The future of Flinders Street Station

The winning architects aim to transform the station into a “modern transportation hub” one that will allow the passengers to enjoy rather than just hurry through, as well as take into consideration the surroundings of the station allowing commuters to re-engage with the city, river and federation square. It is aimed to have cylindrical roofing to protect passengers from weather and allowing ventilation and disperse natural light.

It is great to know that the heritage administration building will remain intact, and features such as the ballroom and gymnasium will be enhanced and serviced with new features such as cafes, bars, retail space and administration area.

The new design of Flinders Street Station is aimed to have an amphitheater stepping down towards the river’s edge to a floating stage.

The new design of the station was viewed with mixed feelings when put up for public display. Some felt the project was too costly, and that “Flinders Street is the “grand old dame” and should remain untouched. However, other were excited by the “prospective of revitalizing the heritage building.”

 

Bibliography:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/clocks-ticking-at-flinders-street-20130816-2s11r.html

 

Past, Present, Future

I recall my Grandfather talking about the Melbourne Terminus as it was called in the past, and how is was just a series of train sheds constructed with iron and weatherboards. Where as at present it is viewed as the heart of Melbourne with its Edwardian Style architecture attracting architects from the world over.

Over the years Flinders Street Station has under gone some dramatic changes but it has never failed to remain one of Melbourne’s most favorite tourists spots. There’s more to the station that what meets the eye, and is something the people of Melbourne hold dear.

I recall him mentioning how the public was outraged when they found out about the reconstruction in the seventies. I wonder how my grandfather would react if he came to know that the government has considered reconstruction of the station and much like the 1889 redesigning, there were competitions held in order to finalize the new look of Flinders Street Station.

Out of a total of 118 competition entries, a team of Melbourne and Swiss-based architects – Hassell, Herzog & de Meuron – has won the Victorian government’s $1 million competition to redevelop Flinders Street Station. Up to date Flinders Street Station is seen as one of Melbourne’s most recognizable landmarks and as many others I too have arranged to meet friends ‘under the clocks’ at the station’s entrance.

However, due to the under utilization of the stations internal space the government feels the need for refurbishing. The ballroom that my grandfather once visited often is now vacant since the late 1980s. Large corrosion holes in the pressed metal ceiling along with peeled off paint and dust stain now decorate the large walls and floors of the ‘once grand’ ballroom and gymnasium.

The upcoming design promises to bring about a positive change to the architecture and structure of the present building, hopefully it will be pleasing to the visitors and passengers.

Assessment Task 2

As a volunteer for an event, taking place in November, it is important for every member of the team to be part of the Facebook ‘Promotions Team’ group. This group acts as a community for everyone to share ideas on how to promote the event on other social media platforms as well as print media.  Being a volunteer for this event and managing the event’s Twitter page has allowed me to be an active member in the event’s Facebook community. This has given me an opportunity to interact with other members on the type of content that could be posted on Twitter as well as give others feedback on content to be posted on other social media platforms. It has permitted me to step out of my comfort zone and has given me the opportunity to intermingle with people on a topic of mutual interest.  However, as mentioned in Finding Your Community, and as reflected upon in my blog post (Finding your Community), in order to be an active member of this community I had to post a stream of content in order for the ‘Big Five’ to notice me, and see the content and values I had to offer.

 

As mentioned in Theoretical Frameworks, McLuhan viewed “radio, cinema, hi-fi and television as a constituted shift away from the cultural conditioning of print.” Keeping this in mind, based on the objectives of the online community I am part of, I tend to agree with McLuhan.  One of the main objectives of my online community/group is to come up with different ways to advertise the event on various social media pages in order to promote this event. Had this event taken place a couple of years ago, interest would be created through newspaper articles a couple of weeks before the event rather than online posts months prior to the event. The act of creating this globalized flow of information relating to the event or any other topic of interest is termed ‘global village’. Through technology one is able to attract viewers through audio-visuals, images, sounds in contrast to the ‘ordered patterns of print-dominated cultures’. As expressed in an earlier post, I personally feel that this allows the audience to interact with others who share the same interests, rather than having seen it as a printed piece of communication. As McLuhan mentioned,  ‘The key to a medium’s cultural effect is not found in its content, but in the way it conveys information.’ Keeping this in mind I think it is highly important for communities such as the one I am part of to engage in the global village, as this will give a chance for the promotion of the event to reach a larger audience due to its interactive media forms rather than just printed forms.

 

In order to convey a message across effectively one must keep in mind the demographic of their audience and the medium that is most appealing to them. An earlier post entitled Cultural Content, further explains the use of media when trying to attract attention. In order to sell our event to the public, the group/community’s task is to promote the event as an interactive media form, one that will convey the message affectively to the audience as well as to develop interest regarding the event.

