Journal Entry #3

My three artifacts that I chose are catered to “audience,” using Disney World as examples. My first artifact is a Disney commercial, which attracts an audience of all ages. My second artifact is a Disney book, that is catered to a young audience. My last artifact is Disney’s wedding website, which caters to adults.

A trend that I see in my artifacts, and the artifacts of several class mates, is that our group of artifacts are based around the same topic. For example, all my artifacts relate to Disney and someone else’s artifacts all relate to New York City. I think it is so interesting that we can display a concept such as “audience” with some many different and peculiar artifacts.

Using ideas from Edbauer’s article on role circulation, it makes me realize how different this project would be interpreted several decades ago, or even in decades to come. How I infer the artifacts that I chose for my project is not how someone else would infer them 30 years ago. For one, some of these technologies that encompass these artifacts did not exist 30 years ago. For two, according to Edbauer, the meaning of these artifacts would change over time.

                With Wysocki’s ideas of role of design, we can say that the difference in visual presentation is going to make people infer these artifacts differently. For example, people will understand an artifact differently that is in text vs. an artifact that is in a video, even if they are talking about the same thing.

                According to Gladwell, the material of an artifact determines how an audience interprets it. For example, if an artifact is digital vs. if it is paper, someone will read them differently.