1.At the beginning of this episode, Krukowski asserts, “the marginal-the rejected-the repressed-is whatever the powerful have decided is of no use at the moment.” What does he mean by this statement? He goes on to ask, “But might it [the marginal-the rejected-the repressed] not be a key to alternate approaches-to art, to society-to power itself?”What is he trying to get at with this question? How does music indicate the differences between the powerful and the marginalized?

The author says when he enters the record store, he finds that those albums and records are preserved for long time. And they seem to be outdated. Nowadays, people prefer to download music from Internet rather than go to record stores and pick CDs. But it doesn’t mean that those albums or songs are useless for our society. They provide a new view of art for us. In addition, in some record stores, when you pick your favorite albums, you can talk to anyone in the stores. They are interesting and conversable. You can get lots of information from them.

2.How are the music listening experiences enabled by Forced Exposure different from those that Paul Lamere is working on with platforms like Spotify?

In this podcast, according to him, the composition of music is culture and our society. For music platform like Spotify, what they need to do is focus on technology and data. They need to develop their machines, pay attention to listeners’ comments and follow the trend.

3.What distinctions does Krukowski draw between being “surprised” by music and “discovering” music? What are the differences between these experiences and according to Krukowski, why are they important?

Being “surprised” by music is that you have never heard that before. It is totally new for you which may draw your curiosity. But “discovering” is the opposite side of it which means you know clearly about what you are looking for. You listen or search it with definite purpose. Like you want to find the answer on Google. The answer will not surprise you. With the development of technology, the music platform can use data base to analyze and predict our interests and tastes in music, so it is harder for us to be surprised by music.

4.According to Krukowski, what is noise? What is signal? Why are these distinctions important?

According to Krukowski, signal is significant sound we can hear and something what we are trying to pay attention to. Except for signal, the rest of the sound is noise. What signal and what is noise all depend on your brains. But in musical studio, the clarify of signal and noise is determined by musicians. Their arrangement of it will maximize your enjoyment of music.

5.What central idea about noise does this episode convey? Why is it significant?

The signal in music is something that the producers want listeners to hear. So, they try to maximize the volume or influence of it. Meanwhile, they use technology to remove the noise. However, we cannot remove it, what we can do is to reduce it. Noise is inevitable.

6.How does this episode relate to other episodes?

The essence of music or sound is two things—–signal and noise. All the effort we put is to get the signal and reduce the noise.

1.According to Krukowski, what are the main differences between a microphone and a cellphone and why is this difference important?

The microphone is a digital device which is more complicated than cellphone. It can convey speakers’ or singers’ feelings and emotions. But cellphone is not very good at it which just transfer our voice and words from our mouth to somewhere else. Therefore, it is extremely for musicians to master the skill of microphone in order to make their listeners feel that they are just singing near their ears which is better for listeners to feel musicians’ emotions in music.

2.What do Krukowski and Gary Tomlinson, the professor he interviews, assert about the “musical” qualities of the voice and how are these changed by digital transmission?

The “quality” of the voice is not only about the word you say or sing, it is much more about the feeling or emotions you express which will influence listeners in their minds. However, sometimes the digital transmission will weaken this influence. What you hear is just the words, the emotional and impressive parts of voice disappear in the process of transmission.

3.What is the significance of Krukowski’s comments on the voice to ideas about community and interpersonal connection?

Sometimes due to the distance between people, we can not meet everyone in our life. But our voice can reach further than our bodies. It connects people from different places tightly. Our voice is a kind of media to let us travel around the world.

4.Krukowski begins by discussing the issue of music file sharing. What is your opinion of this issue? Should music be freely available or should one have to pay?

I think there are two sides of music file sharing. The first side, the music sharing is a good thing for those who love music but can’t afford every CDs. Through music file sharing, they can enjoy their favorite music without any cost. The second side, the music file sharing means the music is free for everyone. It is unprofitable for musicians. Some of them will confront financial problems when they produce new albums. The question of the price of music is a little bit difficult to answer. I think it’s all up to you. If you have extra money, you can buy it to support their career. If not, music can be freely available.

5.How does this episode represent the relationships between music, community, and culture?

The relationship between music, community and culture is interrelated tightly. The specific culture will create the specific music. And that specific music will promote community development. Meanwhile, the development of our community will encourage cultural creation.

6.Does charging money for music impede the formation of communities around this music or does it help support the circulation of music?

I think charging money for music will impede the formation of communities around music slightly. Because finance is one of the most significant points in every field. And it is no doubt that it will help support the circulation of music by increasing musicians’ creative motivation.

1. What is Krukowski’s main point about how we experience time in the “real” world versus are experiences with “digital” time? Why are these differences significant?

The author’s main point about how we experience time in the “real” world versus our experiences with “digital” time is that the “real” world time is live time we all experience in our analog world. And we can clearly feel every moment we spend. “Digital” time is a kind of machine time, not live time. It is locked in a clock. It exists in a series of time codes which makes everything more regular than live time. These differences are significant because sometimes our experience of a moment is being lost in the transition between real and digital time.

