Adrianna Guerrero
For my hour in a naturalist environment, the following is what I observed while in a naturalistic environment. Behind my house there is a small patch of woods, with a running path and an ultimate frisbee course. Walking through the path I check to see if the tent with the American flag is still near the little stream. I look and see no sign of it, maybe it was a failed “treehouse” of sorts by the kids in the neighborhood, or someone looking for a place to stay for a while. The neighborhood mystery. I walk for a little more looking for the rock near the stream I sit at sometimes. Its around evening time and the sunlight is pocking through the leaves creating beams of light. I can hear the faint noise of the chains of ultimate frisbee hoop rattle in the distance. Sticks crack and brake under my feet. I finally make it to the rock and sit down making sure I don’t step in the water. I am now surrounded by the noise of the water flowing around me. I think about where the water is flowing to. Is it clean? Why aren’t there any little fish in it like the stream around my Junior High in Illinois. I remember that I live near the Incinerator located in Lorton and wonder if they use the stream. There are less flies this time around. The leaves look like they are turning, maybe we will have an early autumn.
For my hour of media consumption, I was mainly on Instagram and surfed Netflix and watched a few minutes of a series I have been watching. I start with Instagram. I look through Instagram stories, I flip quick through the stories waiting for stories of friends to see what they are up to. I see Lexi’s story, her and her roommate are pictured, and the captions speaks of a fire. Her apartment building had a fire. Is she alright? Are her roommates alright? I text her to make sure. Everything is okay. I’m relieved. I go make to Instagram. Ads for clothes pop up speaking of Labor Day deals. So many ads, I wish there were less ads. I get bored and start searching through Netflix. I look through my list to see if there is anything I want to watch. Everything on my list has changed since seeing my cousins. They recommended me many Anime series to watch. I haven’t watched them. My recommendations are of Korean series because of the one show I started watching and movies like Big Fish, When Harry Met Sally, Happy Old Year. I think about the algorithm that recommends me shows. So many TV shows and movies. I see that they have added a “Surprise me” tab. Maybe then I’ll actually start watching something. I started watching the series I have been watching, Reply 1988. I hum the theme song, pictures of Korea in 1980 flash the screen. All the characters are home from work and visiting family. One family lives in a half basement apartment and I am reminded of the floods in Seoul that caused concern over safety of them. Has policy changed about regulating them? What happens to those families?
Observing in these different environments allowed me to consider how attentive I am to what I am taking in, what questions I ask, and where my attention is focused when I am in these environments. While consuming media, I was only taking information, the media that was presented to me was fleeting in ways. I swiped and it was gone. This case was special because of concerns of my friends post and questions that I had but without that post I was just swiping not asking many questions. Mindlessly swiping looking for nothing but still wanting to swipe a see something. The same goes for my experiencing of surfing through Netflix I was just clicking though until I saw something that looked interesting only to watch something familiar. Through media for the most parting the memory of what I was taking in was fleeting especially on social media. With Netflix it was a little different, in ways mindlessly searching but I showed more attention to what I was taking in when it came to the show I was watching. While outside things were more still, I listened to the sounds around me and watched for things that I had seen before. My thoughts were more meandering, scanning my surrounding not waiting for the next thing to happen. In the age of technology and it becoming more apart of our lives, it makes me wondering if the world that we are creating online is making use less attentive to the world around us. Also, with many sources of information how do we make sense of it all and how do we manage it?