I've become more interested in people's use of media related to their moods. You could understand any moment of human experience by looking at moods, how they change, what changes them, why they change, why we're able to control them sometimes and can't control them at other times (if we could, wouldn't we always choose to be happy?).
All media consumption is related to moods, but with some, there seems to be more variety and fluctuation in moods. TV is interesting in that, at least for me, it seems to generate very few moods: the ritualistic up-down-up of a good drama; the introspective, aggro-but-still interested-in-learning-about-human-behavior vibe I get from HBO dramas; the self-esteem that comes from watching "healthy" TV like Charlie Rose; the amusement brought on by comedy; the pleasant, trance-like numbing of the mind that sports and pretty much everything else induces; some combination of these. With film, its mostly the same. But with music, things are totally different.
I tried in vain to label all of my music according to mood: drunk, funny, energetic, emo, emotional, happy, in love, rock out w/ cock out, blissed out, sad, druggy, melancholy, etc. (it would be interesting to explore color coding as a means of categorizing music according to mood. Maybe this would work better than words). I was thinking that when I was in a certain mood, I'd dial up those songs on my Ipod, but it wasn't that simple. Sometimes, I knew what I wanted, what song, what artist, what genre. But most of the time, I'm not sure how I feel or what I want, but I'm not willing to give myself over to the randomness of the shuffle feature. That's the key difference between interactive and passive media, and I'm defining music, as we listen to it now in the post-album era (and perhaps TV in the era of remote controls and frequent commercial interruptions), as "interactive" in the sense that we expect to exert control, that we're not willing to give ourselves over to the mood-shifting narrative created by the artist.
Music media can be a mood enhancer, mood manager, mood changer, or, most interestingly of all, a mood indicator (like a mood ring). It seems odd not to know whether you're happy or sad, but most of the time, according to my use of music, that's how I am. Its not until I don't hit the "skip" button when that Beatles song comes up on shuffle that I realize I'm really happy.
I'm still sketching out these ideas on mood and the level of interaction or control in media. I think w/ online video, we're treating video in the same way we treat music, but it might be overly-simplistic to say that we use both to enhance moods rather than experience a new mood. I doubt that self-reporting will get us the answer to these questions. Most of the time, we don't know exactly what we want, but maybe we're too afraid to admit that b/c it means that we're being controlled, which goes against every freedom-loving, individuality-promoting instinct in our minds.
When you look at the big picture of our media use, our use reflects our demographic, our psychographic, our values and beliefs and preferences. But when you start looking closely, you can see the ups and downs of our moods, which are far less predictable than other patterns. You could predict I'd like a new band b/c I like that genre of music, but you can't predict what I'm going to listen to tonight b/c you can't know whether the hundreds of interactions I have w/ people today are going to put me in a good or bad mood...unless you carefully monitored my brain activity and physiological states? Or just spied on me all the time? Maybe the next generation of IPods will measure that sort of thing, and finally I'll get the media I want but didn't even knew I wanted.
No comments:
Post a Comment