Contextual Influences Year 2 - The Embodied Mind

This week, we were given an introduction to the phrase The Embodied Mind, at first introduction of the title I had no idea what to expect and have never herd the term of the phrase. We discussed how the Embodied mind affects the perception of the world around us, to the point where the mind starts to understand the world through the use of our limbs. What I mean by this is when we use objects consistantly in our lives, this can be anything from a Toothbrush to a Game Controller or remote. We use them so much and understand the functions of this item, to the point in where we consider the object an extra limb, and regard them with more importance in some casses.

With the body thinking that certain objects are an extra limb that is joint to the body this has an effect on the mind as it begins to believe than on a extra limb or expanded from the use of certain objects that are in some form joint to the body because it becomes an easy transition to join the limbs of the body to objects that have been aacustomed to you and which makes the unwanted elements that aren't used become a waste and forgotten.

During this lecture we took a look into a few other thories in which we could relate to a couple of briefs which we were running parallel, these were the Game Level Part 1 and the music video brief and had to think about different theorys in which to head down and connect to the brief. I dont consider myself ever getting into film making, But I found the theoy about "discord" the most interesting and what represent film making well,it looks at how the music extract certain emotions of the viewer through melodies or moods of the sound which can help in the suspense of a thriller or build up an ending of scene. At this time I had no idea in what Kind of route I was going to take with my project, but I gained knowledge on types of sound you would use for example building up a suspense in a horror film in which Synthesizers are almost always used in horror films because they can produce otherworldly sounds, and are used alot in SCI FI films, however I also found the extract in which Alfred Hitchcock wanted no music for the 1944 film Lifeboat, because the characters are ''out on the open ocean. Interesting and asks me the wuestion do you even need music / sound effects to create a good atmosphere. I foun this topic really interesting and gives me an insight on how to create a good atmosphere in my music video and relate sound to imagery well.

The other brief we are doing at the moment is the game art brief in which we are designing and animating a character there are many theories that are available and found some stuck out more than others such as the seven basic storylines which is basically that all stories throughout history have involved some sort of connection to the seven stories that have been used constantly throughout history even though they seem different the sic structure of the story is simple and similar. This theory could give me an insight on how to animate a character and relate it well to the stoyline. Other theories around are that for example of the uncanny valley, of which we will accept the character more if it was less human like which is a really interesting factor. Like the Music theory this has given my research and influence into developing my project.

Another question we were asked was why Do people dislike comic sans ? and is it because they find it too babyish?

To be honest Im not sure how to answer this, as it just matter of opinion but I think it could have an effect on the brain and how different people see things, as the general opinion I believe is creative people such as myself who try and come up with new designs and concepts forsee it as an overused type face in the same lines with times roman and Ariel, we just see it all the time, therefor if we used it I believe it would'nt represent our creativity in trying something new. Hoever less creative people probably like it because they see it every day in popular and mainstream places they automatically persume in that its a great text to use because of how much it surrounds us in our lifes. I believe some people just find it babyish because like mentioned before its used everywhere and shows no innitiative similar to the charisma of a baby / child.