I am intrigued by couches. Not only by their look and feel, but by the amount of time we spend on them. I am interested in a whole way of life as lived there on the couch, relaxing, reclining, watching, listening, playing and, not least, engaging with media devices.
My training in film and media studies has journeyed through the Western, Horror, and Apocalyptic genres to research the historical shifts and inflexibilities of gender representation. When I made the turn to the ways media environments shape the content and mode of our reception, however, I was struck by a new set of questions, problems and ironies. It is highly ironic, for instance, that so many men indulge in survival fantasies while sitting idly on the couch – the apocalyptic landscapes onscreen could not be further removed from creature comforts.
Anything we do that is so habitual, so unconscious, provides fertile ground for study, particularly if we wish to empower ourselves within the networks of subjugation. Couch-based activities are not something we ‘simply’ do. They are things we do with varying degrees of attention, resignation, denial, enthusiasm—and they are attended and influenced by a complex meshwork of technological devices, connective wires, radiating waveforms, protocols, ergonomic-styled plastics, signifying buttons, cushy pillows, dust, hair and the sometimes company of people and pets. How we do them, moreover, gets ingrained as practice elsewhere in our daily lives. Put simply, the living room has become a training ground for habits of perception.
My dissertation, Upholstered Frontiers: Digital Apperception in the Home Entertainment Zone, is a cultural study of how an everyday object, the remote control device, has played a longstanding role in acculturating the technical competencies and literacies that undergird contemporary media consumption. The RCD has been instrumental in automating this domestic space, transforming it from the 1950s until now, from a scene- and spectacle-based environment to one of continued monitoring and modulation of information.
My training in film and media studies has journeyed through the Western, Horror, and Apocalyptic genres to research the historical shifts and inflexibilities of gender representation. When I made the turn to the ways media environments shape the content and mode of our reception, however, I was struck by a new set of questions, problems and ironies. It is highly ironic, for instance, that so many men indulge in survival fantasies while sitting idly on the couch – the apocalyptic landscapes onscreen could not be further removed from creature comforts.
Anything we do that is so habitual, so unconscious, provides fertile ground for study, particularly if we wish to empower ourselves within the networks of subjugation. Couch-based activities are not something we ‘simply’ do. They are things we do with varying degrees of attention, resignation, denial, enthusiasm—and they are attended and influenced by a complex meshwork of technological devices, connective wires, radiating waveforms, protocols, ergonomic-styled plastics, signifying buttons, cushy pillows, dust, hair and the sometimes company of people and pets. How we do them, moreover, gets ingrained as practice elsewhere in our daily lives. Put simply, the living room has become a training ground for habits of perception.
My dissertation, Upholstered Frontiers: Digital Apperception in the Home Entertainment Zone, is a cultural study of how an everyday object, the remote control device, has played a longstanding role in acculturating the technical competencies and literacies that undergird contemporary media consumption. The RCD has been instrumental in automating this domestic space, transforming it from the 1950s until now, from a scene- and spectacle-based environment to one of continued monitoring and modulation of information.
