitheater. Usually, I find depictions of modern technology and online culture to be incomplete and artificial, lacking a true understanding of people’s social and personal connections to technology-based media. However, the museum really took the time to not only understand but analyze online video culture. I really appreciated that the museum partnered with YouTube gaming channel Polygon to make a short, interesting video series going into the history and basics of internet video popularity. Plus, the handouts around the room described the characteristics of different video genres and sub-genres, and the appeal they hold. Once we can break down large components of culture, like modern media or even internet videos, we are able to see nuances and recognize patterns in audience demographics and their motivations for watching certain videos, providing a kind of anthropological lens to our media in the modern age.

I’ve always found it really interesting to look at and think about modern communication. As someone who is interested in linguistics, I am always thinking about how digital communication functions. I love using gifs and stickers, and I am often thinking about why certain memes, gifs and sticker packs become popular, what kind of emotional states do they depict, what is it about something as simple as a short blip of images that can be ten or a hundred times more effective at communicating a message than words, still images, or videos combined? So I really loved that they had a little section on reaction gifs and I wish I could have seen the museum’s 2014 installation on GIFs.

The internet can be both incredibly public and widespread, and simultaneously very personal. I think the ever evolving internet video genres reflect that sentiment, with genres that cater to mass audiences or mainstream niches, to those that find more narrow niche audiences. The low-cost, low-risk nature of self-made and -posted videos means that people are free to explore new areas and discover new interests within online video communities with little consequence. In a way, online media is a documentation of the social and cultural evolution of the internet and to recognize its historical and intellectual value shows a really positive shift for our modern age, and a willingness to take video game, internet, and digital media seriously as our new modern culture.

After the video screenings, we went to the Jim Henson exhibit which was super awesome, because I had no idea who Jim Henson was but of course I am familiar with his work! It was so interesting to learn about how he started making and designing puppets, and how he built his career on it. I loved seeing the hand-drawn storyboards and handwritten dialogue pages, as well as the creative ways that the puppets were operated and moved around the stage or set. It was cool to see the platform boots of the first woman to work for his company so she could stand on the same level (perhaps figuratively as well as physically) as her male coworkers.

There were other fascinating things I learned at the museum, like how the carbon transmitter microphone by Western Electric transmitted sound through a metal diaphragm, carbon granules, and wires attached to an electrical circuit. I loved the look and technology of old microphones. Next time I hope to try some of the sound exercises, like the ADR booth and music-less scene screenings. Overall the museum was a great trip to take, and I definitely plan on going back and learning more.