Culture II

For my first cultural exploration piece I want to talk about an interesting thing happening with the way we interact with cameras. Going back to the beginning of recording technology, we see big, bulky cameras primarily being used on film and television, and was distinctly separate from everyday life. The technology behind the camera felt "other" to those unaccustomed to it, and so was treated almost like a verbal-essay-machine. (see this example to watch how ordinary people behaved around this foreign technology in the 20s). With the advent of the camcorder, it allowed people in everyday situations to be recorded easily onto tape, and as the rise of cinema and TV brought the technology into the sphere of everyone's cultural knowledge, it was treated less formally, and more as a candid observer, or even another person in the room. This first video below takes place during the rise of the home video and the idea of preserving your memories on film. The primary goal here is still separate from that of mass entertainment, which seeks not to preserve memories but to provide new experiences.Videos are made for yourself or a small group of people, and I think you can see the candid intimacy with which everyone interacts with the camera.

As the technology developed more and cameras became ubiquitous not only in every household but in every pocket, there seemed to be a growing interest in imitating Hollywood productions. Editing software made it simple to mash together takes and express a story creatively, and the emulation of cinema was galvanized aggressively when video sharing websites were introduced. In the wake of what felt like novice attempts to recreate the feeling of movies, youtube allowed for the last missing ingredient to bridge the gap. You could now reach millions of people with your content, and the intimacy we saw with the content and the camera dissolved. The implication now is that every moment is a moment to be preserved in time. Any action you preform on camera has a sense of urgent importance, where before you were allowed to develop your persona over time, you're suddenly squeezing as much as you can muster into a single phrase or movement. This gives a clearly over-saturated feel to people's behaviors. Compare the above video to this similar one made in 2018.

In the realm of inauthentic, overblown personas, the most important question becomes concerned with how we reclaim and preserve that gentle intimacy that we long to capture on camera. I don't really know a good solution, but I set out to try and do something similar with the next and last video below. My only working method was to forego completely the sense of linear progression. I filmed my friends constantly, and then later combed through to remove anything I felt didn't represent the quieter moments. The result is a series of shots with no particular significance, but which combine to give a sense of what it's like without the camera. My hope is that it's conveyed well to those watching from the outside, but that's secondary. Best experienced fullscreen with heaphones cranked up bby