 

Bibliography: Landow, George P. Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2006. Print. 107-124

Andrew Murphie and John Potts, Culture and Technology. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Print. 11-38

Bolter, Jay David. “Social Media and the Future of Political Narrative.” Travels in Intermediality. Lebanon, US: Dartmouth, 2012. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 8 February 2016. 206-226

Oatway, Jay, Apr 26, 2012, Mastering Story, Community and Influence : How to Use Social Media to Become a Socialeader Wiley, Hoboken. 97-109. ISBN: 9781119943457.

 

Image Source: Google

 

Cultural Content

‘Cultural effect is not found in its content but in the way it conveys information.’

Due to the hustle and bustle in today’s day and age, I personally feel that in order to get a message across to a targeted audience one must have content that attracts the eye of the audience in a single glance. People tend to browse through content on the web and therefore do not pay much attention to detail unless it is striking. Textual information usually gets passed off as boring whereas audio clips, videos, GIFs are what usually attracts someone’s attention. Moreover, due to the numerous social media platforms, it is important to upload content onto the most used platform of your targeted audience if not all platforms.

 

GIF source: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/gifs-language-internet-history-culture-art-future/

Global Village

McLuhan terms the globalized flow of information as the ‘global village’. Being a part of this Global Village allows us to access content from the Internet from anywhere at any time, which as put forth by McLuhan is a ‘contrast to the ordered patterns of print documented cultures.’ Due to content being available in various media forms it doesn’t demand the ‘lengthy acquisition of reading and writing skills’, which I personally feel is important as in todays day and age people look for the easy way out due to their tight schedules. Moreover, this enables content to be more accessible to people for all ages.

Finding Your Community

 

After having read this article I was able to gain an understanding as to how to find my community as well as become an active member within it. A while ago I was selected to be part of a promotions team, which had a Facebook group that allowed the members to put forth their ideas for the entire team to view. At first I was hesitant to post my ideas on the group but as time passed, I felt the only way I would be heard and known was if I started posting, and that’s exactly what I did. This in turn not only allowed me to get my ideas across but also created a sense of belonging to a particular community.

Reflection

 

Blogging has always been a difficult means of expression for me, as I would rather write in a journal rather than post information publicly for all to read.

I personally felt that blogging was a way through which people would convey their opinions and thoughts to the rest of the world. However, as mentioned in a previous post (blogging), Adrian Miles portrays blogging as a way to “nurture peer support” and “assist in idea creation”. Miles describes blogging as an educational tool, one that aids in the process of learning and understanding rather than something that is used as a recreational tool. Blogging not only allows the author to review and correct their work but rather gives the author a chance to get feedback from the larger audience regarding their work. It allows one to improve themselves while keeping up with the advancements in technology and networking. Many a time I come across Companies asking for clients and employees to showcase their blogs as part of an interview process. This not only allows the Company to understand what a person is like but also allows the Company to see how creative the person is in organizing and designing their blog or website.

During the first few weeks of in this course, I learnt that in order to understand blogging one must be able to understand Network Literacy. According to an article by Adrian Miles, to be Network Literate relates to the knowledge of “recognizing content and its containers”. While information on the internet is free for all to use, it is important that one does not plagiarize.  In order to prevent plagiarism, we were required to post a Creative Commons License as well as a Student Charter.

As a new blogger, I was uncertain what to blog about and therefore, in order to make my blog interesting, not only for my viewers but for myself as well, I decided to blog about something that interests me, and thus have chosen to blog about art. To me, art is something personal as it is used as a medium for one to express themselves. Art can be paintings or drawings or even written pieces such as literature and poetry. In my opinion, art cannot be something digital as I feel it loses its touch of being personal (hand drawn) and gets replaced with something digital that lacks emotions and feelings.

I am now more confident while blogging as it not only allows me to improve my informal writing skills but also permits me to play around with text and image. I do however feel a bit restricted, for while blogging there seems to be a set structure, one that you cannot easily play around with, whereas when working on paper one is free to place images and text as per their own preference and liking.

 

References:

Miles, Adrian. Blogs in Media Education: A Beginning [online]. Screen Education, No. 43, 2006: 66-69.

Miles, Adrian. Network Literacy: The New Path to Knowledge [online]. Screen Education, No. 45, 2007: 24-30.

 

 

 

Research

As always I randomly started browsing on Facebook when I came across an event to an art exhibition being held at a famous museum. So as part of this “Research”, I continued clicking on various links related to the work being displayed, and landed up on the Andy Warhol Museum. I guess through this research I figured out that even though we sometimes regard Facebook as a waste of time, it seems to be beneficial to us at some point. If it were not for the Facebook Event Invitation, I probably wouldn’t have landed up on the website of The Andy Warhol Museum.

 

Widgets

I personally feel that widgets add to the layout of the blog design. It aids in the design of the blog. To me widgets help simplify and store content. I chose to have a Gallery widget in order to allow my viewers to view the images present on my blog, without having to go throw the post itself. Moreover, it acts as a digital album.