Sound is part of our lives, it plays a bigger role and affects us. When sound takes place in a particular setting, it affects its space, or those living in that particular environment. This is known as keynote, according to R. Murray Schafer’s “The Soundscape.” One example is a teenager entering a clothing store that was once a toy store, thus giving him a sense of nostalgia, or memories as to how he once loved that store and the atmosphere it brought in his early childhood. Once the sound is given in a particular environment, it gains value and significance over time by the community living there and therefore gives that place meaning. This is known as a sound mark based on Schafer’s “The Soundscape.” There are real-life examples of how Schafer sees sound and how it affects other people when it comes to sound bringing significance to them. From Damon Krukowski’s “Ways of Hearing” to Ralph Ellison’s “Living with Music”, it explains how sound takes place and affects the things around them.

1. When Krukowski asserted that statement, he means that the higher-ups can decide whether something is still in good use or not. If it’s no longer useful, then it’ll be marginalized, or left out. When Krukowski added that the thing being marginalized could be used as an alternative approach to art, he’s trying to let us know that instead of that piece of art being useless, it could be useful in other instances which can still hold its value. In terms of music, the “powerful” refers to the mainstream culture, and the “marginalized” refers to the music that was once popular. In other words, the music that was once popular eventually gets left out because the mainstream culture sees no use in it anymore.
2. In the podcast episode, Krukowski distinct the terms “surprised” and “discovering” when it comes to music. Being “surprised” is when people come across a certain type of music similar to what they normally hear. “Discovering” music, on the other hand, is where people listen to music they wouldn’t normally hear, and would still enjoy it. Being  “surprised” and “discovering” music is important because many people nowadays may not be able to discover new types of music, given that they’re always recommended with the same music online by big companies.
3. The music listening experience by Force Exposure is different than those working on digital music companies because of the way music is exposed. People working at Force Exposure are exposed to a wide variety of music records to listen to, they even write about the records in detail and publish them in their catalogs. Jimmy Johnson’s warehouse has 50,000 records stored, with hundreds coming his way every week to listen to. When it comes to digital music companies, like Spotify, people like Paul Lamere expose music to users based on the users’ preferences. With their preferences, Spotify will automatically recommend to listeners the type of music they’ll be interested in. Although Spotify has more music availability than Force Exposure, users won’t get the opportunity to listen to that amount of music due to recommendations given by the program.

1. In “Living with Music”, Ralph Ellison describes music as a way to relax and avoid listening to all the noises around him. At the beginning of the passage, Ellison lives in an apartment in New York City, where it’s extremely noisy because on his right side, there’s a restaurant that plays music loud through a jukebox, and on his left side, there’s a man who blasts music every morning, causing Ellison’s typewriter to move. In addition, he describes how arguing and fighting would occasionally break out, and there would be people being drunk almost all the time. Overall, Ellison using music affects his living experience because it’s a way to escape from all of the chaos going on in his neighborhood.
2. When Ellison said, “In those days it was either live with music or die with noise”, he means that you either enjoy listening to the sounds that you like, like music, or don’t enjoy listening to sounds at all, labeling it as noise.
3. The comparison between Ellison’s essay and Schafer’s “The Soundscape” shows how Ellison experienced a soundmark. In “The Soundscape”, Schafer established that the term, soundmark, is a landmark where sound possesses unique qualities by those living there. This can be seen in “Living with Music” when the singer above his ceiling gave him memories of his childhood. When Ellison was a kid, he practiced the trumpet, causing noise and disruption to all of those around him. So overall, Ellison hearing the singer above him reminded him of the time when he caused noise just by practicing a musical instrument.

1. As I see it, the difference between hearing and listening is that hearing is the sounds we come across in our surroundings, this could be people talking from a distance, or the music we overhear from a car as the driver drives away. Listening, on the other hand, is what we want to hear, it could be music or the sounds of nature. We can make choices about what we listen to nowadays through technology like our mobile devices. In Damon Krukowski’s second episode of “Ways of Hearing”, he said we can control what we listen to in our environment anytime. There are structural elements that can affect our ways of listening, such as the way we grew up and the type of friends we have.

2. In the passage, “The Soundscape”, Schafer talks about sound and how it affects the space surrounding it. He discussed that keynote, when given a place, influences the personality of people living there and thus gives that place meaning to them. It possesses such great significance, that without it, it loses value to the people that once admired the place. The second episode of “Ways of Hearing”, portrays a good example of this. In that episode, Damon Krukowski and Jeremiah Moss went into a boutique, which used to be a rock club that they used to hang out. Krukowski remembered how the place was and asserted that the music playing in the boutique felt nothing with what the room represented. So one can see that Krukowski’s keynote was the rock club which brought meaning to him and his band. Now that it turned into a boutique, that place Krukowski loved has lost its meaning. This shows the relationship between sound and space made by Schafer and Krukowski.

I agree with Martin Berger’s claim on how the media uses photographs to make black people victims of whites, as that has been used throughout history. This can be found throughout the introduction section, where Berger references photographs from different historic points. Examples of photographs include the integration of Little Rock Central High School in 1957, sit-ins performed at segregated lunchrooms in the early ‘60s, and a photograph showing the Freedom Riders with their bus wrecked in 1961. I can see why the press would do this, probably because to make white people that are sympathetic and viewers of the media could see this and learn to be equal to blacks and treat them fairly.

1. According to Berger, publicity/advertising influences consumers by having them think that their lives would change for the better as shown in the publicity image. And therefore, motivating people to do anything to achieve satisfaction. This is significant because according to Berger, the number of new possessions one has could change relationships and become recognizable to many. However, those with insufficient money (glamour), would become outcasts and left out of the public image.
2. The differences between oil painting and publicity are important because the oil painting is used for the purpose of art, while publicity is used for the purpose of advertisement. In addition, oil painting shows what the creator owns, whereas publicity shows what the viewer wishes to own. The images used for publicity reveal that those who accept the offer will be like the ones shown in the publicity image. According to Berger, it also reveals the creator’s behind-the-scenes from both the oil painting and the public image. While the oil painting shows what the owner has, it was never addressed as to how he got it. A perfume, for example, is publicity shown to consumers so that they can buy it. But what’s not known are the people who manufactured that perfume in a factory.
3. The “dream of a faraway place” is offered by advertising to manipulate consumers by having them think with the product the advertisement is offering, the consumers would feel relaxed and stress-free from reality. One real-life example could be a resort, where people go on vacation and relax.

In the video, “Ways of Seeing, Episode 2”, John Berger argues about how women were portrayed in the Renaissance arts, which are often depicted as nudity. However, in modern-day art, women are not seen naked, but with different elements and styles of art surrounding her and the painting. The way I see it, some women could have control over their images, while others aren’t. This can be seen near the end of the video, where a group of women along with John Berger were discussing the old European art, and one of the ladies sees the paintings as unrealistic because she finds it to be exaggerating. Later in the discussion, however, another lady points out that women believe they are set with the expectation to look beautiful just by looking at the paintings. Compared to what Berger describes women in old art, a woman in art nowadays doesn’t seem to focus much on her and her body but focuses more on the style and meaning of the art itself.

According to Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, writers are encouraged to use the “entering the conversation” model. This model is beneficial because it adds context and thus gives the reader an idea as to what the writer will be talking about. In addition, it helps the writer observe each side of the argument in what the two groups believe in so that the writer can write about it in order to express his/her belief.

The use of artwork does indeed help people analyze other situations because each person has a different perspective which can be useful. As shown in the “How Art Can Help You Analyze” video, people with different positions tend to look at an artwork differently because they can see details that not others may not.