Arts Administration|Performing Arts Management|Non-Profit Management
Week 7 Lexicon Terms
Social Proprioception refers to the concept of an awareness of oneself or one’s group/organization and where they fall into the social space (this can be community, culturally, and much more). This is directly related to an group or person’s ability to organize and coordinate themselves within that social sphere. The advent of social media has inundated people with far more tools to build social awareness surrounding their community and peers than they have ever had. A simple scroll through a Facebook feed can tell you where your friends are, who they are with and what they are doing. This is a useful tool for orienting yourself to the present social climate but it can be dangerous and used for malicious intent if utilized improperly. With this in mind, it is important to manage one’s proprioception carefully and make sure you are aware of the social constructs without being invasive.
Dissonance, in simple terms, is a lack of harmony. This is disharmony can be created in a number of ways. Most commonly, dissonance arrives when two or more contradictory ideas, actions, values, etc. enter into a person’s psyche. It is postulated that humans are constantly seeking a state of internal harmony or consistency. When something arises that disrupts that consistency, we are motivated to reduce the inconsistency,or dissonance, and seek to avoid situations that cause it in the future. Dissonance is a powerful tool in marketing that is frequently seen in anti-smoking and drinking campaigns as well as things like sexual assault prevention. We have already addressed the psychology behind this strategy but in short, by seeing these uncomfortable images, we, in theory, would then become motivated to avoid situations that might lead to those images becoming realities in our own lives and possibly work to prevent them in the lives of others as well.
Feedback Loops are a simple concept. Basically it consists of an action causing an effect and then that effect causing further action and so on and so forth. It is cyclical in nature. Feedback loops can take on many characteristics both positive and negative. Economically, they can create booms and busts in the market, largely due to the spread of panic in a situation. With technology/media we can refer to the feedback loop in terms of notifications. As you scroll through your feed you see your friends liking and sharing certain media, this in turn causes you to to like and share your the same media or related media (positive or negative), this action can create a loop where your friends like you media, share more, which causes you to share more or post more, and so on and so forth. Feedback loops can be a positive thing but can spiral and snowball into many negative effects. A commonly used anecdotal example of this is that a careless rancher makes a loud noise that scares a few of his cattle and starts them running. The other cattle see the startled cattle running and get panicked themselves and start running, more cattle see this larger group running…etc. etc. So while, feedback loops are often passive and start on their own, they can be manufactured, and one must be careful in how you make use of them.
Compression, as it relates to technology and media, is the act of taking a large file, usually an image or a video, and making it smaller. Most programs, like the Adobe CS, have options that can do this for you. In the simplest of terms, the program takes the data from the image and groups like packages of the data (so bits or pixels for example) together to allow for the image or file to compress itself. This is useful because the smaller the file the easier it is to load and distribute. The drawback is that sometimes, but not always, compression can result in a loss of quality.
Graphic Standards are a comprehensive compilation of an organization’s logos, brands, and collateral and how they are to be displayed and reproduced. They are, by nature, very specific including measurements, margins, color specifications, typeography, etc. They should be designed in a way that an organization can give them to a printer, designer, etc. and that person would be able to easily reproduce their brand in a number of ways. Graphic Standards are a catch all for branding and logo re-production.