Honors 150B2: Exploring Electronic Presence

Fall 2015
Dr. Victor Braitberg
Zen TV1 Extra Credit (40 points)
Due: Sunday Nov 1 @ 10pm Upload to Dropbox
Format: 3-5 pages double spaced, 2pt font, 1 inch margins, Word
format
Style: Written in the first person. Writing is free of grammatical and
spelling errors; well organized with clear transitions; follows all of the
directions below.
How many hours of your life have you spent watching television? What
affect does this watching have on yousocially, culturally, and
psychologically? Doing any activity repeatedly has a way of training
your mind and body in particular ways. How has watching television
trained you; to do what, believe what, and think what?
Watching television is something we do without thinking explicitly
about it. The exercises in this assignment are designed to make you
consciously experience television not only as a particular object and
activity, but more importantly as a social and cultural force in your life.
This will be accomplished by making this familiar activity into
something strange.
The following are series of exercises to help you get in the frame of
mind where you can experience what happens when you watch TV.
You are required to do all of these and write about them using the
criteria listed below..
1) Count the technical events in a given show for a ten minute
period (zoom, close up, cut, voice over, music, text, pan, etc)
2) Watch a TV show of your choice for ten minutes without turning
on the sound.
3) Watch any news program for ten minutes without turning on the
sound.
4) Instead of watching TV, watch someone watching TV for 15
minutes.
5) Watch television for 30 minutes without turning it on.

1 Exercise developed by Dr. Bernard McGrane. Taken from: The Un-TV

and 10MPH Car: Experiments in Personal Freedom and Everyday Life.

Answer the following questions based on what you experienced after

doing all of these exercises:

What did you notice happening inside you and around you?

What did you learn about television?

What does television teach?

How does television train your attention?

How does television train and/or teach you to think about and
believe about the meaning of life; your purpose, what you should
want, whats good and desirable, whats real and true, how you
should relate to others, etc?

Apply and relate what you learned from doing these exercises to
a major concept from one of our readings.
o Use a quote from the reading (including the page
number(s) to illustrate this major concept.
o Your discussion should refer to the title and the author of
the reading and demonstrate that you understand the
major concept and can apply it to what you learned from
doing the exercises for this assignment.