2. What does Krukowski mean when he says that listening has a lot to do with how we navigate space?

When he says that listening has a lot to do with how we navigate space, he means that listening is a kind of perceptual tool which helps map ourselves from the source of those sound. Therefore if you pay attention to the sound of your surroundings, you can detect the location without your sights. And this idea inspires me to remove my attention from my headphones to the surroundings.

3. In the interview at the beginning of the episode, Jeremiah Moss argues that developers in Astor Place are “privatizing public space in a very stealth way.” What does he mean by this? What does Moss say about the distinction between public and private space, and why is it important?

Jeremiah Moss argues that developers in Astor Place are “privatizing public space in a very stealth way.” What he means is that nowadays more and more people walk around with their screens, and they don’t want to be hear or do not hear. They are creating some private bubbles which are moving through our public space. And it is this private bubble that turn our public space into private space in a very stealth way. He says that public space is where people can do whatever they like to do, such as hold protest or somewhere people can express their opinions without having to follow rules set by private companies. He argues that it is important because people don’t realize the encroachment of their public spaces. They are not even aware of the public space they are around because they are always on their screen.

4. What is the significance of Emily Thompson’s idea that the development of concert halls arose from desires to “control interior spaces”? How is this desire, according to Krukowski, related to earbuds and headphones?

Emily Thompson’s idea of the development of concert halls arose from desires to “control sound in interior spaces” because there were technological developments occurred in that time. And so many loud sounds produced by big working engineer machines make our life much noisier than ever before. But it is very hard for people to deal with those noisy sound. Therefore, the desire for residents to live in a quieter place is really in need. Thanks to earbuds and headphones, people can own a private interior space in that noisy world.

5. In your own opinion, what are the key ideas from this episode about the relationship between sound and space? What strikes you as interesting about the ways that sound influences our experience of space.

In my opinion, the key ideas between sound and space is that sounds make us aware of our surroundings and make us realize the travel of time. The sound from surroundings can help me locate myself. Different sound will influence people in totally different ways. It might change your mind as well as your thoughts.

1.According to Berger, publicity proposes to each of us in a consumer society that we change ourselves or our lives by buying something more. Besides, publicity is a process of manufacturing glamour. But what is that kind of glamour? The glamour he mentions in this situation is constituted by the state of being envied. Publicity or advertising-images is a sort of effective way that the producers and companies promote or sell their products by stimulating our eyes. For costumers, publicity is a creative way to combine our illusion with realistic world.

2.The difference between oil painting and publicity is their final purpose. Oil painting is a media that the owners show their wealth and their real lives. The objects in those oil paintings are what they already have. The oil paintings picture their present lives. “Oil painting, before anything else, was a celebration of private property. As an art-form it derived from the principle that you are what you have.” Berger said. On the contrary, advertising-image we see on the street is to encourage us to buy something what we don’t have or what we desire. So the publicity is a kind of image or word to present our future life after we buy the products.

3.Berger says that publicity images always depict one of three dreams. First, the dream of later tonight. You are part of the good life they smile at and they are part of the good life you smile at. Everyone is surrounded by what brings pleasure, but it is you who will bring the greatest pleasure of all and next morning you will feel the same about it. Second, the skin dream. The surface you can touch without a biography. Third, the dream of a faraway place: Is to lie down on the bed alone, to allow one’s thoughts to pass through the light of the window and to travel elsewhere, conjuring images. When we buy a bottle of orange juice in the supermarket, we can see the image of a smiling farmer who lives in Brazil. He stands in front of the orange tree holding a freshly picked orange. Through this image we can imagine a beautiful orange plantation in the distance which produce the fresh juice and sell it to our market.

1.According to this episode, John Berger explains that to be naked is to be oneself and to be nude is to be seen naked by others which is not recogonized for oneself.  In Berger’s view of it, he emphasizes the initiative of being naked and being nude totally depends on other people. His opinion about the difference between nakedness and nude is kind of different from Kenneth Clark which makes us have deeper understanding of those old European oil paintings.

2.In this video, we can see the majority of male roles in those paintings are dressed. On the contrary, almost all of them are naked or forced to be naked. Men get huge pleasure from those beautiful and sexy women’s bodies. For those male viewers, women are a kind of attractive artwork but not the real individuals. The criteria for a man to judge a woman is pretty face and good figure. I think that is so superficial. However, this outdated view on women still influence people deeply. Nowadays, some people still hold the view that the value of women is to please men rather than realize their own value in life. So hundreds and thousands women can’t get the equal rights with men. They are restricted from going out to work. Even some of them get jobs due to their excellent abilities, they are still discriminated against at work.

3.According to Berger, the significance of the mirror in those paintings is to show the women’s vanity. All of those paintings convey the same concept to us that the beauty of women is defined by male. The female characters in paintings need to cater men’s tastes. So the gaze of them is out of the frame and towards those male viewers which seems that they are seducing them. Except for their gaze, there is anohter important point we should notice is that all of those nudes don’t draw the hair on women’s bodies. Because hair will reduce the sexuality of male sepectators. As I said in question #2, all of these arrangement is to please male. Additional, a female interviewee appeared in the second half of the video mentions that women lose their dynamism as well as their own activities. They are always waiting for the reactions from men.